Tanya Lawler from eBay spoke at ChannelAdvisor Catalyst today aiming to answer the question “What is really happening”. She says that there have been two major changes for ecommerce in the last 18 months – how people shop and service expectations.
People now what to shop in the way they want and get the product when they want it and their expectations are very diverse.
Tanya from eBay talked not about mobile commerce, but rather mobility – whether it be on mobile web, a mobile app and regardless which country in the world the buyer is eBay want to be there.
Shipping is important and Tanya highlighted how at the weekend she wanted to purchase but because it was a Sunday she couldn’t have next day delivery. It may be a lot to ask, but because she couldn’t have next day delivery she didn’t make the purchase. Tanya says it’s the same as going grocery shopping and getting to the checkout with a basket full just for the cashier to say “Sorry I’m going on a break – I’ll be back in twenty minutes”. If a customer wants an item delivered Tuesday afternoon then retailers need to be able to give that flexibility.
This follows on from Scot Wingo’s talk earlier this morning at Catalyst where he talked about Amazon raising standards and pushing the envelope in ecommerce. Whilst I often hear retailers kicking back and saying that they can’t do same day shipping, next day delivery, free postage etc, the truth is that this is what consumers want (sometimes) and failure to offer the services means customers will go to your competitors.
Personalisation is important and key to eBay’s future – who would have guessed that Tanya is a petrol head and you can expect to see TVR parts in her eBay feed. Quite frankly I’m happy for the garage to service my car and that’s why eBay don’t want to market car parts to me. It’s not just the eBay feed however, we’re starting to see more promotions on eBay and Tanya highlighted the Weekend Spectaculars and Baby, Home and Wedding promotions which have been running on eBay. eBay may not be the first place you think of for nappies, a cot and dummy for your new baby, but eBay aim to make sure that it is.
The international opportunity on eBay is amazing – 20% of eBay’s business is cross border trade, 150 different countries buy from the UK and 80% of eBay buyers would purchase from an over seas seller. It doesn’t matter if your on your laptop in Russia or on you mobile on the bus home to Clapham, it’s just as easy to buy on eBay in both situations.
eBay aim to be an omni channel retail partner for businesses, whether it be cross channel global services for large merchants, down to shipping and logistics services for sole traders eBay aim to provide the tools to get your inventory in front of the right customers who want to buy it.
9 Responses
It was just a shame that no matter who represents ebay, when questions about difficulties on the site that affect sellers are asked, all you get from ebay representatives is no clear answers and that they will get back to you later.
Ebay just answer the questions.
Apart from that, she looked good!!
From this presentation it was very hard to see how Tanya has got anywhere near the top echelons on Ebay UK. It was very, very disappointing.
Speaking to a bunch of people very clued up on e-commerce and eBay and gave us a speech with absolutely no content or insights.
The guy doing the CBT Ebay workshop was much better.
Completely contradicting herself here, one minute customers want it asap next day, the next they are happy to buy overseas.
Anyway she is a woman and they always want something extra, so luckily our customers are not in the same boat as that
Dear eBay
Good luck with Russia. Although I guess you’ll never lose because when the claims for INR come flooding in because Russian Customs take 2 months to clear a package you’ll just hand the money back to the buyer and the seller will lose the sale and the goods. Same old, same old.
Yours etc…
I’d love to know what it was that she didn’t buy on a Sunday just because it couldn’t be delivered on Monday.
In fact, why was she even looking on that day?
The analogy with grocery shopping in person (and the cashier taking a twenty minute break) is such unrelated nonsense that it kind of weakens the credibility of the whole argument.
I agree that this was very weak presentation. I wanted to hear about new eBay features, not a high level presentation about how great eBay was