Sellers have high expectations for eBay Express

Expectations for eBay Express are running high among experienced eBay sellers, who view the upcoming specialty site as a potentially significant new channel and have their fingers crossed that the company will build and market it properly.

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EBay Express, due during the second quarter, will feature only fixed-price items, most of them new, from experienced sellers with outstanding track records. On eBay.com, many items are used and sold via auction, and many sellers are novices.

The new site will offer a shopping experience that is much simpler and quicker than eBay.com's main marketplace. With eBay Express, the company hopes to attract buyers who either shop little or not at all on the main site, and deliver them to its best sellers, accomplishing two important goals: broaden its shopper base and keep its star sellers happy.

These sellers generally work full-time on their eBay stores and often have annual sales of over US$1 million. Many over the years have set up parallel stores outside of eBay.com precisely seeking to reach mainstream online shoppers who find eBay.com complicated, time-consuming and even unsafe. These sellers have also wanted to differentiate themselves from less-experienced peers and from fraudsters on eBay.com.

Although excited by the impending launch of eBay Express, some veteran eBay sellers also say they feel some trepidation, as they wait anxiously to see how the site actually works. If it's not truly quick, easy to navigate, intuitive to use, safe and aggressively marketed, eBay Express will go down in history as a great concept that was badly implemented, sellers say.

"The success will depend on eBay's execution and promotion of the site. If they do it right, this could be monstrously big, because it's really reaching out to a new audience with a completely different buying experience," said Adam Hersh, founder and president of Adam Hersh Auctions, who began selling on eBay about eight years ago and specializes on movie posters and memorabilia.

David Yaskulka, founder and CEO of Blueberry Boutique, a shirt and tie online store, thinks eBay should tighten the eBay Express seller requirements. Right now, eBay's plan is to only allow items on eBay Express from sellers who have been rated a minimum of 100 times by other buyers or sellers, with a minimum 98 percent positive feedback. Yaskulka would like eBay to require a minimum of 500 ratings, and that all of them be from buyers. He also thinks sellers should be forced to accept returns, which right now eBay doesn't plan to require.

Still, he has high hopes for eBay Express. About a year ago, he also set up shop on Amazon.com seeking mainstream e-shoppers. He might not have opened the parallel storefront on Amazon.com, which was costly and time consuming, if eBay Express had been around then. "We think eBay Express will be a very important new market for us," Yaskulka said.

In a first for eBay, Express will feature a shopping cart where shoppers will be able place items from different vendors and pay for them in a single checkout process. Sellers are also required to accept PayPal transactions and credit cards.

Still, eBay Express will not fully replicate the shopping experience on a traditional online retail site. For example, items will be shipped separately by each vendor, and sellers will not be required to accept returns. However, eBay will stand behind every purchase, offering to reimburse dissatisfied buyers, a broad protection it doesn't offer on eBay.com.

Although eBay has come a long way from its beginnings, many shoppers still picture it as the online flea market it was when founded in the mid 1990s. EBay Express can change that, sellers say.