GetItNext Blog

Back in Jersey Minus a Phone and Exhausted After Devcon08

Well I'm back in Jersey after flying back last night from Devcon08.  While my visit to Chicago was short, in a large part due to 5.5 hr delays in Newark Sunday night, I managed to have a great trip.  I was able to meet up with old friends and contacts and make some new ones.  Sorry Ina that I didn't have time to meet up live, hopefully next year.

Unfortunately the trip didn't end on a good note.  Upon entering the airport I discovered my Samsung i-760 mobile PDA was not in my pocket.  After scrambling to cancel accounts and using a lame wifi connection at the airport I discovered once again that I was delayed by continental.  It started with the usual O'Hare delays then Continental fessed up and told us the fuel gauge was busted on the plane.  But hey you should be happy because we are giving out FOOD VOUCHERS.  The stampede ensued to the counter including lots of arguments and griping.  After 45 minutes I strolled over even though I wasn't hungry since I had woofed down a McDonalds extra value meal.  In order to stick it to Continental I decided to use the $12 meal voucher on some barley and hops.  I headed over to Chilli's and ordered a Sam Adams and handed the tender my coupon.  "Sorry sir its not valid on Alcohol...."  Damn continental screwing me again i thought.  All of sudden the chap sitting next to me is like I'll buy his beer, thanks Christopher Pyle from Ascent Media.  He turns to me and is like "I'll do anything to stick it to the airlines", I was like ok thanks.  Handed him my voucher to apply to his meal and we were both happy with the trade.

As I'm strolling back to the gate I hear my name on the intercom.  Hmm did I just win the lottery and get upgraded????  "Matt Williams please report to e92 immediately your plane is leaving".  Friggin continental again, told me to be back at 9:00 and I was 15 minutes early and they were ready to ditch me.  Got on as the door closed, lots of angry stares from the entire plane, and a really pissed off woman who was sitting in my seat and thought it was hers cause I was a no show.  HA!  She wasn't pleased about sitting in the middle seat and kept squirming the entire flight encroaching on my space, killing any chance at a nap.  Arrived back at lovely Newark at 12:30 am and home by 1:30 am.  What a lousy end to a couple of fun, intense days.

Zappos: Brand + Culture = Success

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos gave a great speech about the factors that have made Zappos the incredible success that it has become.  Zappos is based on a fanatical approach to customer service and their devotation has grown gross merchandise sales from $1.6M in 2000 to $840M in 2007 by focusing relentlessly on customer service. 

Tony learned early in his career about the importance of culture.  Tony founded another startup LinkExchange, an advertising network that was successfully sold to Microsoft for $265M in 1998.  He explained that the early days of the company were great.  However, once the company reached 100 or so employees he dreaded going to work (for the company that he founded).  The reason for that is that they ignored building a culture.  They hired people with the right skills for the job but weren't part of the early culture.

Tony also told everyone about an amazin customer service story.  A woman purchased some shoes for her husband.  However just after they arrived her husband was killed in an accident.  The woman phoned to see if she could return the shoes and the customer service agent helped her to do.  Here's where things got incredible.  The customer service agent them sent flowers to the woman expressing the Zappos' condolences for her loss.  Needless to say the woman deeply impressed and phoned Zappos back to thank them for their thoughtfulness and shared her story with all of her friends and family.  Zappos gained a customer for life!

4 Things to Build a Brand That Matters

VISION - Whatever you're thinking, think bigger.  Does the vision have meaning?  Chase the vision, not the money...  Zappos decided to be the very best at delivering customer service.

REPEAT CUSTOMERS - "Great product, Great service, or Low Prices"  (Choose and focus on 2 of the 3).  They used to spend significant amount of money to acquire more customers.  But they found that focusing on investing on existing customers was a much better investment and they became their best marketing tool.

TRANSPARENCY - "Be real, and you have nothing to fear".  Zappos allows their supplier to log into their backend systems to view the exact same inventory and system information as Zappos employees

CULTURE - "Committable Core Values"  The key component is being "committable" - these are core values that you are willing to hire, fire and evaluate performance on.

Email "tony AT zappos.com" for a copy of their Culture Book - it's available free of charge.  Zappos also provides 1 hour tours of their offices. 

GetItNext Air Hockey Champion is an American

Hockey is a common bond that the GetItNext team holds near and dear to our hearts, after all we have roots in Canada.  We were mildly surprised to stumble on an air hockey table at the eBay Devcon08 conference in Chicago.  So on Monday night we had a round robin tournament amongst our team at the conference during the Paypal beerbash.  Much to the chagrin of the Canadians the GetItNext 2008 Air Hockey Champion is an American, Matt Williams.  Matt swept the tournament going undefeated with me (Ron Stewart) finishing in 2nd place.  Colin Angel finished in last place, no surprise of course.

eBay Unveils Big Paypal Changes for Sellers at Devcon08

More details on the eBay product roadmap that Adam Trachtenberg covered during his roadmap session.  Here are the high level points that Adam highlighted for upcoming Paypal changes:

• The US will NOT be going to Paypal only
• UK Sellers will have to list offer a paypal option in all listings
• Other countries are still TBD
• Australia Paypal only is targeting for mid July
• Exceptions for certain countries & categories such as vehicles or capital equipment
• 3rd party checkout is still TBD.  eBay is trying to bridge needs of the buyer and seller and needs to figure out the best approach.

eBay To Improve Buyer Experience By Improving Payments

More details on the eBay product roadmap that Adam Trachtenberg covered during his roadmap session.  Here are the high level points that Adam highlighted for an area that impacts sellers in a big way, payments.

Mission: eBay wants buyers to have a consistent safe checkout experience EVERY time they shop.  In an effort to make their payment policy more consistent and similar to what eccomerce shoppers are used to they want to:

• eBay wants to increase buyer confidence
• want to decrease online fraud
  • will be confirming all new seller eBay accounts
• plan to provide safer payment method for buyers
• plan to implement changes to reduce unpaid items

Check back as I will continue posting small snippets as I get time throughout the day, here's a link to all the eBay news from devcon.

eBay Key Focus for 2008 - Product Roadmap

The team at GetItNext attended the eBay Roadmap session yesterday and was pleased to see a sharper strategic focus.  eBay announced that they are focused on 2 key objectives:

1. Creating a 1st class buyer experience
2. Creating a more trusted marketplace

eBay understands that they can't afford to let people have a bad experience.  Based on the feedback that they've received in focus groups, people feel like they have a bad experience with eBay not a bad experience with a particular seller.  As a result, eBay is taking a number of steps to improve the customer experience.

1. Mandating Critical Item Information (making more fields required when setting up a listing)

2. Shipping

   • All items must specify at least 1 domestic shipping service
   • Strongly suggest to sellers to include the package weight and dimensions for the eBay shipping calculator
   • An expectation of shipping time needs to be provided by the seller
   • Sellers will be mandated to specify a return policy - the policy must specify who pays for the return
   • Incentive to provide lower shipping prices.  Lower shipping prices = higher placement in the search results (all other variables being equal)
3. Making eBay Safer
   • Anonomizing email addresses sent thru member to member communication (prior to the completion of a transaction) - Industry Best Practice
   • After completion of a transacdtion the real email address of the seller and buyer is viewable
   • No off-site linking (with some exceptions e.g. photos).  There is an extensive revision to the 3rd party linking policy
   • High Volume / High Value sellers will be verified (via an automated system to authenticate the sellers) - help eliminate fraud

All of these changes are very valuable steps in the right direction to enhance the eBay user experience for both buyers and sellers.

Big eBay Changes Announced for Sellers - Shipping

The big theme coming out of eBay Devcon 2008 in Chicago is focusing on improving the buyer experience and this means lots of changes for sellers.  I just left a session with Adam Trachtenberg that covered the eBay Product Roadmap, I'll give you some of the high level points for the first topic that impacts sellers, shipping.  Here are some of the upcoming changes to shipping that Adam detailed:

• Return policy MUST be specified
  • even if you have a no returns policy you will have to list it
  • who pays for ship backs
  • not applicable for certain categories
• Handling time, need to list how long it will be till you ship the product so the buyer has an estimate on how long it will take to receive your product.

One question raised was "can you link the paypal shipping system to eBay shipping.  Adam answered that currently the answer is no.

Check back as I will continue posting small snippets as I get time throughout the day, here's a link to all the eBay news from devcon.

Live from eBay Devcon 08 - Keynote

The GetItNext team is on the ground in Chicago and will be posting updates throughout the day.  Currently Rajiv Dutta, President of eBay Marketplaces is on the stage kicking things off.  The overall theme is that they are going to be fast, innovative and provide increased support so that 3rd party developers can improve users experiences.

Key Announcement - Project Echo stay tuned.

 

Keynote Speakers for eBay Devcon Chicago 2008

This years eBay Developers Conference has a terrific set of keynote speakers.  I'm counting down the days till the conference.  Here's this years list:

• New CEO and President of eBay Inc, John Donahoe
• President of eBay Marketplaces, Rajiv Dutta
• Max Mancini the Senior Director of Platform and Disruptive Innovation at eBay is going to demo Project Echo and new Web services
• Mike Shaver who is the Chief Evangelist for Mozilla
• Adam Gross, VP for Salesforce.com
• Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos

Here's a full list of Bios, eBay Devcon Keynotes

eBay Devcon 2008 Agenda - Chicago Developers Conference

For everyone planning on attending this years eBay Developer conference June 16-18th here is the agenda.  I'm really looking forward to this years event in Chicago, especially Monday NIGHT.  Hope to see you all there.  For more details on signing up goto eBay devcon for the details.

Agenda:

Monday, June 16, 2008
Time	Event
7:30am-7:00pm	Registration Open
8:00am-9:30am	Breakfast
9:30am-11:00am	Keynote
11:00am-11:30am	Break
11:30am-12:20pm	Education Session 1
12:30pm-1:30pm	Lunch
1:30pm-2:20pm	Education Session 2
2:20pm-2:30pm	Break
2:30pm-3:20pm	Education Session 3
3:20pm-3:30pm	Break
3:30pm-4:20pm	Education Session 4
4:30pm-6:30pm	Beer Bash & Exhibits Open
7:00pm	PayPal Party

Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Time	Event
8:00am-6:00pm	Registration Open
8:00am-9:00am	Breakfast
8:00am-9:00am	1:1 Technical Sessions/Guru Lounge
9:00am-9:50am	Education Session 1
9:50am-10:00am	Break
10:00am-10:50am	Education Session 2
10:50am-11:00am	Break
11:00am-11:50am	Education Session 3
12:00pm-1:15pm	Lunch & Platform Pub Quiz
1:30pm-2:20pm	Education Session 4
2:20pm- 2:30pm	Break
2:30pm-4:00pm	Keynote
4:00pm-6:00pm	1:1s/Exhibits/Guru Lounge

Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Time	Event
8:00am-12:00pm	Registration Open
8:00am-9:30am	Networking Breakfast
8:00am-11:30am	1:1 Technical Sessions/Guru Lounge
8:00am- 12:00pm	Exhibits Open
8:00am-2:00pm	PayPal Certification
9:30am-10:20am	Education Session 1
10:20am-10:30am	Break
10:30am-11:20am	Education Session 2
11:20am-11:30am	Break
11:30am-12:20pm	Education Session 3