Get ready for a bumper few days of online sales! The British Retail Consortium (BRC) forecasts that consumers will spend an estimated £4.3 billion in the week running up to Easter, with a further £3.5 billion spent over the Easter weekend.

This equates to £832 million (20%) more than in an average week in April which means the average UK household will spend £350 over the next four days!

“Easter generally marks the end of the toughest quarter in the retail calendar. After using the first few months in the New Year to service post-Christmas debt and consolidate savings, consumers tend to feel a bit more relaxed about splashing out over Easter,”

Here are some of the categories that will be particularly hot this weekend:

• Clothing and footwear retailers will take £670 million over the holiday weekend.

• DIY and gardening will benefit from the four-day weekend, especially if the weather is fine. 6 million consumers are expected to spend £2.9 billion undertaking jobs left over the winter.

So, if you sell products that fall into one of these categories it might be worth promoting them on the homepage of your website to ensure maximum exposure to shoppers. And be sure to make sure your feeds to the shopping comparison sites are up-to-date and accurate so that consumers can find your products wherever they chose to shop online.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, approximately 8 million Easter cards will be sent - with a value of £22 million.

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I read an interesting post on the e-Consultancy blog this afternoon, entitled “Big brands not doing the business on eBay“.

It focussed on five well-known UK brands that have tried to crack eBay but seem to have fallen short.

• Orange (mobile phones)
• 3 (mobile phones)
• Vodafone (mobile phones)
• B&Q (hardware)
• Robert Dyas (homewares)

Trevor Ginn, from Auctioning4U, suggests that lack of automation software is a possible reason for the lack of success

“One issue is that a lot of companies don’t use any decent automation software, which makes it a lot easier to list in bulk. Robert Dyas is a good example of this.”

“The sales are run by one person who has not got the time to load a decent number of Robert Dyas’ 2000 odd SKUs. Subsequently, you get very limited use of the eBay channel.”

Whilst Trevor is certainly right to point out that automated management software can certainly reduce the headcount required to manage a successful eBay business, the real problem in many cases is a poor overall business strategy. If your strategy is not good, then automation software will simply help you execute a poor strategy more easily - which is not a recipe for long-term success!

Over the last six years, ChannelAdvisor has helped many well-known brands develop and execute robust eBay strategies and develop a sustainable extra channel to market. In the UK our clients include such well-known brands as Schuh, Creative Labs and Hewlett Packard. Our experienced account managers have these companies refine their strategies and improve their overall results on eBay.co.uk, enabling them to transact hundreds of thousands of pounds each and every month on eBay UK.

Our experiences have taught us that, at the end of the day, success on eBay is not guaranteed. Like any online channel there are constant challenges to address, new competitors to navigate and channel nuances to learn and adapt to. It takes a lot of experience to execute a sustainable strategy and software alone is not enough to guarantee success.

That’s why ChannelAdvisor works with each and every one of our clients to hone in on a winning strategy - and once we’ve done this, our world class software picks it up and runs with it!

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Attention eBay.co.uk sellers! Yet another listing promotion coming your way!

For the entire day of Tuesday 20th February 2007, sellers who list an item using the Auction-style, Auction-with-Buy It Now or Buy It Now Only (Fixed Price) formats in an eligible category will pay a half price Insertion Fee per item they list.

Further details can be found on the eBay announcement board.

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Not one, but TWO 5p listing days coming up this weekend on eBay UK. Unfortunately, only CD and DVD categories are eligible - but still a great opportunity to boost your listings if you’re a media seller. And you get a free Gallery picture as well!

During all of Saturday 10th & Sunday 11th of February 2007 (local UK time), sellers who list an item using the Auction-style, Auction-with-Buy It Now or Buy It Now Only (Fixed Price) formats in the eligible categories (see below), will pay a reduced 5 pence (£0.05) Insertion Fee per item they list, and will be able to use the Gallery Listing Upgrade feature for free.

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eBay is really stepping up its support of Giving Works (eGW) – the program that offers “cause marketing” opportunities for SMBs — putting both marketing muscle and (gasp!) fee givebacks behind the program.

Cause marketing simply links a strategically-chosen nonprofit organization to a company’s brand for mutual benefit. Major retailers are all familiar with cause marketing’s impact, e.g., the 2006 Cone Millennial Cause Study showed 89% of Millennial consumers “are likely or very likely to switch from one brand to another (price and quality being equal) if the second brand is associated with a good cause.”

eGW, powered by its nonprofit partner MissionFish* has become increasingly professional seller-friendly. Predictably, leading sellers such as Designer Athletic, Rock Bottom Golf, HomeClick and Snow Deals NOW recently became some of the top eBay cause marketing practitioners (also predictably, they use ChannelAdvisor, the first CSP to offer the program.

I’ll look forward to chiming in here from time to time about special promotional opportunities.

My first promotion tip: eBay (through homepage banners and more) and a bunch of nonprofits (including the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (see promotion here) and the Larry King Cardiac Foundation (see promotion here) are driving traffic to the “Spotlight on Healthy Hearts” campaign from now through February. As of now, sellers who list even a dozen items are getting featured on the front page “current sellers” list.

*Full disclosure: MissionFish is a client of my company Blueberry Consulting

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David Yaskulka’s Blueberry Consulting focuses on eBay cause marketing and public relations. Clients include MissionFish (www.missionfish.org), which powers the eBay Giving Works program, and many top Wall Street firms. As a seller, he managed Blueberry Boutique and Harris Michael Jewelry, which joined Designer Athletic, Snow Deals NOW and Homeclick among the top eBay Giving Works listers in 2006. He is a frequent speaker on eBay cause marketing and widely quoted in the media.

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