Another area of interest that I have been thinking about is an ecommerce site that will be useful for DNotes and upcoming company. We have some ideas to make it attractive for using DNotes, but we also need to consider making it easier to use, less burdensome, and high traffic. If you have any ideas regarding:
Where can we start that will be easily scaleable into a full blown ecommerce site?
What can we do to make it easy for merchants to participate?
How can we make it more attractive to merchants over using eBay/Amazon?
If you prefer to email your ideas, rather than make them public you can shoot me an email as well.
Well, as an ebay seller and buyer and frequent user of Amazon, only one thing REALLY stands out in my mind: Keep It Simple! There are so many rules covering selling on those sites that you really don't know what you have agreed to when you sign up and it's even worse if you actually sell something.
Also, am I right in thinking we are not focusing on making a large profit from the sellers and buyers but looking push DNotes acceptance and value with these sites? If so, keep any fees low and simple with easy to understand terms. Pretend it's a face to face meeting place where one person sells something to another. No multi page agreements, no escape clauses, no endless protective wording and required formats, etc.
Keep the structure flexible, not rigid. Let parties agree to their own terms and don't limit them to only a few payment methods. Some of the things ebay got wrong include: (some items below apply to auction style listings)
1. Limited payment options. Still no Crypto and Paypal hasn't included it either.
2. Pages of legal terms that you agree to without realizing what have agreed to.
3. Rigid selling and buying structure. If you don't fit the mold, you will not have a good experience.
4. Required structure for resolving disputes. Sometimes nothing applies. Would rather work it out outside of ebay at times. ebay is not my mother, I can work with the other guy and resolve as we see fit.
5. Seller and buyer ratings. This may sound like a good thing but, it really isn't. Most feedback is crap and if some doesn't like you they can make real trouble for you.
6. High selling fees and a percentage of the final sale can really kill you on marginal items with expensive shipping. Flat rates would be fine if we are pushing DNotes use.
7. Easy and simple site. It doesn't need to complicated. People should be able to get in and out quickly.
8. Have some form of reporting system for bad actors but allow (if you are considering auctions) but keep it simple and personal. No "feedback scores" Perhaps an overall satisfaction rating.
On the other hand, Amazon does a pretty good job of selling without much BS involved. Following the basic structure of their business model would not hurt.
My 2 cents...
