Bargains in misspellings
I just watched an auction end online for a brand new pair of men’s workboots … a brand with an excellent reputation … being offered for $15 — $100 below retail!
Number of bids?
Zero. No sale!
Here’s a pretty good reason why … the boots were advertised as “Bloodstone Workboots” — but the actual brand is Blundstone, not Bloodstone.
Now there’s always been a market on sites like eBay to find a bargain via misspellings — whether a typo or simply the seller not knowing the correct spelling!
I know for sure that typo’s slip through my fingers more than I’d like, and I don’t profess to be a leading authority on spelling and grammar (an aside: why isn’t grammar spelled “grammer”, like hammer or stammer?).
If I was a smart seller, I’d at least do my research to confirm the right brand name. I’d also include the common misspellings in my listing, so it’s more easily found by people who don’t know the correct spelling when doing their search (especially on eBay when they search title and description).
Of course, if I was a smart buyer, I’d be searching on misspellings to find bargains like a pair of brand new top brand workboots for sale at $100 less than retail with 0 bids!
Timezones matter
Picture this … it’s just after 1am right now … the dead of the night here on the weekend … all’s quiet in the neighborhood, everyone is tucked in their warm cozy beds … lights are out … even the cat is curled up dreaming of what he might get to chase and stalk tomorrow.
Ring ring riiiiiiiiing! Off goes the phone at full pitch: a rather startling sound to snap you out of your sleep in the middle of the night. The first thought, of course, is that it’s a family emergency call … who else would call at 1:01am? Maybe someone has had an accident or needs help?
Grabbing the phone, I notice the caller ID says “Unavailable” … which means a call from overseas. Picking it up, I hear a pre-recorded voice broadcast …
“Hi, this is Bill Glazer and I just wanted to …”
Slam!
A voice broadcast … at 1am on a Sunday morning! Are you kidding?
My ONLY response to this kind of call is to slam down the phone and not feel the least bit impressed about the caller or their campaign.
My only guess is that at 1:01am in the middle of the night in Melbourne Australia is the equivalent of some decent hour of the day in the USA for this kind of telemarketing.
But if you have a global mailing/calling list, you could do much better taking into account that a suitable time of day to call is different according to what timezone your customers live in!
(You wouldn’t even have to ask for the info: the country code and area code in the phone number gives you an indication, especially for land line numbers).
This timezone concept also applies to the “launches” now undertaken for many online products that go on sale at a set time.
For example, “12 noon this Friday” for sometime in the eastern United States is a whole lot different for us Aussies. Yet very few campaigns factor in to their communication a way to help their list figure out what the time will be where they live.
It’d be easy enough to include more than one timezone in the pre-launch messages (maybe covering 5 or 6 high profile locations around the world) … or at least setup a link to an online time service so visitors can easily work out what “12 noon on Friday” will mean to them locally.
And if you’re going to use voice broadcasts in your campaign, know enough about your global mailing list to help prevent unwelcome phone calls in the dead of the night!
Heads Up to Sellers on eBay
I was in the eBay discussion forums today and, in a thread highlighting the frustrations of one particular seller, they had posted their email exchange with eBay.
In part, eBay’s answer about feedback included this:
Please understand that we will not remove feedback because it seems unfair, or the member lied.
eBay does not censor feedback or investigate it for accuracy…
So an eBay member can lie in their feedback, and the feedback won’t be removed.
Seems to me that eBay is making their marketplace way too orientated towards attracting buyers of any kind. They don’t just want nice, paying buyers… by removing the chance for sellers to now leave negative Buyer feedback, and even with neutral feedback affecting the percentage calculation shown for the buyer on an auction page — it’s getting much tougher for Sellers with near encouragement of “dodgy” buyers.
Here’s just one example of how an inexperienced eBay Buyer can affect a Seller’s rating:
I have seen some really mystifying feedback such as the example I saw yesterday. This buyer left two neutrals for a seller and said very happy with items purchased in each case.
What it really means for Sellers is this: your communication must go to lengths to both be complete and accurate — both to potential Buyers in your listing and to the actual winning bidder after the sale is made.
You have to do everything possible to ensure there are no “Buyer surprises” in the transaction process… from the description of the quality of the item through to packaging and postage. If you’re getting regular questions, address them in your listings or About Me page (and link to them). Make everything as clear as possible.
This is how your marketplace works and you cannot afford to ignore the buyer-orientated environment. This won’t stop unscrupulous Buyers. But it will do two things: it may stop a Buyer with good intentions from misunderstanding the process, and if your listings clearly address relevant issues (and use other ways to help build trust and likeability), then potential Buyers will have a better feeling about you too.
Over time you’ll find ways to use your listings to highlight the positive “trust” issues that mechanisms like the feedback system no longer deal with.
It’s an undoubtedly frustrating situation — especially when bad buyers go without negative feedback — but there are still ways to minimise the impact it has on your eBay business.
Believability in your copy
After reviewing a couple of lots of copy in recent days — one aspect which I noticed needed beefing up is the price “believability” factor.
For example, in one web-based sales pitch, a suite of 10 products were claimed to be worth over $34,000 (a specific amount was used, which was good to include) and being sold for just $47.
With such a discrepancy between the price offered and the value claimed, questions will immediately pop in to a prospective buyers head. Questions like …
Yeah right! Are you exaggerating? How do you justify $34,000? How do you justify making the cost only $47? Why are you selling it so cheap? Or is $47 actually more than it’s really worth? Is the whole package really worth $34,000? If you’re making this up, what else are you making up?
They’re legitimate questions you must address in your copy to persuade the buyer that your offer is genuine and trustworthy.
In the example above (the figures I’ve used are close to the actual figures in what I was reading) there’s also other benefits granted to the buyer, including Private Label Rights (to re-brand the products as your own), resale rights, the ability to give away the product. This creates more questions to answer to address a buyer’s fear about how many copies of the product will be sold (that will be competing against the buyer)… how quickly will they recoup their $47 investment?
Illustrating how this might happen — describing various ways they can make money (even by giving away your product) — can change the focus for a buyer from skepticism to seeing the income earning opportunities offered by this package.
In this case, no “reason why” justification was offered, nor were these questions addressed. If they were, I would predict the overall results would be better than they are now.
Whether you use a “reassuringly expensive” price or a highly discounted price, you need to use convincing copy about the value of the product or service to add believability.