[quote name='yodagonemad']After using the site and referring several others I have a few more suggestions. I give this as advice from someone with experience in online sales. I don't mean to tell you what to do, but I can assure you my advice is solid and works. I hope you will not be offended, and will instead think about what I suggest and seriously consider implementing some of it. I write this because I want Gamestaq to succeed so I have an alternative to eBay.
First suggestion, add delivery confirmation to shipments, and if needed raise the shipping to $3. People like round numbers anyway, and for $3 you should be able to add delivery confirmation which people also like. Plus, once you move to person to person delivery confirmation is 100% essential.
Second suggestion, move to all inclusive pricing. Instead of having one price for both buy and sell with fees tacked on later, stack the buy and sell buttons and have their individual prices beside them. Make these prices all inclusive. For example, a $35 game would have the buy button with $40 next to it ($35 + $2 fee + $3 shipping) and below it would have the sell button with $33 beside it. This way anyone can open the site and see right then exactly how much they will pay to buy it and have it at their door, or exactly how much they will get in their paypal if they sell. I showed 3 of my friends this site and all of them disliked the fact that there are fees added later, even if these fees are fair. Basically, making it one price makes it both easier, and more prone to impulse buying. If I see it is $40, and I go to buy and it is $40 total to my house I will just do it. If I see it is $35, and go to buy and then the fee is added (while fair), and shipping is added, maybe I think twice and lose interest. Plus, by adding those fees later you are forced to explain why they are there, and what the customer is getting. The less a customer has to think about the better you will do. This is why on eBay almost everyone does a single price with free shipping, and why sites like Amazon offer free shipping. People like seeing a single price and paying that price to get the item to their door. Even if it is technically not cheaper, it is easier to swallow one price rather than a price with 2 fees.
Third, pricing is a bit erratic, some seem fine, others a bit silly. My suggestion is to aim for brand new games like Madden 10 to be $50 shipped with fee (so total price if you switch to a one price system). That means the seller gets $43, which is still perhaps a tiny bit lower than eBay, but fair and better than any other trade stores. The buyer also gets the game for $5 less than anywhere, and it is tax free so that makes it even better. On the other end, Prince or Persia is really too high. Even though it is a newer game its market value has tanked. I noticed it was originally listed for $14, which was pretty good. At $17 + fee and shipping no one is going to buy it. You can get is used online from a website for $16 shipped, and off eBay for closer to $14. You can get it brand new for $25.
Finally, I am sure you guys are working on this, but for your own survival you probably need to get the person to person system up ASAP. Your system won't work long term with you guys playing middleman (paying shipping twice, plus having to front the cash to buy copies which may or may not sell for the price you buy them for). Additionally, you cannot predict supply and demand so you will end up with too many of one game and not enough of another. It should not be hard to get person to person up fast. Simply add a seller list, so when someone wants to sell they get added to this list. You will have to insure your sellers are still active, so you want to implement an activity system and if it was me I would send every seller an email every week to which they had to respond to remain on the list. All that can be automatic, and the seller response simply be a link that will change their status in the database. Once you have the seller list with activity monitoring setup you are basically all set. When a buy order comes in they enter their credit card and everything just like now. You contact guy number 1 on the seller list (the seller who has been on the list the longest obviously) asking if he still has the game and wishes to sell at the current price. I would make this email use links also, so all the seller has to do is click a yes button or no button to respond. If yes, buyer is charged, seller is sent shipping label with buyers address and payment, transaction over. If no, you knock that seller off the list, and move to next seller. Biggest challenge will be deciding how long to wait for a seller response. Too long and you annoy the buyer, too short and the seller does not have time to respond. I would tend to make it a pretty short window, say 6 hours, and then send to the next seller. However, you can still make it so the first one can accept, so in this way the sellers who have waited longest get first priority, but the system also moves along. Also, just because a seller fails to respond he should not lose his spot in line unless he also fails the weekly activity email check. If he simply isn’t around to accept the sale but comes back later he should still retain his spot in line for the next sale.
That’s all I’ve got for now. Sorry about the long post, but I really like the idea of Gamestaq, and should you guys fail I may launch my own version of it using my ideas. But before I do that, I feel I should suggest them to you so that hopefully you succeed and make Gamestaq and success. Also, I apologize for any typos or grammatical errors; I just do not feel like proofreading all of this.[/QUOTE]
Oh wise Yoda... u do live up to your handle, as I feel very much like Luke right about now.
(does that mean I get a light-saber!)
We have big ideas and plans for Gamestaq.
Public profiles, social features, and others.
But of course our main goal right now is to get peer to peer transactions up and running efficiently. The obvious issue with starting a P2P marketplace is building up a community of users to do the trading (chicken and the egg). There can be a buyer, but no seller... or a seller but no buyer... and the site just never moves anywhere because there is no community base.
So we are now working hard to build that much needed community to kinda jump start things.
We do currently have delivery confirmation for all buyers' packages.
When their game is shipped out, they get an email confirmation with the USPS tracking #.
We respect and appreciate all of your advice, and i hope we can talk in more detail over PM.
. I missed out on Madden 10 too? :/ Getting more?