JMMW's ISORG Research Report

ISORG Project

For this project, we have researched on 2 e-Commerce websites, namely eBay and Lands' End. We will be touching on the objectives, features, characteristics and analysis of the 2 websites.

First of all, we'll start with the Objectives of both sites.

eBay



eBay is The World's Online Marketplace®, enabling trade on a local, national and international basis. With a diverse and passionate community of individuals and small businesses, eBay offers an online platform where millions of items are traded each day. With millions of buyers and sellers worldwide, eBay offers localized sites in the following markets which includes Europe, North America and Asia Pacific.

Type of business:

Their users include individual buyers and sellers, small businesses, and even enterprises. The users ranges from the buyer who shops on eBay for practical needs or for fun, to the seller who relies on eBay as a primary source of income. This explains that eBay under 1 of the major e-commerce categories of C2C (consumer to consumer).

Vision:

eBay is a community that encourages open and honest communication among all its members. Their community is guided by five fundamental values:

• We believe people are basically good
• We believe everyone has something to contribute
• We believe that an honest, open environment can bring out the best in people
• We recognize and respect everyone as a unique individual
• We encourage you to treat others the way you wanted to be treated

Mission:

Giving back to the community has been an essential part of eBay since the very beginning. In 1998, with a donation of 107,250 shares of pre-IPO stock, eBay created a charitable fund known as the eBay Foundation™. Today, eBay Foundation remains an important part of eBay and serves as the primary vehicle through which eBay contributes to community organizations. Annually, eBay Foundation provides grants to numerous non-profit groups that are working to make local communities better places to live and work. Since its inception, eBay Foundation has contributed more than $8 million to non-profit organizations.

Lands' End






Lands' End is a direct merchant of traditionally styled clothing for the family, soft luggage, and products for the home. They offer products through their catalogs, on the Internet and in their Inlet stores.

Type of business:

They work directly with mills and manufacturers, eliminating the markups of middlemen. They pass the savings on to their customers, who shop directly with them — from home or office, by phone, mail, fax or Web. They ship directly to their customers, virtually anywhere in the world. In other words Lands’ End is under the category of B2C (business to consumer) under e-Commerce.

Vision:

Principle 1 - They do everything they can to make their products better. They never reduce the quality of a product to make it cheaper.

Principle 2 - They price their products fairly and honestly.

Principle 3 - They accept any return for any reason, at any time. Their products are guaranteed.

Principle 4 - They ship faster than anyone they know of.

Principle 5 - They believe that what is best for their customer is best for all of us.

Principle 6 - They are able to sell at lower prices because they have eliminated middlemen.

Principle 7 - they are able to sell at lower prices because they operate efficiently.

Principle 8 - They encourage their customers to shop for their products in whatever way they find most convenient.

Mission:

At Lands' End, they have built a strong heritage of giving and making a difference in the communities where they live and work. In an effort to help employees make an even greater impact, the company has an employee volunteerism program through which employees who volunteer for a non-profit organization are rewarded with a matching donation back to the non-profit organizations of their choice.

They partner with Habitat for Humanity to provide a deserving family with a house in Dodgeville, Wisconsin. As a way to encourage participation in this worthy cause, they are offering their employees significant financial incentives based on their hours of service.

Lands' End partners with the American Red Cross to host onsite blood drives, babysitting classes, swimming lessons, CPR and First Aid classes, as well as workshops for child care providers.

Lands' End also partners with a number of cultural organizations in the communities in which they live and work (Madison Symphony, Summer Concert Series in Dodgeville, Stevens Point and Reedsburg etc.).

In 2006 Lands' End shipped thousands of clothing items and fabric to various non-profit groups. Many church groups use the hemming scraps to make charity quilts.

Now, we move on to the Features of both sites.

eBay

Launched in 1995, eBay started as a place to trade collectables and hard-to-find items. Today eBay is a global marketplace where businesses and individuals can buy and sell practically anything. You don't have to register to take a look at what's available, but you will need to register if you want to buy or sell.

First of all the main reason for eBay’s soaring popularity is the convenience of buying and selling through online. To start the buying and selling session, one just needs just to go through the five simple and fast steps!

5 simple steps to start buying in eBay:

1) Register yourself with eBay! It’s FREE!
2) Then you may browse for your desired products through categories or by searching their keywords
3) Next, you may review the item and seller and ensure the specifications of the products fit your desired! Also, review the seller to find out his/her transaction ratings! (This special security feature on eBay allows users to find out more about the seller and buyer reliability)
4) Once decided on the item, you may either ‘Buy it Now!’ or ‘Bid for It’
5) Once everything is confirmed, you can go on to pay and receive your products! To ensure a pleasant experience with eBay, it has installed a feedback feature so as to gather feedbacks for better eBay experience!

Payments and Security

eBay offers a range of payment methods for its users, including the preferred Paypal, bank deposit, money orders, cheques, cash on delivery and so on. However, it does not recommend cash and instant wire transfers. On top of the wide range of payment methods, eBay took a step further to educate users on the pros and cons of each type of payment methods.


various payment methods, click to enlarge

The eBay Trust & Safety team is devoted to making eBay a safe and reliable place to trade. The team helps build trust in the community through various educational resources, rules and policies and trust-building programmes, all of which help maintain general marketplace security and prevent and combat fraud.

eBay works behind the scenes to develop the technology and skills to fight fraud and empower the community to understand and conduct safe trading practices. eBay also proactively works with law enforcement and government agencies throughout the world to enforce its policies. eBay's trading policies are rooted in the values of the eBay marketplace. eBay strives for a level playing field and information transparency, enabling economic opportunity for the community and encouraging open, honest and accountable transactions.

Lands' End

With a wide range of categories of products for consumers to choose from, Land’s End aims to satisfy every single buying desire they come across! Product categories includes:

The Lands' End Catalog — Primary catalog featuring a full line of classically styled casual clothing for men and women, including outerwear, swimwear and footwear.
Lands' End Women's Plus Size Collection — Clothing perfectly proportioned to fit women 16W–26W. Along with style and reassuring quality, this collection features rich, natural fibers, beautiful colors and unsurpassed value.

Lands' End Men — A complete line of finely tailored clothing for men, from suits, ties and dress shirts to more casual office attire.

Lands' End Kids — Quality clothing, freshly styled, to dress kids from head to toe. These fun, colorful classics fit newborns to pre-teens.

Lands' End School Uniforms — Uniforms and school-appropriate clothing, designed to meet dress-code requirements, in sizes for kids and adults, including Spiritwear, embroidered with your logo for sports, clubs and organizations.

Lands' End Home — High-quality, classically styled products for the home, with a focus on honest value instead of promotional "white sales."

Lands' End Business Outfitters (Corporate Sales) — Specially selected Lands' End clothing expertly embroidered with the logo of your company or organization, plus unique gifts and service awards. LEBO dresses everyone from the smallest groups to the world's largest businesses – and everything in between.

It's now onto the Characteristics of the 2 websites.

eBay



main layout of eBay.com, click to enlarge

The design scheme of eBay is rather simple. At the very top, you can find the usual user-related menus, namely Buy, Sell, User Account, Community, Help and search fields. It acts like a "one-stop" control panel for the users so that they would not have to look all over the page for those functions to access the website.

In the middle of the page, on the left you can see a long list of categories of products that are offered for sale on eBay and on the right, you can see pictures of highlighted categories or products to attract users' attention. The highlighted categories and products change everytime a user visits the website. This is good in the sense that it allows different kinds of products to have a chance to be featured and provides variety for the users. All these are rather simple navigations for the users so that they can find whatever they want with little or no hassles.

At the bottom half of the page, you can see eBay's affiliates, and more featured products offered by the sellers. Various information links can also be found at the bottom of page.

Graphics-wise, a major bulk of the pictures found on eBay is provided by the Sellers. This is to facilitate sales and to provide a rough idea of how the sale item is like, so that the Buyers can judge for themselves on whether to purchase the items or not. Other than that, pictures are also used to capture users' attention, just like the ones that eBay has put up on its main page.

There are no pictures depicting the different categories of products, eBay chose only words to represent them. A probably reason for this could be that there are too many categories and it would take a very long time for the page to load if pictures are used to represent every category.

Lands' End


main layout of landsend.com, click to enlarge

Similar to eBay, Lands' End's design scheme also has a user control panel conveniently located at the top of the page, which includes Store Locator, Shopping Bag, Customer Service, "My Account", Sign-up for Email and Sign In.

Right below it is the navigation menu for the site, which includes the various categories of products that Lands' End offers. Beside it is a search field which allows users of the website to search for what they want easily without going through each individual category.

The main highlighted products of the site are featured in the middle of the page, which occupies quite a large portion. It shows a model wearing the featured product and eye-catchign promotion words and phrases are used. In relation to the featured product, various choices and categories are available.

There are also 3 additional categories of products featured below the main ones. The various information links are located below them.


category view of landsend.com, click to enlarge

Under each category of products, the top and navigation menus remain the same. All the individual products under a particular category are listed as a list menu on the left while to the right of that is the main highlighted product of that category. Bottom information links remain unchanged.

Certain functions - like Gift Cards, Shopping Bag, "My Account" - of this website require an account to proceed, which means that users who wish to purchase something from it have to sign up for an account before they can proceed. This is to ensure integrity of both users and Lands' End, privacy and security.

For the Graphics of Lands' End, as this is an apparel virtual store, most graphics are pictorial representations of the products, with real life models wearing some of them and posing for the photos. Other pictures include photos of the products themselves.

All in all, there are not too many graphics, the website is simple, concise and pleasant to look at, and it is able to attract or tempt users into buying their products.

Last but not least, let us look at the Analysis of both sites.

eBay

STRENGTHS OF eBAY

No Geographical and Time Constraints
eBay is a global marketplace where businesses and individuals can buy and sell practically anything. Sellers and Bidders can access eBay via the Internet from everywhere anytime in the world. This makes trading easy and accessible for everyone as long as there is Internet connection, increasing the number of listed items for sales as well as the number of successful deals benefiting both the sellers and buyers in the global. Transactions can be closed anywhere anytime.

FREE Registration
Consumer does not need to register to take a look at what is available in eBay. Registration would only be need if the consumer wishes to buy or sell. Registration is FREE.

Being FREE implies that it does not reduce the profit made by trading in eBay, thus this is one good reason why eBay is popular. Being a C2C trading website, eBay does not come into the picture unless something serious goes wrong in the trade thus there is no commission to be paid to eBay from either party.

Buy what you want
eBay is a place where there is something for everyone. There are many ways the transaction can be done, the consumer chooses the format best for himself /herself :
• Experience the thrill of placing the winning bid on an auction-style item.
• If you know what you want and you want to pay for it instantly, look for items that offer Buy It Now.

Sell what you don’t want
eBay could be a place for making money out of the things you do not need or things that you bought but never had used them. Making money on eBay is simple. Millions of people just like you sell on eBay everyday for lots of reasons.

Many people may even come together to buy things from overseas so that they share the cost of shipment which might just come up to be a very small amount as it is being shared by many. Some traders tap onto the existing eBay business model to do their own business making profit out of this online trade.

With millions of buyers and a safe and easy system, eBay is a great place to sell.

One of the safest places to trade online.
eBay commits to making consumers experience on eBay safe and fun. Millions of items are sold everyday. eBay community and Trust and Safety teams work together to provide a great way to complete consumers purchase or sale. There are many programmes in place to help make consumer trade with peace of mind.
• Feedback system
• Buyer Protection programme
• Dedicated Security Centre

Things rarely go wrong but should something happen, eBay is there to help.

WEAKNESSES OF eBAY

Feedback System
Feedback is made up of comments and ratings left by other eBay members one has bought from and sold to. These comments and ratings are valuable indicators of one’s reputation as a buyer or seller on eBay. They are included, along with an overall Feedback score, in one’s Feedback Profile.

A consumer may not wish to leave honest feedback out of fear of negative retaliatory feedback. eBay does not offers exact guidelines on this Feedback System. Feedback and responses to feedback are allotted only 80 characters each. This limitation prevents consumer from being able to give the full detail of the whole incident.

Although eBay protects sellers from getting a negative feedback from a deadbeat buyer when the deadbeat buyer/bidder did not respond to Unpaid Item dispute, they do not offer the same protection for a buyer who gets a deadbeat seller.

Frauds
Frauds can be committed by both the sellers and buyers. Examples of frauds are like receiving payment yet not delivering the goods or receiving the good yet claim otherwise.

Lands' End

STRENGTHS OF LANDS' END

Convenience of Own Shopping Accounts
Allows convenience of shopping through one’s own account without worry of keying wrong information. Safety is also assumed through Lands’ End safety policy.

Privacy Guaranteed
Privacy guaranteed. Whenever orders are placed through the mail or phone, the information given is kept confidential. They do not use cookies to shop at Land’s End except for Personal Shopping Account, My Virtual Model, Lands' End Live and Shop with a friend features for consumers’ convenience, which can be removed if desired.
Since they opened in 1995, they do not have any case of fraud through credit card transactions. This is due to their safety policy, which ensures shoppers’ peace of mind whenever they shop with Land’s End. They use Secure Socket Layers (SSL) to protect consumers’ financial information whenever they transact at Lands’ End. And in the event of any loss during a credit card transaction, Lands’ End will assume the liability hence making it loss free shopping for the consumers.

User Friendly interface
The website is easy to navigate as well as user friendly. It’s site map is laid out in a straightforward manner that consumers can find what they are looking for without sifting through the entire website.

Attractive pictures of products attract consumers’ desire to purchase
The website has many beautiful models wearing the company’s products which spark off the desire of owning one of the beautiful pieces that the models are wearing. The short description and picture of the products with the size chart side by side allows consumers to immediately try out the sizes available and drop it into their shopping carts. This helps in capturing the desire to buy before it wears out.

FREE Registration
Registration to own a personal account and start shopping immediately is free-of-charge and hassle free! One just need to fill in the information needed and one can start shopping almost immediately!

Lands’ End is a place with a wide range of clothing and innerwear
Lands’ End wide range of clothing for the young to the elderly makes it a friendly one-stop family clothing store where busy moms or dads can shop at their own convenience.

WEAKNESSES OF LANDS' END

Inabilities to verify clothing’s quality
One of the weaknesses of Internet shopping is the inability to verify the clothing’s quality and whether does the clothing fit the person. At Lands’ End, as long as the items purchased are not satisfactory, Lands’ End guaranteed a return of the items at any time for an exchange or refund of the item itself. Even though they have this policy, it can be quite troublesome to actually send it back after it had been delivered to your house as you might incur more mail charges.

Jasmine, Mei Hua, Masturah and Weixin @ 6:00 PM