Many of you have already heard about eBay's newest shopping experience, eBay Express. Some of you may even have “kicked the tires” on the preview version after it was launched in late April.

Bill Cobb, President, eBay North America, outlined the vision and rationale behind our newest shopping experience. “eBay Express will be an exciting new buying experience, offering items that are available for purchase right away. We think eBay Express will encourage more shopping among our existing buyers, who today may only buy on eBay for certain purposes or types of products. We also think it will attract new buyers to eBay who prefer a more conventional e-commerce shopping experience.”

This month, I want to give you more seller-specific details about eBay Express and some ideas about how you can take advantage of this new offering to continue to grow your eBay business.

Double the exposure and no unpaid items
Bay Express is a specialty site, but it's still part of the eBay marketplace. This means that your eBay Store Inventory Format and Fixed Price listings that qualify for eBay Express will automatically appear on both eBay.com and eBay Express – doubling your exposure!

Learn more about eBay Express: Answering your questions about eBay Express Selling and Listing criteria 3 Easy Steps to Selling on eBay Express

Having your listings appear on eBay Express in addition to eBay.com gives you more exposure for your items, without having to list your inventory twice, or change the way you sell. Buyers who like a more conventional shopping experience will like eBay Express because of its many hassle-free shopping options, including:

• Quick and easy ways to search and browse
• A shopping cart (something that both buyers and sellers have been asking for, for a long time)
• Payments via credit card or PayPal.

For sellers' peace of mind, one of the most important aspects about eBay Express is that there are no unpaid items. This is because payments on eBay Express, whether via a credit card or through PayPal, take place at the point of purchase.

Here are some more reasons why I think eBay Express is a great product for sellers:

Item descriptions carry over to eBay Express
All information included in your item descriptions on your eBay.com listings is included in your eBay Express item descriptions, with the exception of eBay Stores sellers' Cross Promotions, Listing Headers, and Listing Frames (we think buyers would be confused by a shopping experience that links them back and forth between eBay Express and eBay.com). If you have links to any other eBay.com pages in your item descriptions, they will be displayed on your listings on eBay Express.

Smarter search
The search technology on eBay Express is very smart. For instance, on eBay.com, if a buyer searching for a size 8 dress types “Sz 8” into the Search box, they will see only those listings where the seller has included the exact search term – “Sz 8” – in their listing. Compare this with searching on eBay Express: if a buyer searches for “Sz 8”, the search logic understands that “Sz” is an abbreviation for “Size” and broadens the search to include all listings with that word as well.

The default search results on eBay Express are based on what we're calling Best Match, which means that best selling items are ranked higher. An outstanding aspect about Best Match is that it actually learns, and never stops learning. Best Match, learns from aggregated buyers' activity over time, and accordingly adjusts product rankings on eBay Express. Product rankings are dependent on what buyers are looking for and clicking on. Buyers can also use other criteria, such as price. 

Accepting unconfirmed shipping addresses
In order to sell on Express, you must change your Payment Receiving Preferences to accept shipping to unconfirmed addresses, or make sale-by-sale decisions. I recommend that you accept shipping to unconfirmed addresses. 

Payment Receiving Preferences within the Profile section of PayPal

If your prefer to make sale-by-sale decisions, you can change your preferences within the Payment Receiving Preferences of your PayPal account.

All sellers are experienced merchants
eBay Express does not differentiate sellers in the way eBay.com does because all sellers are “Experienced Merchants.” PowerSeller icons do not appear next to sellers' User IDs on eBay Express. The only information that appears along with a seller's User ID is their Feedback score.   

If you're a PowerSeller, you can continue to include PowerSeller branding in your item description on eBay.com – which will be included in the description on eBay Express.

eBay's marketing muscle is behind eBay Express
We launched a preview of eBay Express this spring to make sure that our sellers had the opportunity to become familiar with it long before the year-end holiday selling season. We’re still making improvements to the product, but that hasn’t stopped us from thinking about marketing it to buyers. We're planning major marketing initiatives for eBay Express during the summer and fall of 2006, including the back-to-school timeframe. The marketing push will span a diverse range of media, including major channels like television, radio, and print.

I hope that eBay Express offers you even more opportunity to grow your eBay businesses.