Recently eBay launched its new “eBay Express” and it’s almost certain to be a major profit center to eBay sellers.
As everyone knows, eBay began as an auction site. Catering to small, mom and pop sellers, eBay evolved into a more traditional online shopping channel with its stores and such features as Buy It Now (BIN) which allows buyers to purchase merchandise immediately, rather than waiting for an auction to end.
With eBay Express this transition to online store is complete, although eBay will certainly retain the auction format for which it is most famous.
In 2005 eBay bought shopping.com and the similarity in format between the two is apparent. The format is almost identical although there are far more items on eBay Express than shopping.com. For instance, this morning in ‘women’s apparel’ there were “469,207 matches found” on Express and “79,000 items from 525 stores” on shopping.com.
One great difference: with the eBay Express system every purchase goes to the same shopping cart, even though there are thousands of merchants. The shopping site, on the other hand, leads directly to...