New Shoes on The Marketplace – July 2nd 2019

All of the sellers tend to value their used shoes very much. It is an inner valuation that is far more than what the market will pay. It’s not a Ferrari that will appreciate in value (which most Ferrari’s don’t given the interest, maintenance and other costs etc).

It’s a mismatch between people who think their used stuff is worth more than gold. And the actual buyers rejecting this circus to the point that the marketplace loses value to both the sellers and eventually buyers. Rule of thumb, you can get brand new shoes for $175. Your used stuff has to undercut $175 by a lot, even if you bought it for $4000. It’s used, and it has to be priced that way.

Hi Justin,

Some detailed thoughts below:

—Pricing and depreciation—
Most obvious point, but sellers are too optimistic in their pricing. As a longtime eBay seller, it’s common – people are asking the price they want to realise (often to recoup a cost) instead of the price people will actually pay for them.

As others have noted, the vast majority of luxury brands see massive depreciation from the RRP – when reselling I’d normally expect an upper end of 20% resale value compared to the RRP. Some products hold their value better than others – a regularly sized, popular makeup of Edward Green Galways will probably be closer to 50% of RRP, but they’re the exception.

Possible suggestion could be that sellers input the RRP of the product when listing it, and then the price displayed is xx% of that depending on the condition of product, popularity of brand, regularity of sizing, whether trees are included, etc.

You need to discourage the standard seller behaviour of “I’ll set the price higher than I expect to really get, and then when someone makes an offer I’ll appear to haggle and still end up with a price I wanted” as it creates an overall offputting appearance if everything just looks too pricey.

This is a hard one to manage overall, as it will require intervention from yourself that sellers may not be happy with.

—Landing page—
I’m not a big fan of the large banner at the top of the page, followed by a horizontal block of filter dropdowns. It pushes the product too far below the fold and overall doesn’t make the site look immediately transactable. It looks more like a blog than a store at the moment.

I’d suggest a smaller banner, and combining the account login and Shipping / Currency headers into one section. That grey header is actually quite intrusive in the current design – it even pushes your logo down to the next section.

Use the carousel banner for more inspirational / lifestyle images, and save the messaging around fees / Paypal security for later in the journey around the basket. At the moment the banner is trying to appeal to buyers and sellers, so it’s giving a weak overall message.

Have products appearing on the product grid as default by newness, and push the filters to the left-hand side of the screen. This will get products right in people’s face earlier on.

— Filter options—
The filter button behaviour is a bit eccentric – you need to click an option (eg. size UK 9.5) then click outside of the menu to update. It would be more orthodox to have the filters immediately refine the search when clicked, or have an “Apply filter” button within the menu.

I also personally prefer to see all the options listed below the button rather than having to click into each (eg. I don’t want to have to click Brand to see all the available brands, just list them underneath A – Z)

It’s interesting that the site retains your filter options between visits. This is potentially helpful compared to having users select their sizing again etc. but does limit the appearance of newness, which can have a detrimental effect. I’d suggest on that basis that it should reset filters between visits.

—Condition filter—
Could you add some more granular details here? Savvyrow and Leffot’s used marketplace do good work here. Rather than just New, New with Defects, Used it’s more;
New / Immaculate
Near perfect / Lightly worn
Good / used but visible wear
Well worn / approaching end of life
Restoration / repair needed

Given that you probably expect most shoes to fall somewhere on the “used” spectrum it might make sense to offer more detail.

—Size filter—
Having the “9.5UK / 10.5US / 43.5 EU” combined in one value works well, although the other option is separating them into UK, US and EU filters. Given there isn’t always exact equivalence between the EU / UK sizing separate filters could be more accurate, though would require sellers to input 3 sizing values instead of 1, and make it less accurate overall!

—Design—
The grey used in the filters banner is a bit passive / generic looking – could you use your black and red branding for a slightly more distinctive design?

The actual colouring used on the filters text especially looks very pale – they look almost as though they have been greyed out, which doesn’t invite clicking. When clicked on the list of values is black, and more legible.

—Product page—
I like the conversation box, although it might be better called “Question about this item? Ask it here” or something a bit more specific.

Could you enforce a bit more strictness around image guidelines and standards for selling? It’s quite disorienting to have a mix of angles for the primary image as you scroll through the grid page. Also, some products will feature multiple alternative images within the product details, where others only have one shot. How about:

1. All products should feature a side profile of the shoe against a plain background as the primary image?
2. All products should feature alternative images shot from the top, isometric and rear – both shoes should be fully visible
3. All products should show the sole condition in a photo
4. All products should show the label, model number or sizing information in a photo
5. Any amount of additional detail shots after the above are supplied

—Buyer’s / Vendor’s currency box—
Is this really necessary to show on the product page? Ultimately all that matters to me as the buyer is how much I’m paying in my own currency – it just seems to add possible confusion. I don’t really care how that translates to the vendor’s currency, I just assume that’s sorted out in the background.

—Send offer—
As we’ve covered with pricing section, it would be useful for customers to send an offer to buyers. They may not see the conversation box or want to use this for offers, so how about a “Or send best offer” button next to the Buy Now button?

—New vs. used products and proposition—
I think the presence of brands like Sons of Henrey dilutes the intent of the marketplace a bit. Nothing personal against them at all, but it’s odd to see a new pair of Sons of Henrey (asking price £270, RRP £270) sitting next to used a pair of John Lobbs (asking price £370, RRP £1,500). It makes the value proposition hard to gauge, because shopping used vs shopping new are quite different journeys and experiences, with different user expectations.

It also clogs the grid page up a lot with quite samey looking products, which seems at odds with what you’re trying to do with the marketplace (bringing together a quite eclectic, difficult to find collection of things under one roof). Particularly when they have sizing options of each model, which results in a separate product page per size.

—Buyer’s confidence—
Major obstacle for me as a buyer at the moment is “what if something goes wrong?”. It seems like a lot of the focus on the Marketplace is facilitating purchases but not serving as the actual vendor, which is fine as a philosophy (and works well enough for Grailed etc.). But it is asking customers to put confidence in the seller or Paypal if things go wrong (and I’ve dealt with Paypal enough to know that’s sometimes a challenge)

This lack of oversight/accountability from the Marketplace site could be fine if the price savings offset that overall sense of risk, but at the moment there’s no reason I wouldn’t just buy through eBay with all the buyer protection that offers.

It also seems like a lot of sellers won’t accept returns, which is a big turnoff compared to shopping on eBay, which pretty much requires returns from sellers even if they don’t want to! Could you say that all sellers are expected to accept returns (although the buyer must cover shipping costs) or something?

—Shipping policies—
Parts of the shipping policies page are confusing. It says “Sellers are not responsible for any delays due to customs or any duties/taxes that may be charged by the courier” however product pages are listed with a separate calculation for tax. It might be helpful to put on the product page “Please note: as the buyer you may be liable for import fees on your purchase” to make this clearer.

It states “Customer is responsible for any re-shipping costs due to non-delivery”. I think should be failed deliveries rather than non-delivery eg. “Customer is responsible for any additional shipping costs incurred if they provided incorrect shipping information, or were not available to take delivery of their products from the courier”

Return policies – as stated, maybe stipulate that every seller must take returns with the caveats you’ve already listed?

As a general point, the policies pages look a bit bare-bones at the moment and could with some general re-writing / tweaking / formatting to make them more user-friendly.

Hope that helps, and wishing you success
Sam