Review: My eBay beta
Having already made some changes to its feedback policy and search, the online auction site has recently introduced a new 'My eBay' summary page for users in beta.
I've been selling a few items on eBay lately, so I decided to check out the new format to see how it works...
Google turns 10
This weekend, Google celebrated its 10th birthday.
In September 1998, armed with $100,000 in seed money, Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page began a journey that a decade later has seen the development of a $150bn company that employs more than 20,000 people.
Using PayPal's IPN system
One of the benefits of having your own merchant account is the level of integration that it provides.
A payment gateway enables your customers to pay without leaving your website, and there is almost no limit to the ways that you can build specific functionality related to payments that makes business easier for customers and your business.
eBay targets multinational brands, still stingy with data
I had a pleasant but brief chat yesterday with Christian Kunz, the man heading up eBay’s newly-announced international ad business .
The division, which will be headquartered in Bern, will oversee the management of advertisers' display and text ad campaigns across 25 international sites.
It will aim to further increase eBay’s already-rapidly-growing ad revenues; a small part of its business, but one that is successful enough already to have caused concern to some in its seller community.
Irish tech etailer targets US
The last few months have seen a number of excess inventory retailers announcing plans to expand from the US into Europe, as they search for new clients and buyers.
However, Luzern Solutions, a Dublin-based firm that sells such goods via eBay, Amazon and ther online marketplaces, is looking to take them on on their own turf by heading over to the US.
The company's head of marketing Jackie Brannigan tells us how the web is shaping up as an overstock sales channel, and one that many manufacturers and retailers are still to exploit fully.
More Hollywood than haute couture
eBay has posted a letter to its 14m UK users detailing its fight against counterfeits and claiming it is a defender of e-commerce against the threat of uncompetitive commercial practices.
The letter, signed by 'Doug' (European SVP Doug McCallum), follows a ruling last week against eBay in the Paris commercial court.
New search tools for eBay
Online auction giant eBay is introducing some much needed changes to its search functions, making it easier for users to find what they want and filter out what they don't.
The changes will go live on the UK site in the next month but are already available to try out on eBay Playground.
The New Media stock exchange
I have issue with the process of online media buying. Agreeing a spend budget for the month, researching a handful of websites, a few phone calls to negotiate the rate, booking a volume of impressions, signing an insertion order before sending over the ad-serving tags.
It feels too rigid, too simplistic, but most of all too much like offline media buying! But is that all about to change?
Q&A: Dabs.com’s Jonathan Wall on e-commerce
Jonathan Wall is the marketing director at Dabs.com, the online technology retailer bought by BT in 2006.
Here, we ask him about the company’s latest efforts around acquisition, conversion and retention, including a current project to digitise its print catalogues.
He also gives us some interesting thoughts on cashback affiliates and shopping comparison sites, as well as the good stuff IT manufacturers are doing to support retailers like Dabs.
Craigslist: Meg Whitman seduced us
In what is one of the more amusing lawsuit filings I've read in recent memory, Craigslist has fired back in its legal battle with eBay.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
