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Mike from DeWitt & Co. asked me to post a review of my experience with Shoppal so far. I appreciate the help I have received here so here goes : This includes my thought process up to the point of opening the store:
#1 My husband wanted to open a web site so I said to start NOT on eBay (I have an eBay store and have been there since 1999). He agreed. We got a domain name for him on Go Daddy. I had read about Shoppal ( http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y206/m01/abu0159/s03) so I set him up on that. He was able to build a store himself with very weak computer skills. YAY! So Shoppal gets an A+ for that: www.califspeed.com
#2 He wasn't getting any hits so I decided to help him. I visited the Shoppal boards and Mike from www.SolidColorNeckties.com in the article above was REALLY helpful. They gave a tool on the board to check your site: http://www.widexl.com and it turns out his wasn't so great. Our domain name redirect was causing frames for one thing. For a one-time $50 Shoppal gave it top level domain status and that fixed the frame issue. Boo to the extra $50, but A+ to Shoppal for great customer services in setting it up. We also tweaked all the tags etc.
#3 eBay was wearing on me (I was horrified by Express--yuk!) and I was having a hard time getting my mind around my husband's product line so I decided on Mike's urging to learn SEO etc on a site of my own with a proven product line.
#4 Shoppal review. I like it a lot. It is easy to set up. It has search and inventory control which some don't (i.e. Citymax). So far great service and helpful boards. There is a free trial. I was in Froogle within days.
I find entering my product line to be cumbersome, but my product is visual so I am fussy. Their bulk loader is weak.
I was able to use some of my custom eBay templates and then I used a gallery tool to make a menu: http://www.freeauctionscripts.com/cr...otion-tool.php
since I am not that good at html.
I put in the Paypal option, but plan on taking credit cards through their module when I start selling things.
I'd like to get away from eBay. I have not referenced eBay at all on my site. They have an eBay module, but I don't plan on using it. I did copy some of my eBay feedback comments without mentioning eBay to hopefully give buyers confidence.
I am planning on pushing my web site strongly to all my eBay buyers. To facilitate that I bought the coupon module from Shoppal to make it easy to keep track.
I am doing some link exchanges and working on the site daily. eBay is so dead I have plenty of time...
I changed my blog and my about me page on eBay to go to the site instead of my eBay store.
I haven't sold anything yet except to Mike the tie guy (who was being nice), but I'm getting good placement in the search engines already so I am optimistic. It looks like my husband has his first buyer on his site--they are in negotiation LOL. He also is getting good search engine placement now. Kim www.decorativedishes.net
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Very intresting. I will send this to my DD. She is working on a book site. this might help her.
Great job. I love the dishes.
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Looks very good! I'm impressed especially since you said your DH has weak computer skills. I can relate to that! Tell him congratulations!
Jo
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Good article, Decorativedishes, very informative. It sounds like a good way for a novice to get started.
Joan
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Hi again Kim,
Thanks for posting this... it looks like a fairly simple/straightforward layout that would appeal to many a future web store owner.
I would recommend setting up your merchant account right away. PayPal is mostly an eBay thing... buyers that don't shop ebay (thankfully, there are more than a few of them) don't know (or care) what PayPal is.
Do they charge comission on sold items? It didn't look like it from the home page.
Also, it said on the home page that there was eBay Turbo Lister Integration. Have you tried this? I think that would be a huge boon for ebay sellers wanting to branch out.
Thanks again for posting a "critique" and best of luck with your site!
Cheers
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Thanks all.
Hi Joflora . I recognize you from the eBay pottery board. I think you and Gordon were about the only store owners on there. I told my DH he got a compliment on his site. He jumped right in using the Shoppal options: featured items, sale with the little cross-out of the price, and the cross marketing.
Mike - They don't charge any final value fees.
I was thinking about the cc card thing. I will take your advice and sign up on Monday when they open. I guess I should keep Paypal as an option also since I am marketing to my past eBay customers.
I haven't turned on the eBay module. It is only $5.00. I don't use turbo lister and I think it only goes from Shopal to turbo lister. I really want this to be a separate thing from eBay, but I also don't want to cut off my nose to spite my face so we'll see. So far I am not attempting to combine eBay orders with web site orders and am running them in parallel. If it takes longer to take off so be it. I still have my eBay store. I just haven't decided where I am going to put new inventory. I guess that turbo lister thing could come in handy for that. Kim
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Really? Gordon and I are the only ones? I can't imagine and have to say honestly, that I haven't paid any attention to stores on the pottery board. Guess I'll have to look next time I'm there.
Jo
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Hi there, you mentions you got good search engine placement. I just did a cell phone accessory site www.theshoppersworld.com and would like to know if you did any linking to get the good placement or linking will kick me off?
Thanks for your help!
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Kooper - Well I hardly know anything about SEO except what I have absorbed from reading various boards. I have a feeling that your product line is pretty competitive so you may have more of a challenge.
I checked my site to see if it made "sense" to the search engines. That's why I removed the frames. I manually submitted my site to the search engines and I submitted through search express and http://www.dmoz.org . I put some links on from some other sellers I know and some decorating sites. I have a blog and that is getting picked up and references back to my site. My "me" page on eBay gets picked up and that also references back to my site.
I haven't sold anything yet so I feel kind of silly "giving advice" but there it is. LOL. Good Luck. Kim
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I have now had a chance to play with the turbo lister integration. It's not super fancy, but it has possibilites. I am running some auctions with it to see what happens. It will re-direct the checkout through the shoppal store if you can get the winning bidder to do it. eBay has done everything they can to prevent that from happening.
I created a new eBay user id for the experiment if anyone want to see the listings: decoratingwithdishes. (I originally used my regular i.d., but since there is a store on it it was confusing. I bought a BIN from myself to test it--not smooth.). I turned off the eBay checkout which means the PP won't show up in searches. The shoppal templates are weak so I put my own in after the listing was in Turbolister. It is all manual so would not work for volume sellers, but it might attract some buyers if you have super hot auction items. Keep in mind I have never used turbolister before so I may be overlooking possibilities. Kim