Look For Your eBay 'pURL' In The Mail !
Yesterday, after taking a re-scheduled hike due to rain the previous weekend, we stopped at our PO Box, checked out the mail and saw the latest sales brochure from eBay addressed to Tina.
We appear to be on their regular mailing list now, and quite often several sub-categories of our sales niche are advertised in the sales brochure which pleases us when they do that!
Well eBay has now done more than that for us as a buyer. On the front page there is a 'special message' for Tina to check out page 3 inside. Looking at page 3 I find out that eBay has gone the route of giving those receiving the sales catalogue their own pURL!
Was just reading in another sales magazine that we subscribe to, 'Target Marketing' that pURLs are the latest internet marketing tool that innovative companies are using.
'pURL' with a lower case 'p' is the acronym for personalized Uniform Resource Locator.
'PURL' with a Capital 'P' has long stood for 'Persistent Uniform Resource Locator.
'URL' which stands for Uniform Resource Locator is the web address that comes up in the address bar of your browser. For example: http:www.ebay.com is an URL.
You will always find the eBay.com site at that URL, http:www.ebay.com. A company using a 'PURL' would be re-directing the viewer to another page within the main domain.
Note: Please bear with me on this, I am not a 'techie', and am trying to explain what is happening now at eBay that is going to affect buyers first and later sellers!
'pURLS' have been around since their first appearance in the year 2000. However they have been underused until this year. Companies are now finding out that they can generate a pURL for each one of their customers, and once the customer signs on to their own pURL, then that is when the company's computer can start feeding that viewer individualized pages each time the viewer signs on!
If the viewer is a woman then pages that would likely be of more interest to a woman would appear first. Likewise if the viewer was a man.
Plus when the viewer goes back in again, the pURL has additional info on what the viewer viewed before and serves up additional items that could interest the viewer.
(Similar to what Amazon does, but differently with a pURL.)
You may be thinking now... so what does this do for me??
Well, first of all it is exciting that eBay is attempting to become more than just a 'generic' web site. They have recently changed the eBay generic portal page that viewers first enter.
The new 'neighborhoods' has also been a recent development. Sure it is in its' early stages and is taking a while to take off, but that concept has been around on other web sites for ages before eBay just implemented it here.
The article I just read about pURLs was just in the October 2007 issue of 'Target Marketing', so eBay is only a few months out from others already testing this new personalized way of displaying web pages for buyers.
I am pleased to see the new developments I just mentioned above. Which helps offset some of the pain the eBay techs gave us personally when they changed the blog format to a more 'squeezed in' format. Doing that distorted the displays of our archived blog posts! Still not over that 'improvement'! Arrrrrrgh!
Anyway, you should be getting your own pURL pretty soon I would think, especially if you have been a buyer on eBay and have been on their sales brochure mailers program before this latest mailing.
So look closer at the sales brochure should you get one in the mail, and use your pURL if you are a buyer!
Of course if you don't buy, then having a pURL will not benefit you that much, much like the new eBay download tool bar is more for buyers instead of sellers. But think of how much better informed your buyers will be! You just gotta figure out how to get your items before them to view with these latest developments! Read up on 'pURLs' and figure out how to benefit from them as a seller!
Thanks for reading this blog post... Usually we blog about pop culture - tv shows- movies - comics - comic books - or related items. Feel free to post your comment or question below in the comments section!
For the listings of all the items we have in 'core' listings or in our eBay Featured Store, just click here!
Michael & Tina
Note From Make It So Marketing: Each comic / comics book or magazine in our eBay Featured Store is individually graded, inventoried, priced, bagged and boarded, before being listed for sale! We attend several pop culture and comic books conventions during the year to replenish our inventory for resale!
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