Hot on the heals of BlueBay Electronics, another ChannelAdvisor customer has been recognised for their online success in 2007.

This time the award goes to one of our UK customers, Schuhstore, who just picked up the first ever ‘Auction Seller of the Year 2007′ award at eBay’s recent Backstage VIP party in London.

The team at Schuh, led by ecommerce whiz kid himself, Dan Lumb, has exceeded all expectations this year, moving over one hundred thousand pairs of shoes in the last 12 months through the eBay channel. Yes, you read that correctly, in the last 12 months they have amassed a massive 111,500 postivie feedbacks (although that number is increasing as I type this!)

We’ve been working with Schuh for just about a year now and we’ve enjoyed every moment of it. It’s people like Dan and the Schuh team that make us excited to come into work in the morning and we love the constant pressure they put on us to improve. We couldn’t be happier that their success has been recognised in such a appropriate way.

Congratulations to the Schuh team from everyone at ChannelAdvisor - great job!

p.s. if you’re after some light entertainment, be sure to check out the rather strange, but amusing ‘silent movie‘ on their eBay blog…

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eBay continued its global “Reinvigorate Tour 2007″ (eBay should have cool t-shirts with this on it) with several initiatives designed to make buying and selling easier (and more attractive).

Front and center is the announcement that listings starting at 1 Euro now cost 49 Cents and include the free Gallery option (as a native German I have taken the liberty to translate this). And while head of eBay Germany Stefan Groß-Selbeck stated that this new price is effective “at a minimum” through the end of the year, I would not be surprised if Germany will follow eBay France’s lead to always include Gallery in the listing fee (starting August 28th).

Other enhancements include a new eBay.de home page, new My eBay, updated community forums and a reduced eBay Premium Store price (299.95 Euro down from 499.95 Euro), many of the same changes we have been seeing on eBay.com (Chris at TameBay has additional details) — except the compulsory Gallery of course …

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Ina at AuctionBytes reports this morning on eBay’s new Seller Non-Performance Policy that is very important to review and understand for any eBay seller since it can result in severe restrictions or even removal from eBay. The policy states several best practices for promoting buyer satisfaction:

• Accurately describing the condition, size and quality of the item directly in the listing.
• Honoring the original terms by accepting payment for an item at the end of a successful sale.
• Promptly shipping the item with appropriate packaging once payment has been received.
• Responding promptly and professionally to questions from the buyer.
• Proactively communicating with the buyer throughout the transaction.
• Issuing refunds in a timely manner when accepting returns or when there are problems with delivery.

The eBay Chatter blog interviewed Lynda Talgo, eBay’s Senior Director of Global Policy Management in Trust and Safety which highlights the impact of this policy on high-volume eBay sellers:

Higher-volume sellers: For sellers who are not low-volume sellers, and who have a buyer dissatisfaction rate of greater than 5% (but less than 10%), the restriction is a reduction in sales volume. Sellers will be able to continue selling and listing items, up to 75% of their historical weekly volume based on their rolling 90 day history of completed sales. (This is based on dollar sales volume, not on number of items sold.) We manually review restricted accounts after 30 days to determine if there has been improvement in their satisfaction rates. If a seller’s buyer dissatisfaction rate is brought down to less than 5%, the restriction will be lifted. If the buyer dissatisfaction rate remains greater than 5%, the sales volume will continue to be reduced. Additionally, sellers whose performance substantially worsens during this restriction period may be subject to more significant consequences.

A restriction to even 75% of the rolling 90-day average volume could mean at 50%+ cut to probable sales volume and leave many sellers sitting on a mountain of inventory (putting their business at risk). Of course Scot has some great thoughts on this.

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eBay has just announced a huge promotion for the entire month September following their very successful Gallery promotion launched two weeks ago.

“… if you buy Gallery and start your Auction-style or Fixed Price listings at $9.99 or less, we’re going to give you the insertion fee for FREE. In addition, for items with a starting price of $10 or more, you’ll save 25% off the listing fee (up to $1.20 per listing!).”

Early seller feedback (from the IMA Merchant forum) is very positive:

“Well, this has really been an eye opening experience for me! I have always been loathe to run core due to the costs involved but the level of sales I’m getting right now (if it keeps up) is highly encouraging. I’ve already sold 16 of those boogers and have covered all of my listing fees already. Darn it. It looks like I really do have to pony up the cash to run core.”

“I’m excited! I want to clean out my warehouse and have lots of stuff I can sell for less than $9.99, so this is great for me!”

“No Way! I can believe it!!! I have been bummed that eBay hasn’t ran very many sales that benefitted me lately but this is it! I bet I can double my sales if the multiple quantity still works. “

Scot has a great analysis on the benefits, but really - when ARE we going to see free Gallery at eBay??

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Well, we’ve just about (but not quite!) recovered from the first ChannelAdvisor Insite event of 2007 which took place yesterday in central London.

Over 30 UK online retailers joined ChannelAdvisor and Google (who were Platinum Sponsors) for an information-packed day of presentations, discussions and workshops about the current opportunities for online retailers in the UK.

The day started with a look at recent UK eCommerce Trends followed by an introduction to the fundamentals drivers of success on marketplaces (such as eBay and Amazon Merchants@), shopping comparison websites and paid search campaigns.

After lunch the group then split into two ’streams’ to dive into some more advanced strategies for optimising each of these channels in preparation for the rapidly-approaching Q4 busy season. Attendees also got the opportunity to hear first-hand from Aidan O’Curry and Richard Keelty from Google Europe about how Google Checkout and Google Product Search can drive more sales and reduce costs for online retailers.

A big thanks to our sponsors: Google (Platinum), PayPal (Gold), Cybersource (Gold) and FOEB (Silver) without whom the Insite series of events wouldn’t be able to happen. We look forward to the next events up in Manchester on the 5th September, and then on to Glasgow, Birmingham and finally Dublin.

If you were at the event yesterday - thanks for coming - we’d love to hear your comments!

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