#1 It’s All About the Customer Experience
It sounds horrible, but buying from eBay is a mess. If you are purchasing an item through an auction, you need to wait for the auction to end to purchase your items. After the auction ends, you would need to go to PayPal to pay for your items. This can be very confusing for the customer. Many don’t know if they are supposed to contact the seller through eBay or PayPal. They don’t know who to contact if they want to cancel an order or return an item. It is impossible to know where to go for what.
Most sellers don’t want their customers to get frustrated just trying to purchase something. Amazon.com makes things simple. They have a 1-click checkout option that is very convenient. When you click the “Buy’ button, you have bought the item, and there is nothing else to do. Also, any refunds and returns are very simply to request and then process. If a customer needs to do any of these things, they can select the correct option from the orders page or they can visit the returns center. Buyers are even allowed to return products that were shipped to them from someone else as a gift.
Amazon is the winner, because they make purchases, returns, and refunds much more simple than eBay.
#2 Sales and Promotions are Great for Both the Customer and for the Sellers
It is extremely difficult to find a promotion or sale on a basic, everyday eBay listing. It is not as easy as you may think. You can purchase tools from a third party that can help you to create coupon codes for customers, but why go through the trouble and pay the additional cost? Something like that should be easy to find and included. Customers love to find deals and use coupon codes for additional savings. Amazon makes it very easy for sellers to create promotions and coupon codes. They give you a variety of options. Sellers can create a promotion, so that when a customer buys three products, they can get one free. You can also create coupon codes that are automatically applied, or the manual copy and paste coupon codes. Amazon offers many different options. Often times, customers will come back to you if they have previously bought a product with a discount or that was a discount, and Amazon makes it very easy to do this.
Amazon is the winner again, as they help the seller earn repeat business because it is so simple to create sales, promotions, and coupon codes.
#3 Prime Makes a Huge Difference- An Extremely Huge Difference
Amazon sells and ships items, as do third party sellers. eBay has only third party sellers. A huge benefit of using Fulfillment by Amazon is that Amazon can offer programs, such as Amazon Prime, which is a huge draw for customers. With Amazon Prime, customers pay an annual fee, and they can get free, two day shipping on everything that they purchase from Amazon. It is especially great when you purchase a large item, and you don’t pay for shipping and it is at your home in two days.
As an Amazon seller, you can greatly benefit from this. Your customers would rather wait two days for their products, rather than the standard 7 to 10 days that eBay offers. This is especially true during the holidays, when deliveries from eBay are backed up. It is also great for last minute gift giving.
Amazon wins this one, because they can offer free shipping, quick.
#4 Only One Will Do the Work For You By Getting Your Products to Your Customers Faster and Cheaper
As mentioned above, Amazon Prime is a huge selling point for Amazon. It can be very difficult to ship your own products for free with guaranteed two day shipping. It can be difficult to get all of the orders out on time, and free shipping can be very expensive when it is coming out of your own pocket. If you are using the fulfillment system, it won’t be expensive, and your items will always be shipped, even if you are at the gym, sleeping, or on vacation. Also, your holidays would not need to be ruined due to the stress of trying to get thousands of orders out on time. The fulfillment system will handle that for you. This is something that eBay cannot offer.
#5 Trust is Important
When you look at an Amazon listing an an eBay listing, Amazon is more trustworthy. Ebay still uses listings with a garage sale feel. ebay uses colored texts and backgrounds, as well as animated GIFS. While these things are important to some, customer reviews are more important. Amazon makes it much easier to see how many stars a seller has, as well as their feedback. When sellers have excellent feedback and sales numbers, they can be promoted to a Featured Merchant. More trust means more sales. Most people don’t purchase products from a company that they cannot trust.
Unlike eBay, Amazon protects their purchases with an A-Z Guarantee. This lets buyers know that they never need to worry about hassles on Amazon.
In the end, Amazon is more trustworthy.
#6 Simplicity Makes Life Easier
Most people don’t look for the most complicated way to do things. They are always looking for an easier, more simple way to get things done. As a seller, you wouldn’t want your customers to get frustrated trying to find your products. When you try to search for a product on eBay, everyone’s listing will come up. Potential customers will not want to go through page after page of results of the same item.
Shopping on Amazon is much easier. They have one listing for each product. If there are several seller for one product, the items are not listed several times in the results. When you click on the items, you can easily find the featured merchant, and the new and used options available from other sellers. It is a great way to make searching and buying easier.
In the end, Amazon is much simpler to use.
#7 Elegance in Design is Important
Both eBay and Amazon put a great deal of information on each page. However, when you look at products that are for sale on each site, there certainly are differences.
Amazon uses a uniform listing, so it all looks the same. When you are shopping on eBay, you never know what design you will get with each listing. Consistency in design makes the shopping experience much easier. It is like comparing a garage sale to an upscale store. Most buyers appreciate consistency when shopping. Also, Amazon allows the seller to post several images of one product for free. This is good for the customer. When there are several images in the same spot for each listing, it makes shopping more simple for the customer.
A great design means a great price. This creates an excellent buying experience for the customer.
