eBay India have announced what I think is one of the best developments on any eBay site for a very long time: they’re adding a shopping cart. Going rather against the grain of the current “auctions or bust” mentality, eBay India is promoting Buy It Now, and has added the shopping cart and a new streamlined checkout process to facilitate quick and easy shopping. Rajan Mehra, Country Manager for eBay India, said:
“While auctions will always be an important part of the eBay India business, we’ve also noticed that a large number of our sellers and buyers who trade in new items in categories such as electronics, mobile phones and computers prefer the Fixed Price format.”
The shopping cart will allow buyers to select multiple items from different sellers as they browse the site. Items from different sellers can then be checked out at the same time. The shopping cart allows for much greater flexibility than is normal for eBay: at the moment eBay requires a commitment to purchase far too early on: you either ‘commit to buy’ or you have to move on and risk losing the item (and the watch list is FAR too clunky to use in one shopping session). With a shopping cart, buyers can put something in that cart safe in the knowledge that they don’t have to purchase it yet, they can keep on browsing, and *that* means they keep looking for longer. The longer they look, the more they purchase.
The particularly nice thing about eBay India’s shopping cart implementation is that it doesn’t attempt to split the site like eBay Express does: it simply adds another incredibly useful layer of functionality. Currently, the “add to cart” button appears only on BIN items, but I’d like to see it extended to auction items too: especially teamed with Bid Assistant, a shopping cart could be a great way to keep buyers on eBay by making it easier to build a watch list or a bidding list. Sadly, it’s only available for buyers registered in India at the moment, but this is such a great development for both buyers and sellers, and I sincerely hope it’s implemented on the rest of eBay’s sites soon.
4 Responses
Well … The Move Was Very Eagerly Awaited By Most Of Us As Many Upcoming E-com Sites In India Were Gaining Strength … Auction It Seems Is Not So Very Popular With Indian Users . Anyways Lets See How This Move Helps .. Lastly Most Of Us Are Especially Sellers Like Me Selling Mostly Internationally Are Disappointed As To Why This Option Is Not Available To Foreign Buyers
Almost certainly not available worldwide as it’s only supported on eBay India. Hopefully it’ll roll out worldwide and be supported cross site as it’s an excellent innovation 🙂
Runalaila, believe me – your foreign buyers are just as disappointed as you are! Lets hope eBay listen to us and roll this out worldwide really soon.
H sue … actually i have a lot of foriegn buyers coming over to the ebay india site and making payments by the indian ebay checkout ( paisa pay , which is the mode of payment we require to offer if we have to get included in the shoppng cart checkout ) . i dont see any reason as to why they should be stopped from taking use of this feature … anyways i a quite sure , once everything is tweaked out , this will roll out worldwide soon