eSellerPro 2012 Marketplace Trends

Keith Bird, CEO of eSellerPro opened their customer conference today with a positive overview of the last year. Sales for eSellerPro merchants topped £300million (£s not $s) in what’s a record year with a 71% growth compared to this time last year.

2012 has been a year to stablise and scale for eSellerPro. At last year’s conference Keith Bird had only been CEO for three months and recognised there were things they could be doing better. They’ve now put stronger foundations in place with investment in architecture, improved communications and documentation and recruitment – they’ve attracted some great talent who are now in place to drive eSellerPro forward.

Keith laid out eSellerPro’s plans for expansion overseas and it’s good news for their merchants. Rather than dilute their focus by recruiting sellers in the EU and US, they’re focusing on growing their UK retailers cross border trade.

Service to customers is still less than ideal, but Keith emphasised that the people are now in place who really do care and 2013 will focus on their existing customers. Unlike most organisations who’s marketing budget is spent attracting new business, over 60% of eSellerPro’s budget will be spent supporting their existing clients.

Whilst they have delivered a fantastic product they aim to make it easier to use. Part of the problem is simply how powerful the product is, but that also makes it complex and one area of focus will be to make the Inventory module more user friendly.

Chris Farrelly, eSellerPro Founder back as CTO

Chris Farrelly having had a well deserved year off (supposedly, he can’t seem to stop working!) is back in the saddle full time as Chief Technology Officer taking the reins back from Edgar Smith who acted as interim CTO. Chris was always a techie at heart although in the past he had to focus on building the company as well. Now rested and eagar to get back innovating he will head software development at eSellerPro once again and 2012 will be a year of innovation.

eSellerPro 2011 – 2012 Performance

eSellerPro’s customers who have been using the platform for a full 12 months have grown an average of 37% over the last year – that’s over three times the growth of UK ecommerce which ran at about 11%. Cross border trade for eSellerPro customers grew 195%.

eBay was key to eSellerPro retailers growth turning in over 60% growth. Play.com and retailers eSellerPro websites grew at greater than 40% growth but the disappointment was Amazon which grew at just under 30% in the last year. Top priority at eSellerPro will be to fix the underperformance on Amazon.

Reflecting figures we’ve heard elsewhere, eSellerPro report that 20.8% of all traffic came from mobile devices. Yet another reminder to ensure that your products are available for purchase on mobile devices.