Online Sellers' Satisfaction

In my continuing attempt to tap into the habits and attitudes of the online selling community, I put out a survey last week on the following sites' forums.

• Power Sellers Unite
• Overstock Auctions
• eCrater
• iOffer
• BluJay
• Yahoo Group I subscribe to

The survey was anonymous and 10 questions long. 62 responses were collected within ~24 hours.

Online Auction Site Satisfaction

As I have discussed here, there has been a great deal of consternation in the eBay community since the departure of CEO Meg Whitman. New policies related to release of funds through PayPal, and restrictions on the types of feedback sellers may give to buyers are two of the reasons. At a high level, there seems to be a great deal of dissatisfaction among the online auction choices as seen here (readers should filter a certain level of angst among those who participate in online forums to begin with):



The good news for eBay and the other online auction sites is that the Satisfaction levels are significantly higher among sellers with >25 items. Among this group, about 49% classify themselves as Dissatisfied or Very Dissatisfied vs. 55% among the overall population.




In both groups, 64-65% indicate there is a 51-100% chance they will try new auction sites.

Among Power Sellers, those with 100 or more products currently listed online, the picture gets more interesting. 55% of them indicate they are Dissatisfied or Very Dissatisfied with eBay, and fully 42% of them indicate there is at least a 76% chance they will try new auction sites. Among all three groups, Online Auction has the most consistent Satisfaction levels.

Payment Options

Because Mpayy offers the best merchant model for online sellers, and is very new to the market, this section of the survey holds particular interest to us. None of the respondents indicated they were currently using Mpayy (subject to change), although two did indicate they were Very Dissatisfied with us, but that is likely me pestering this community for information and attention as I evangelize the virtues of our secure money transfer service.

Not surprisingly, PayPal has an incredibly tight grip on this market, with 88% of respondents using PayPal and 36% using Google Checkout. PayPal helped midwife the online selling market and eBay, and Google has been loss leading to get a toehold in the payment processing business. Google Checkout has paid some shopping cart providers to include their service, and so these two providers are the most available and thus most highly utilized right now.

100% of the Google Checkout users rate themselves as Satisfied or Very Satisfied, which is a nod to the continuing user friendliness of the Northern California behemoth known as Google. 30-40% of the PayPal users across the three groups rate themselves as Dissatisfied or Very Dissatisfied.

The survey indicates that ~40% of online sellers are at least 51% likely to try new payment options, with Power Sellers showing the highest willingness to switch. The following table shows by group the percent in each group of sellers to try new payment options.

# Items	0-25%	26-50%	51-75%	76-100%
All Respondents	37%	16%	16%	30%
More than 25 items listed	44%	16%	13%	28%
Power Sellers	44%	12%	12%	32%

56% of Power Sellers Participate in eBay Boycott

One interesting tidbit revealed in this survey was that while 45% of the overall eBay community participated in the boycott, 56% of the Power Sellers (>100 items listed online) who responded to the survey participated in the eBay boycott. There was no further qualification of this participation, but it's an interesting number.

Lessons Learned

It seems rather clear that this is a movable market. Online auctions have virtually zero switching costs, especially as new software platforms arise that allow online sellers to manage their inventory in one central location and publish to multiple selling forums. Mpayy can gain market share here by demonstrating its value and integrating to the sites and solutions being used by this market. Given the ease of implementation and the value proposition to buyers and sellers alike, it is only a matter of time.

Online Sellers Survey

As I've discussed, this week is the eBay boycott. It's even being reported on NPR that a number of sellers are leaving eBay this week.

According to the story I heard in the shower yesterday, eBay announced that there was not demonstrative impact to the number of weekly listings it usually has. A more interesting source of eBay listing deletions that has been published is the use of the Verified Rights Ownership (VeRO) program at eBay by the Church of Scientology to delete listings for the re-sale of e-Meters. The program exists to allow Intellectual Property Owners to delete listings of black-market goods.

The truth of the Church's actions notwithstanding, I decided to try to gauge satisfaction among online sellers, and their current and future use of new online auction tools and payment systems.

The survey can be found here.

Electronic Payments Pricing Compared

Last week I presented the capabilities matrix that juxtaposed Mpayy with the other payment processing systems available for plug-in to any eCommerce website and for use to conduct payment processing for online sales that don't involve a web shopping cart.

Today, we present a comparison of the pricing for each of the various channels offered by each of the systems.



Mpayy wins in all categories on the basis of pricing, and was designed to do so. Mpayy is a multi-sided payments network of buyers and multiple types of sellers. There's a great article in the Harvard Business Review that indicates it is important to subsidize one-side of the network. Mpayy does this by providing the 1% Cash Back on purchase amounts over $50, 100 free Person-to-Person Transfers/month, and providing for $0 overdraft fees when users' checking accounts are empty.

On the Mobile Commerce side, Mpayy is well-positioned to take advantage of any growth in this new type of sale. PayPal does have a model, and is working with companies like Mporia which hosts mobile commerce websites for companies like Buy.com. As you can see, PayPal forces those merchants to pay through the nose for this unique capability, though those prices will come down as adoption of Mpayy grows.

PayPal rates are closer to those of Mpayy, though online selling merchants are increasingly in opposition to eBay/PayPal, which is restricting payments to sellers for up to 21 days for any transaction eBay deems questionable. Further, there is some evidence that sellers with a spotty track record and new sellers are being forced to use PayPal. Large retailers are reluctant to adopt PayPal for two reasons: i) eBay clears billions of dollars of merchandise competing with the retailers and providing eBay with a competitive advantage by possessing their data; and ii) "gray market" goods that move through eBay will undermine the retailers' own goods.

Google Checkout offers $0.20 + 2.00% for Internet Point of Sale transactions. However, Google only accepts credit cards, and increases indirect costs through the onus of integrating to their API's, including providing complete information on everything in a user's shopping cart rather than just clearing the transaction. While we have no direct evidence, this would suggest that Google is taking a loss on every transaction in light of credit card costs to merchants being so high. Further, our discussions with the largest retailers indicate it is unlikely Google Checkout will receive significant adoption among "MegaRetailer.coms" because they know the value of their data and don't want to give Google all of that information.

Revolution Money is on here because they are currently offering $25 account opening bonuses and claiming no fees. As discussed on Friday, Revolution Money does not have a merchant model, and funds sent through it are not guaranteed. Further, they require a pre-funding step rather than just treating their account as a pass-through account. Revolution Money is seeking a lead list for its credit cards, and they do have plenty of other fees built into the system should anyone run afoul.

Calling All Sellers! Mpayy Mobile Merchant Accounts

Mpayy has been operating as an online and mobile payment processing system at http://www.mpayy.com and http://mobile.mpayy.com for about a week and a half, and the name of the game is find SELLERS.

So, this is an open letter to the following types of sellers:

- eBay auctioneers
- Overstock Auctioners
- uBid auctioneers
- Bidtopia sellers
- eBid sellers
- AVON ladies
- Mary Kay sellers

Mpayy's Mobile Merchant account was created JUST FOR YOU!!!

How it Works

Mpayy offers two Mobile Merchant accounts. Both are fully self-service and priced at $0.20 + 2%. The only difference is that the Mobile Merchant Universal is linked to a checking account, and funds can be withdrawn to that linked bank account at any time. The Mobile Merchant Standard account was created so that teams can empower their independent salespeople with this awesome mobile point of sale tool, and they can transfer any revenues to a company account that then has funds moved into the linked checking account.

All Mobile Merchant sales receive 100% guaranteed payments, instant account notification by both SMS text message and email. Merchants face 0% fraud liability, as Mpayy assumes that burden. Sales are tracked and downloadable through the Mobile Merchant account dashboard Activity section.

Buyers must have Mpayy accounts as well. However, this can be opened in a matter of minutes and users can open accounts and make purchases within the same session. They will automatically receive 1% Cash Back on Purchase Amounts over $50.

Give it a go! Start selling through Mpayy, today!