Bev and Andy Toogood are successful eBay PowerSellers trading as Little Sunflowers as well as running their own website and a retail outlet in Wendover, Buckinghamshire. Yesterday Andy took time out to attend the ChannelAdvisor Insite conference in London and today shared his take on the day with TameBay.
ChannelAdvisor Insite has the stated aim of ‘providing you with the information you need to build the most successful online business and encourage exponential growth’. Whilst I wouldn’t say I came away feeling as though that was achieved in 8 hours yesterday it was a fantastic day with good insight into current trends and the opportunity to network with other sellers sharing experiences and finding solutions to problems with people who have been there before.
My own driver for attending was about trying to keep up-to-date with information in an ever changing e-commerce landscape and with some hope to pick up a few pieces of information that would improve our own offering. Things change so quickly that it’s hard to keep up, even from week to week, and this event certainly provided lots and lots of very good information on what’s going on where with tidbits of information thrown in on how to improve your own online presence.
What impressed me most and has done so in the past with ChannelAdvisor events is that whilst the organization clearly offers solutions for just about everything that is ecommerce they always steer well clear of promoting or even entering into discussion on what they offer as solutions during any of the sessions. This makes the events a pleasure to attend because rather than feeling as though you’re in the middle of a sales pitch it is pure information provision and advisors are always eager to offer advice and assistance whether you are a ChannelAdvisor client or not.
Would I recommend attending? Yes, I would. For £49 it’s very good value for money and you definitely won’t regret it.
There are four more opportunities to attend ChannelAdvisor Insite this year in Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham and Dublin.
12 Responses
Hey Andy – we’re really glad you found the day both enjoyable and useful. Hopefully we’ll see you at plenty more events in the future!
James
ChannelAdvisor UK
Andy – thanks for the review. We appreciate the feedback and always work to make these events as impactful for the attendees as possible.
Scot
P.S. Those amber teething necklaces you have are a neat idea – plus you can clone dinosaurs out of them based on this movie I’ve seen 😉
If anyone has been to eBay University in the UK and hoped for more indepth information they should attend Insite. In fact if you meet one of the following criteria it’s worth going to:
1) You have your own ecommerce website
2) You sell a significant amount on eBay
3) You sell on Amazon
4) You’re looking to increase your sales from Gold Powerseller level or above
5) You want to know which market the biggest increase in sales is coming from
or
6) You want an overview of the ecommerce market in the UK today and where it will be in six months time
Thanks for that – I got an invite the other day & thought it looked worthwhile – have just signed up for the Bham one 🙂
I echo with Chris on his view regarding the quality and content of the presentation. I would strongly recommend any one researching on the current e-commerce trends to attend the conference as the content of the presentation was very well balanced with along with some theory as well.
What I enjoyed the most was the networking drinks session and the conversation I had with Channel Advisor reps. A must for anyone with passing interest in e-commerce or electronic marketplace.
Hey Saqib, it was great to meet you at Insite 😀
hi guys ,
Is it advisable to sell simultaneously on 4-5
ebay sites ?
I am having a happy time doing so ,
but at the same time a few freinds advising
that it can be confusing for many would be customers .
Runalaila – I’d say keep doing it until customers actually start getting confused! Most buyers prefer the local-site listed products and tend to never find the ‘available from other countries’ stuff so I personally don’t think there will be confusion.
Now on your side keeping track of it and your stock can be confusing so don’t let THAT get confused 🙂
Scot
Hi Runalaila, Scot is right, most buyers search one eBay site and the defaults are generally “Listed on”. That means for me in the UK when I search I only see products listed on eBay.co.uk. Equally if I want appeal to buyers in the US I should list on eBay.com to get the best exposure in that market.
The other advantage is that in smaller marketplaces such as eBay.ie (Ireland) you can be one of the biggest sellers in a category much more easily than you could on say eBay.com. If you dominate the category in a particular country you’ll get most of the sales from that country!
Runalaila, if you’re going to list on more than one site and you tend to have multiple item sales (which I’d imagine you do?), I would strongly recommend you to have one shop for each site. You can’t combine items listed on different eBay sites, so you’ll spend far too much time doing manual invoices, or having buyers very confused when their invoices from eBay only have half their purchases on them. Take it from someone who’s been there 😀
well guys
thank you all for all the suggestions.
but honestly i use listing on other sites but those are not intended for sales but to draw them to my main listings listed on ebay india .
its working and as a bonus i am getting sales
from listings on uk and usa sites too .
As sue said its been additional work for me to draw invoices manually and also people do get confused but the results obtained do not make me want to withdraw the strategy ….
so lets hope my carrying on makes sense ..
Sue – sorry to say I disagree with you about the listings from multiple sites.
If you manage your buyer’s expectations, then they know what’s going to happen. A simple statement in the description of which payments you accept, that you list on several eBay sites, and that eBay invoicing cannot combine items in different currencies, usually does the trick.
Add to that a one-liner that if they buy in multiple currencies and want a single invoice, they have to request it (because you sell too many items to too many people on too many sites (LOL – as if)) to keep track of who is buying what where. 99% of people can empathise with that.
Only ever had one whingy grumper ever get a strop on about it – and I bet you can guess which side of the big pond they came from – can’t you?
Gaz