EBay's new approach to Christmas shopping

To celebrate the Christmas season, eBay is opening their first ever UK store, though it’s not quite shopping as we know it...

Their temporary boutique opened yesterday, as scheduled, in London’s West End for just 5 days, allowing shoppers to browse their potential purchases before splashing out online. This is by no means eBay’s first foray into expanding from their online auctions; why not check out our previous article on their augmented reality app from earlier this year.

The shopping emporium works by making use of QR, or Quick Response codes. If you’re interested in learning more about QR codes and how they work, check out our previous post here. Customers can wander around the store and browse to their hearts content, purchases can then be made using a smartphone (or any other connected device that can read QR codes).

"Shoppers simply scan the QR code with their smartphone to make their loved ones’ Christmas wishes come true – no tills, no queues, no bags, no stress. Using your mobile phone, you can literally complete your shopping in a matter of clicks," claims eBay’s spokesperson.

Experts expect approximately 5.8 million shoppers to log on during the five day sales, with sales peaking at 30 gifts per second, almost double during the same period of 2010. EBay say they are expecting around 120 gifts to be purchased every minute via smartphone.

If you’re interested in learning more about how your business can take advantage of smartphone technology, or want to know how you can promote yourself over the festive period, why not get in contact with Rocktime and talk to our Sales team about the opportunities avaliable


Author: Alice Cheetham

eBay Fashion and Augmented Reality

We talked about augmented reality briefly with our Geek Video of the month, and here it is again! EBay has had huge success with its mobile e-commerce and now they’re trying their luck with something new; the release of their Augmented Reality upgrade to the eBay Fashion App last month.




The app is broken down into two main components; the ‘See it now’, as shown above, allows the user to take a photo of themselves, resize different styles of sunglasses to their face and then track the movement of their head, rendering the sunglasses appropriately.

For clothing, the ‘Outfit Builder’ allows users to designate favourite pieces of clothing and save them to their virtual closet. Using a photo of themselves the users can then mix and match clothing over the top of their photo as they please. Once the outfit is created, it can then be saved and shared amongst friends via email.

EBay is by no means the first large company to put together an augmented reality app; when it comes to clothing JCPenny and H&M have both had their respective apps on the market since late 2010. However eBay's venture into the market of augmented reality is one of the most technical so far, using the more conventional approach of real time streaming and rendering.

So what advantage does an app such as this offer the company? When it comes to clothing, one of the huge drawbacks of online shopping is the inability to see how the clothes look on you; and augmented reality could be just the ticket to solve that. Of course, there’s still quite a few kinks to iron out first and augmented reality will never truly replicate going to a shop yourself and physically handling goods.

For the moment, it remains to be seen whether eBay’s venture into augmented reality really hits off, or becomes just a passing gimmick. Nonetheless, given the exponential increase in the capabilities of the average phone and an ever growing uptake in the popularity of the smartphone, I don't think it's too unlikely that we'll be seeing more and more of these augmented reality mobile apps and this makes the Flashlight team at Rocktime extremely excited.


Author: Alice Cheetham

Social Media meets Commerce

Giving further credence to the power of social networking, on the 2nd of November, eBay launched their Group Gifts service in the US (just in time for Christmas). See the above promo video from eBay which invites you to think 'Big'.

The service has been designed, say eBay to make “it easier for friends and relatives to chip in for gifts because it eliminates the headache of collecting contributions”.

How it works is: A gift is chosen, then others are invited to contribute to the gift via Facebook or email, they show their commitment via making the payment.

Should Group Gift Service make it to the eBay UK, I can see this working amongst my friends, for group payments for Hen Dos, Baby Showers, however I can’t see this working with older relatives, who unless this is advertised well may be sceptical about the security of this group gift option (if they haven’t heard of it before).

Group Gifts is just one of a number of social commerce tools currently being developed by eBay. Last week it unveiled a payment mechanism for digital purchases that allow people to make purchases through Facebook too.

It will be interesting to see how Group Gifts takes off in the US.

New Media Age recently reported that the UK market isn’t yet mature enough for social commerce, despite commitment from brands such as Dell and Disney.

Are we ready, time will tell.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

eBay Launch Favourite Charity Campaign

A new eBay for Charity feature allows you to set your favourite charity on eBay, so that you can support them whenever you buy and sell.

To celebrate the launch of ‘My Favourite Charity’, eBay is awarding grants of up to £5,000 to the three charities that receive the most votes as favourite in September.

Visit My Favourite Charity to see which charities Tess Daly, Sharon Osborne, Helen Mirren, Roger Moore, and other celebrities have chosen, and then choose your favourite charity.

Ebay state that: “your contributions have so far raised over £19m in the UK. Along with the benefitting charities, we'd like to thank you for supporting good causes on eBay”.

We are big fans of the layout of the Ebay for Charity page, good mix of useful links, video and social media. Loving the ribbon idea too.

Learn more about eBay for Charity or follow them on twitter here.

Author: Sarah Griffiths