speech bubble | The official vzaar blog

The vzaar team is back in the office after two days at ChannelAdvisor’s superb Catalyst event. Hundreds of online sellers, service providers and others gathered with ChannelAdvisor staff to talk about selling more and examine the trends that are fuelling the continued growth of ecommerce. It was great fun meeting and chatting with dozens of online sellers about video and how it can invigorate eBay sales.

What did we learn? Well, lots. There isn’t much cause for doom and gloom just yet. Ecommerce spending in Europe, America and Asia is still set to grow every year for the next 5 years, even if other aspects of the economy are shrinking or slowing down. That said, more and more traditional High Street retailers are beginning to fully understand how they can exploit ecommerce more effectively so there is likely to be greater competition.

eBay remains a critical online channel for many, if not most sellers, and much attention was given over to getting eBay to work really hard for you. The changes to feedback and fees were much discussed and sellers are still digesting the enormous raft of changes that eBay has announced. (Oh and eBay UK’s MD, Mark Lewis told attendees to expect more). Contrary to press coverage predicting a strike on May 1, the people I spoke to were pleased with the changes, said business was generally very good and they expected to expand their eBay operations this year.

But eBay isn’t the only kid on the block anymore. Google and Amazon are attracting buyers and sellers. Amazon, in particular, is enjoying phenomenal growth and it’s a vital channel for many merchants already. Scot Wingo, Channel Advisor’s CEO also primed sellers for big changes this side of the Atlantic from Google in and from Google Product Search in particular.

It’s obvious that sellers looking to increase their sales need a variety of channels. Be it eBay, their own website, Google, Amazon, comparison shopping sites or more specialised marketplaces such as play.com. And the choice available is greater than before. It is remarkable to note, especially in these times of economic uncertainty, that there was no doubt from attendees that if they put the time and effort in that they could grow their businesses and profitability.

And last, but not least, if you didn’t have time to stop by the vzaar stand at Catalyst: don’t worry! Drop us a line and we’ll get in touch: http://www.vzaar.com/contact

Posted by Social Wizard at 1:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Our vzaar business cards are not normal business cards. They are of course the best thing to happen to business cards since business cards began. They are moo mini cards.

There are several reasons we went for moo cards

• The product is great. We love the small format and the thicker cards
• Moo lets us have different cards. Each of our cards come in 5 different colours
• Everyone we hand a card too notices it. Normally with business cards you forget it as soon as we get it. Everyone we have given a card too has commented on the cards and how cool they are. That's extra attention for us. Thanks Moo.
• We like to think the funkyness of the cards reflects that vzaar is a funky company too. We know moo is no ordinary company and we think neither are we. Moo cards are a statement by us that we want to stand out.
• Richard Moross was one of the speakers at Future of web apps earlier this year. There was a lot in his presentation that gave us thoughts and ideas for running vzaar.
• They say copy from the best. Moo has built it's concept by using other winning sites (i.e. flickr). We're doing a similar thing with eBay and this has given us a lot of inspirations
• And of course, moo cards are really really cool

Continue reading "vzaar loves moo" »

Posted by Chief Geek at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

It's really important to use your own products and to know your own platform. I'm doing about one listing a day on vzaar at the moment. Real world listings, not tests. This helps me find problems and bugs and issue or just learn how things can be improved. As a result we have a long list of things we want to improve and are working through them as fast as we can.

One of the reason Arena did such a good job with helping me pick flowers for my date (see my last post) was because they knew their products really really well. Had they just recommended roses or some generic flower I probably wouldn't go back in a hurry, not only because they didn't help me out but because they clearly don't think enough of what they sell to know everything about what the sell. But this is not the case and Arena is going from strength to strength.

The same thing can be said of almost anything, even smoothies or coffees.

Continue reading "Love your products" »

Posted by Chief Geek at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The current online video landscape has gone from nothing to super competitive in a very very short time. The list of online sites and companies that have something to do with video is getting a bit rediculous. One of these reasons we've been pushing really hard at vzaar to get our beta live, as we know the competition is tough and we want to be leading it in a short while.

Selling on eBay has also got rather competitive in the last 5 years, going from a small (well smaller than it is today) marketplace to a viable business for tens of thousands of people.

So what do you do when you're in a competitive business market? You look to stand out from the crowd, and look at what other people are doing and you learn from them.

We're helping eBay sellers stand out from the crowd, with video really having the ability to enhance an listing, and change the way people buy on eBay. And anything that helps your buyers helps you.

For us, as vzaar we also want to stand out. We want to make sure that we're better at helping people put video on eBay than anyone else, as well as well as make sure the experience we give our users is top notch. Using the flower deliver service of a friend of ours this week reminded me how improtant to understand and meet the needs of our users (that's you).

Continue reading "Blooming good business" »

Posted by Chief Geek at 8:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)