ProStores have just released the latest upgrade which makes setting up your own shop on the Internet easier than ever for eBay sellers.
Possibly the most attractive upgrade is the ease with which eBay fixed price listings can be imported into ProStores enabling you to get set up for business in just minutes. Not only will ProStores import your eBay listings but it’ll regularly sync with eBay to ensure your stock levels are always up to date.
Other updates include a new tabbed design to present the most important information up front to your customers (that sounds suspiciously like the new view item page on eBay), making the product image, price and attributes, and a more prominent “Add to Cart” button more visible.
The shopping cart itself has been upgraded giving a smoother checkout flow and search pages which have no matching products now have a ‘Featured Products’ display and an ‘Advanced Search’ box that includes search tips to keep buyers on your site.
ProStores costs start at just $9.95 a month, although in reality that limits you to just 20 live products in your store. Most serious sellers will start straight off with the Business package at $29.95 allowing you to stock up to 10,000 products.
ProStores has always been a US based product, eBay integration is with eBay.com only. Also prices will be displayed in US $ although there is a third party currency converter add on which will allow buyers to select their country from a drop down.
ProStores is great for US users with the eBay.com integration, but for users in other countries it’s a fairly expensive way to run an online store. It would be great to see a similar product available in the UK, but currently standalone ecommerce packages look a better more flexible and more cost effective option.
17 Responses
Hi, thanks for this news. One of the biggest issue with eBay is not being able to separate template from content. If you import descriptions into ProStores, then what happens to all the boilerplate text that is same for all your eBay listings? eBay’s listing system needs a way to allow for separate of boilerplate and content. That will make distribution of your content much easier.
If ChannelAdvisor ever manage to get sync of stock levels between and ebay and online shop like this appears to have their offer would become quite attractive.
I’m curious about Tekgem’s question as well?
I’ve been considering prostores for some time now, primarily for this very reason. I tried infopia at my old job and it was a nightmare (for that business–I’m sure it is good for some).
You should get an affiliate account if you are going to write good about them!
But then, maybe not. I rolled over the links to check the URL–I notice no affiliate tags, and thus take your article seriously rather than as an ad, haha.
@Tekgems and @Clayton
I have to admit a severe lack of knowledge on ProStores as they’re not really set up for the UK and I don’t have an eBay.com account, but what I can tell you is that unlike eBay they have a phone number. They’re also more than happy to talk to you on the phone as I found out this evening when researching a couple of details for this article!
ProStores phone numbers are on their website
BEWARE OF EBAY & PAYPAL!
Every change ebay has made in the last year has been a double edged sword. Before getting too excited about these changes, make sure to look at the detrimental effects of their previous policy changes. Such as FORCED Paypal for the majority of users and Paypal’s amended User Agreement.
READ your Paypal User Agreement, which now states that Paypal (owned by ebay) can withhold ANY users’ funds for 21-180 days at Paypal’s “sole discretion”. Paypal also keeps the interest those funds collect during Paypal’s holds.
Thanks to ebay’s CEO, John Donahoe, ebay and Paypal are both a mess now ! To learn more, search the internet for:
“Ebay Stockholders and Sellers Calling For Immediate Termination of John Donohoe CEO Petition” at petitiononline.com
“eBay’s Disruptive Innovation, How’s that workin’ for ya? — GenuineSeller”
ebay employees’ ratings of ebay incs. horrid management at glassdoor.com
Auctiva.com are getting into the store front business . A lot cheaper than ebay and they listen to feedback from users. Early days but it shows promise.
#2 Andy eSellerPro already dynamically update stock quantity in eBay Listings.
If there was someone out there that had a website that synced stock between Ebay and a Website, we would be interested.
But we are not aware of anyone that can do that other than prostores.
Yet because we are in the UK, we cannot make use of this option…
Shame really.
Mark
#8 Hi Mark, there is a company called eSellerPro.
@ # 8
Depends on the store, I guess. I’m pretty sure I recently saw an osCommerce plugin that does exactly that. I’m guessing it uses the API so you’d have to create a developer account and setting up platform notifications.
Why is this a featured story on the front page?
Its a minor upgrade for a US based product that most of your readers neither know or care about.
News about the core ebay.com/uk/country site should be featured, not minor subsidiaries no one has heard of.
#7 Stewart, thanks for the info but a company that doesn’t publish pricing on their website and says ‘the cost of your software solution is designed to fit your business profile’ makes me very nervous because once they have your contact details I’m guessing they never leave you alone… just like ChannelAdvisor 🙂
11#
would you care to hazard a guess as to the meaning of the first W in WWW?
guess correctly and answer your own question.
#12 Andy, I guarantee they are nothing like Channel Advisor, they are streets ahead of Channel Advisor. The pricing is very cheap for what eSellerPro does and I’m sure they wouldn’t bombard you like Channel Advisor.
I have been using it for over a year now and it has revolutionised my business – take a look at Bamford Trading for example.
@ # 13
I almost replied similarly but I think his point is that he doesn’t believe anyone uses ProStores so why bother? I think it would be similar to featuring an article about Kijiji or Rent.com. I never look at the featured section myself so I really don’t care.
#9
Thank you Stewart, I am about to give them a call 🙂
Mark
I spoke to esellerpro but they are just too expensive for small to medium size Ebay businesses. (£400.00 pound a month on top of £4,250 website set up if you want a full design etc).
So we have taken the concept and have wandered off to GetAFreelancer.com (hire a techie type to solve your IT needs) and invited tenders for someone to write our own scaled down version that will sync stock between Ebay and the Website.
Much cheaper and you are in complete control of your website still.
To use esellerpro and channeladvisor, puts them in the driving seat as they host and hold control over a certain aspect of your business.
If you are looking to escape from total reliance on Ebay, you may find customs software solutions that “talk” to Ebays API and your website a good solution, rather than handing control to someone else…
Ongoing support for these custom solutions has to be considered though.
Mark