Category: buySAFE Page 2 of 6

101 Five-Minute Fixes to Improve Your Web Site

On March 26, 2008

At buySAFE, our web site is one of our greatest assets. It is the main avenue by which we communicate with prospective buyer and merchant customers, partners, the media, and investors. It is the main tool we have for defining buySAFE for the rest of the world. It is the vehicle we use for creating action with respect to our unique eCommerce trust and safety and advertising services.

I spend a fair amount of my time thinking about how to better leverage this asset, and then working with my team to improve upon its utility.

Therefore, when I ran across this article, "101 Five-Minute Fixes to Incrementally Improve Your Web Site" by Inside CRM Editors, I thought you would enjoy it too. Here are their first 10 web site improvement tips, and if you are interested in learning more, you should definitely click through to read their other 91 tips as well.

Tell readers why they should perform a task. If your site is full of passive suggestions, toughen it up. People are trained to follow a request, as long as you give them a good reason to do it.
Make the most highly trafficked pages easier to scan. If your current site consists of large blocks of text, break it up so that it’s easier for the average Internet user to read.
Convey a sense of trust. If you’re experiencing skepticism, offer social proof like testimonials or risk-mitigating offers like a free trial.
Stress benefits. Ensure that your copy always shows users exactly how your site will benefit them.
Make headlines meaningful. Be sure to change any vague or cutesy headlines to something more up-front and meaningful.
Repeat yourself. Check over your copy to make sure that you’re really driving the point home by making it in a number of ways.
Tell visitors what to do. Revise your site to ensure that people know exactly what the next step is. If you want a visitor to click a link, tell them
Keep the reader engaged. Make sure that your current content gives visitors a reason to keep reading throughout the entire piece; otherwise, you need to spice things up a bit.
Stay consistent. Check your copy for consistency, or else your site may be seen as unstable or flighty.
Stay simple. Simplify your message simply to avoid confusing visitors, while at the same time improving conversion rates.

Read the other 91 web site improvement tips at "101 Five-Minute Fixes to Incrementally Improve Your Web Site" – Inside CRM >>>

Technorati Tags: Website Tips,Inside CRM

The eMarket for Lemons at The Wharton School

By stevewoda

On February 14, 2008

In buySAFE, Counterfeits, eBay, eCommerce, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Portable Trust & Reputation Signals, Steve Woda, Surety Bonds, Trust and Safety, Web/Tech

I had the opportunity to speak at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania last week about an article that Dr. Eric Clemons recently authored for the Journal of Management Information Systems, "An Empirical Investigation of Third-Party Seller Rating Systems in E-Commerce: The Case of buySAFE". My presentation was focused on marketplace economics and specifically about information asymmetry, signaling, the "Market for Lemons" concept, and buySAFE. In addition, I was able to share a few thoughts about my entrepreneurial experience with buySAFE.

As always, I had a great time as the guest of Dr. Eric Clemons, and I enjoyed hearing the passionate questions, insights and feedback from the students. One of the students posted an article about my visit on his blog, The Un-Wharton.

buySAFE is Hiring Talented Software Developers and Sales Executives

By golf

On December 31, 2007

In buySAFE

As many of you know, 2007 was an amazing year for buySAFE as we accomplished more than 100% growth for each of the last four quarters. I expect buySAFE to continue to grow at a very fast pace in 2008, and so as you can imagine, that means we are looking to hire very talented people. Specifically, buySAFE is hiring exceptional software developers (see the position description below) and sales executives, but of course, we are always interested in meeting talent across the board.

If you are a VERY smart person that enjoys BIG challenges and wants to work REALLY hard on a talented team to help build a great company, then you and I should probably talk. Similarly, if you know someone that fits that description, please let he or she know that I want to talk to them as well.

The eMarket for Lemons and The University of Maryland

By golf

On December 5, 2007

In buySAFE, eBay, eCommerce, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Portable Trust & Reputation Signals, Web/Tech

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak to a few hundred business school students at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. Michael Beveridge, buySAFE’s VP of Business Intelligence, joined me in speaking at the invitation of Professors Guodong (Gordon) Gao, Peter Weiss, and Mingfeng Lin. The students had previously read “buySAFE – Creating and Profiting From the Bonded Seller Advantage“, a case study on buySAFE authored by Wharton professor, Dr. Eric Clemons. Here is the presentation that Michael and I shared with the students… “eMarket for Lemons – The Economics of an Evolving eCommerce Marketplace“.

As always, it was a terrific experience for me. The students were extremely prepared, and they had definitely done their homework on buySAFE, information asymmetry, and the ecommerce marketplace in general. If you ever want to get an excellent sense of how well your marketing efforts are working or how well you are educating the market about your solution, I highly recommend inviting a couple hundred college students to study your product or service and let them give you feedback. I loved it!

A Few Interesting, Recent eCommerce and Entrepreneurship Articles

By golf

On November 13, 2007

In buySAFE, eCommerce, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Steve Woda, Venture Capital, Web/Tech

Good morning everyone! If you know me well, you know that I am a voracious reader of anything and everything that I believe is interesting or useful either personally or professionally. My colleagues will attest to the fact that their Inbox usually has at least one article that I have recent found that might be useful for them or buySAFE. 🙂

Today, I have been catching-up on my reading list, and I thought I would share with you a few articles that I found interesting. Hopefully, you will some of the info interesting as well.

Steve

Build Buyer Trust to Drive Holiday Revenue

By golf

On October 22, 2007

In buySAFE, eCommerce, Marketing, Portable Trust & Reputation Signals, Trust and Safety, Web/Tech

How can you drive up your holiday revenue? Build trust with your buyers!
That’s right. By simply spending a bit of time and energy thinking about how your consumers do their searching, shopping, and decision-making, you can increase your holiday revenues in a material fashion.

On Wednesday, October 24, 2007 at 11:00-12:00 PM MDT, I will be giving an educational webinar sponsored by Infopia and buySAFE on the subject of building trust with your buyers to drive up your revenues and
profits.

If you can spare an hour of your time, I promise you that you will learn something
new and interesting. If you are serious about building your online business, this will be time well spent.

Space is limited, so please register for the webinar as soon as you get a moment. You can register at https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/890705170.

Related articles:
“Infopia Integrates with buySAFE” – Infopia Blog

buySAFE and ScanAlert (HACKER SAFE) Announce a Major Trust, Safety and Security Partnership

By golf

On June 3, 2007

In buySAFE, eCommerce, HackerSafe, Portable Trust & Reputation Signals, Trust and Safety, Web/Tech

This week, buySAFE and ScanAlert, the provider of the Hacker Safe service, announced a huge partnership, and in my opinion, this is a great development for e-commerce.

Under the terms of the deal, ScanAlert will provide buySAFE’s Certified Merchant solution for free to its merchants during the HACKER SAFE account activation process and from within the account management console. In addition, buySAFE will make ScanAlert’s PCI validation services available to its merchants for free as well. This is truly a terrific combination for merchants and buyers.

Obviously, buyers want to find the right product at the right price. Once that has been accomplished, buyers basically care about two things when considering whether or not to make a purchase online…

Am I going to get what I pay for?
Is my private information going to be safe?

buySAFE is the best in the world at making sure buyers will get what they paid for. buySAFE does this by rigorously inspecting its merchants’ sales experience, online reputation, identity, and financial stability. Then, buySAFE monitors the merchant’s transactional history, in real time, for any sign of transactional or business default. Finally and perhaps most importantly, buySAFE puts its money where its mouth is bonding the transactions of buySAFE merchants up to $25,000 per transaction if requested.

Hacker Safe is amongst the best in the world at ensuring that buyers’ private information is going to be safe. They accomplish this goal by performing daily vulnerability scanning of their merchants’ websites. This helps to make sure that the merchants’ websites are secure and difficult for bad guys to breach.

Both companies are industry leaders in the online trust, safety and security world, and both have thousands of merchant customers using their services.

Again, it important for merchants to understand that their shoppers are concerned with two things… and Will I get what I paid for, and is my private information going to be safe? Optimal web site conversion metrics can only be achieved by answering both of these questions credibly. Together, buySAFE and ScanAlert are a powerful combination that will benefit merchants, buyers, and the entire e-commerce industry.

Related articles:
"buySAFE & HACKER SAFE in a Ground Breaking Announcement – Enabling Risk-Free eCommerce" on the buySAFE blog
"BuySafe Partners with ScanAlert/Hackersafe and CRE Loaded" on AuctionBytes.com

Chicago Will Host eBay Live 2008

By golf

On June 1, 2007

In buySAFE, eBay, Web/Tech

If you are an eBay fan (as I am), and you live in the Midwest, you will be very happy to learn that eBay Live 2008 will be held in Chicago. eBay has not yet announced the decision, but Ina Steiner, a very authoritative source on all things eBay, has broken the story in her "eBay Live 2008 to Be Hosted in Chicago" blog post.

There are a number of major companies in the e-commerce ecosystem, both merchants and third-party service providers, that have decided to skip eBay Live 2007 in Boston in the interest of attending other prominent e-commerce conferences (buySAFE is one prominent example). All of of us who own equity in eBay are rooting for them to regain their shine, and so perhaps Chicago and 2008 can be a resurgence opportunity for eBay and their ecosystem.

Scam of the Month – Judge Judy Punishes an Idiotic eBay Fraudster!

By golf

On May 27, 2007

In buySAFE, Counterfeits, eBay, eCommerce, Online Fraud, Portable Trust & Reputation Signals, Surety Bonds, Trust and Safety, Web/Tech

In this "scam of the month", Judge Judy takes on an eBay fraudster and ultimately hands out the maximum punishment. In spite of the fact that this scam seems audaciously ridiculous, it is actually quite common online. Bottom-line, there are a lot of folks out there that lack any semblance of a moral compass.

My inspiration for starting buySAFE was a similar scam that I fell victim to on eBay during the summer of 2000. The only major differences that I can point to are that I purchased a $400 PDA, and instead of taking the scammer to court with Judge Judy, I decided to instead start a company dedicated to making every online transaction trusted, reliable and risk-free… buySAFE!

Next time, I hope these two innocent victims limit their purchases to buySAFE merchants. It will save them a whole lot of anguish and effort!

Watch this video. It is quite enlightening.

Related articles:
"Judge Judy Episode on eBay Trust & Safety" on Psychohistory blog

The Wharton School and Entrepreneurship

By golf

On May 23, 2007

In buySAFE, eCommerce, Entrepreneurship, Steve Woda, Venture Capital, Web/Tech, Wharton

The Wharton Business Plan Competition took place earlier this month, and NP Solutions was the big winner for 2007. The new venture took home the $20,000 grand prize for a business that provides a polymer based injectable hydrogel treatment for back pain. Obviously, I wish these folks a bunch of luck with their new business.

As you may already know, I am a big fan of these collegiate competitions. buySAFE (formerly known as BondMyAuction) is a product of the Wharton Business Plan Competition, and so I can speak from experience when I say that these events can be very useful in getting entrepreneurial ventures launched. I actually entered the business plan competition in 2000 and 2001 with different ventures as a student.

Then after graduation, I teamed up with Peter Niessen, a 2002 MBA grad, to enter BondMyAuction in the 2002 Wharton Business Plan Competition (You need at least one current student on your team to participate, but the rest of the team can be alums, etc…). Peter was a terrific teammate, and he and I were able to make it to the Finals of the competition. Again, it was a great experience, and you can read about it in this recent article by the New York Times – "Beyond Grades: Business Students Put Their Start-Up Ideas to the Test"

One last interesting note for you…

Jeff Grass, buySAFE’s CEO, was also a finalist in the Wharton Business Plan competition in 1999 along with his business partner, John Tedesco (John is currently the CEO & President of Guardian Mobile Monitoring Systems). Jeff and John launched PayMyBills.com shortly after graduation, and they ultimately sold the company to PayTrust in 2000. Today, the company’s service is owned by Intuit, and it powers the bill payment and management solutions for some of the country’s largest financial institutions.

Needless to say, collegiate business plan competitions can provide aspiring entrepreneurs with a generous leg up on the formidable challenges of starting up a company out of school. For me, the Wharton Business Plan Competition experience was invaluable.