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Changes to eBay UK

There are currently many changes affecting sellers on eBay. This includes:

  • Fee structure. There is a reduction in insertion fees and a hefty increase in final value fee. Some volume sellers will get discounts off the final value fee but only very large business will receive significant reductions in their fees. This fee structure is in place, discounts will appear on Aprils invoice for March listings.
  • Sellers can no longer leave negative feedback for buyers. This is to stop retaliatory feedback and, eBay hope, will give buyers the opportunity to leave honest feedback for a transaction without fear. Due to begin in May. I think this fear is over emphasised, do people really worry about a red dot on a computer screen? Negative feedback may affect sellers (is the jury not still out on this one?) but how many sellers read buyers feedback? There are many voicing concern over this change but as I do not think feedback is important to buyers I don’t consider the change to be radical or much cause for concern.
  • Detailed Seller Ratings (DSR) will determine if you receive a discount on your eBay fees and how high you are placed in their listing visibility. Under 4.5 in any category and you will not receive a discount and under 4.3 you will be placed at the bottom of listing visibility. These numbers could change at any time.

I have already changed to auto feedback when people pay. Thinking about it I should have done it ages ago, after all, a little trust can go a long way. After reading Seth Godin’s article on the honour system I am convinced it is the right decision.

Feedback, fees and others small things are always liable to change. Rising costs are, unfortunately, nothing new. The most important change is those little DSR stars. I have began to implement Channel Advisor’s advice on how to improve DSR rating that can be found summarised on Tamebay.

I don’t pretend to have any easy answers but, after I was feeling somewhat demotivated since the Christmas break, I find the changes on eBay has rekindled my interest in selling there . I’ll let you know how I get on.

Fixing Zen Cart -Xsell and PayPal Blank Shipping Address

I found another couple of things to do with Zen Cart today – one minor and one major:

First the minor – X Sell module.

I like this module. It allows upselling and should display other products people may like to buy with the text ‘We also recommend’ but instead displayed ‘TEXT_XSELL_PRODUCTS’.

Of course, I had not defined what the text should be. This is defined in

includes/languages/english/product_info.php
define(‘TEXT_XSELL_PRODUCTS’, ‘We Also Recommend :’);
which was overwritten when I upgraded to 1.38a. Admittedly, I probably defined this before but altered the default file rather than create my own version in my template directory. I have now corrected this and it works fine.

Thanks to TTLNTL for posting the solution and saving me trawling through lots of cross sell threads.

Solution here: http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=62821

One major and BIG problem is PayPal Express not functioning correctly.

Since installing Payflow Pro UK and getting rid of IPN I noticed that customers shipping addresses were not always appearing in my admin. Checked everything but couldn’t find out a problem. The details were definitely there as they displayed correctly in confirmation emails but did not appear in the admin section that meant I am unable to print packing slips or address labels.

Back to pen and paper!

I then noticed PayPal Express payments failing because the county address was not being passed and assumed the two problems were corrected. Fortunately, I was able to search the zen cart forums using the error code (10731) and found a solution. Looks like lots of people were having the same problem.

Thanks to Dr Byte for quickly finding and solving it!

Solution here:http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=83968&page=5

I think there is definite wisdom in upgrading a short time after new releases rather than straight away. It gives others time to identity and solve a problem so the answer is already there when you need it.

Thanks to the Zen Cart team for their great support again.

Welcome

I considered for some time reasons for starting this, mainly focusing on time, commitment and content and have finally been motivated to get on and do it by reading the posts on the UK Business Forums so thanks to all the contributors there.

My blog will cover three main areas:

AllGiftsDirect news, products launches, promotions, discounts and other information.

Zen Cart Software – I have quite a bit of experience in running Zen Cart and find I can set up a site and be online with listed stock quite quickly. While not an expert I began with no knowledge of PHP or CSS and others starting out from a similar situation may be interested to pick up tips and shortcuts. I keep my own websites updated to the latest version and will post here what needs changing and how to do it.

E-commerce. Having spent years in the retail industry working in both small and large shops from independents to international chains, I have plenty of customer service experience. Although not strictly customer facing, customer service is still paramount to any business, on-line or not. Here I wish to reflect on e-commerce, eBay, Amazon and business in general.