Along with providing plenty of comparison and review data, good search facilities are essential for a large eCommerce site. This also means that if you use a searchable product database that your keys and descriptions must be well-chosen and links from search results to pages work smoothly and easily.

While we've talked earlier in this series about importance of providing various ways to enhance social aspect of your site, it's also important that customers be capable of using it without assistance. Never over complicate your site or your processes to point that it's no longer obvious what to do to buy something (or complete whatever desired action you are focusing on).

A typical customer should be able to go from front page to product page to order page to thank you page easily and without hesitation or confusion. The simpler and cleaner process, better for you.

If you can manage it, test with 4 or 5 basically internet illiterate people. Watch carefully what they do, where they hesitate, what seems to cause confusion - but don't talk or help during process. Then go over everything with them in detail working with your observations and their thoughts and feelings. Your site may be obvious to you, but is it obvious to anyone else?

And when you think you've covered anything, a few pairs of new eyes (or checking out your competitors' sites) can give you a whole new to-do list.

Your eCommerce site is an intentional business creation. Every aspect should be organized around what you want site to do, what kind of visitors you want and what you want them to do. Everything on your site should be there for a specific reason that contributes to your goals for site. And everything should be tested to be certain that it actually does contribute.

It's your site and your business so never take anything for granted, never assume something works if it can be tested. And never stop testing. With careful attention to detail and on-going testing you'll be able to make incremental improvements over time that will vastly improve productivity of your eCommerce web site.

As a seller on eBay, biggest advantage that you gain is possibility of becoming from a local merchant to an international player over night. If you are already selling merchandize to consumers online or offline, eBay gives you an additional sales channel without any extra cost. If you are planning to begin selling goods or services through Internet, eBay allows you to start your business online quickly and with minimum expenses.

Yahoo

You may have difficulty in imagining biggest portal on our planet as a marketplace, in some countries, like Japan and Canada, Yahoo auction is, actually, doing better than eBay. In US market Yahoo has just announced its intention to eliminate fees charged for using its auction site. This is a good news for even many eBay power sellers. Some of them will definitely move to Yahoo in a bid to save on high fees charged by eBay. The good thing about Yahoo is slowly it is becoming a major hub for many small business web stores. As a matter of fact, according to Yahoo, every eighth online store is now hosted by Yahoo.

Amazon

Amazon, may be is not as popular as eBay or Yahoo as far as auction marketplace is concerned, however, many auctioneers claim that some of products sell better on Amazon than any other auction marketplace.

Why should you consider selling through auction marketplaces?

Here are some reasons, why auction marketplaces are viable sales channel for businesses:

•The auction marketplaces are very popular and each of them has huge community of buyers and sellers. •There is virtually no start-up cost involved. •No extra overhead is required. •You really don’t have to set up a website to start selling. •Easy to learn.

While determining what to sell through auction marketplaces, choose your products very carefully. Don’t try to sell products like DVD, cellular phones and similar common items. There are way too many people are trying to sell those products. Do your research before jumping into online auctions. Go through categories of your choice. See how your competitors are doing. Check out listings of sold items. For how much products you intend to list are getting sold for? What keywords your prospective competitors are using to market these products? On which auction site these products are selling better?

Go with trend! Travel, cosmetics and jewelry sales are expected to do better than other categories of e-commerce in coming years. In every category of goods and services you will find a niche, which is doing fairly well. All you have to do is find that niche by making extensive and thorough research!

Selling through auction marketplaces like any other business process requires sound judgment and careful planning. Be sure to use them before starting your online sales.