iMark Interactive

Our good old friends in charge of the shopping site NewEggMall.com have struck again.  We got a tip from one of our readers that was trying to sign in to their merchant portal, that it is only compatible with Internet Explorer browsers.  Now, this might not phase you, but it does us.  You have to think that a technology company like NewEgg, the owners of NewEggMall, would be more versed in how technology should be run and built.  Any online marketer or designer knows that websites and login portals should be built to run on multiple browsers.  There are a lot of merchants that do not use IE, nor do they endorse it.    It is kind of archaeic to force users to sign in with IE 6+ browsers in order to do business.

We know that a good majority of companies use IE, but that is not usually because of choice, but do to how their software is bundled.  IE comes standard on all windows machines and if you don’t install another browser, then you will be using IE.  Internet Explorer is an old browser that is full of bugs and slow load times.  Browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, and Opera have jumped into the running due to their fast load times, good security, and far less clutter.

This is a screenshot that was sent to us from our visitor.  It shows that the NewEggMall merchant portal only allows you to use IE 6+ to access to the login page.  The only thing that we can say is REALLY? Come on NewEggMall!  If you want to get into the shopping game and actually compete, don’t hinder retailers with your lack of programming skills.  This is just offensive to people that actually understand that there is a difference between Internet Explorer and other browsers.  It is time to code a website that deals with cross-browser functionality.  Your parent company deals with technology and electronics, so why don’t you ask them how to do it.  I don’t see NewEgg.com only working for people with IE.  If that was the case, they wouldn’t be around any longer and NewEggMall.com wouldn’t even exist.

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**Neweggmall.com is no longer a website that you can visit.  NewEgg shut this business down due to lack of interest.**

Neweggmall.com was created by NewEgg.com, which is one of the best consumer electronics retailers on the web. The marketplace was first created to add a different product assortment because NewEgg doesn’t sell anything not related to consumer electronics and computers. This marketplace has been around for over a year now and is gaining some momentum, but slowly. They have a lot of categories to choose from such as apparel, sporting goods, and more. They have finally opened it up to other electronics retailers as well.

NewEgg Mall plans on putting some of the listings for electronics products on their newegg.com domain. This could really push up the traffic levels to neweggmall.com and make it more of a player in the marketplace game. There are many retailers out there that are constantly looking for new places to sell their products and diversification is key to succeeding online. While NewEgg Mall may look nice, we have dug a little deeper into what they are actually providing and how it may affect you as a retailer.

They setup the marketplace much like Amazon, where consumers come in and find your products, purchase, and you ship them the merchandise. This is where it stops being like Amazon. In order to be in NewEgg Mall, a retailer has to either have or get a credit card processing account from Chase Paymentech. If you have this provider, then it should be fine, but if you do not, then you will need to get it. Where we found issue with this is that many small and medium sized retailers use Authorize.Net or Paypal to process their credit cards on their websites. They are already charged per month for this, so in order to get on NewEggMall.com, you would need to pay per month for Chase Paymentech as well, plus a per transaction fee, like any other credit card processor. So instead of NewEgg Mall creating a payment system that retailers can use without having to setup another one, they make you do it. They don’t even allow you to use your own payment provider like PriceGrabber Stores does.  This also takes the risk away from NewEgg Mall and puts it on you. You are responsible for processing the credit cards, checking for fraud, and every other aspect that comes with taking credit cards over the internet. We spoke to quite a few retailers about this and they think it is a joke.  If NewEgg Mall wants to compete in the marketplace arena, then they need to be setup like a marketplace. We are sure to hear more retailers complain about this.

NewEgg Mall charges you per month, the same amount as Amazon to use their services. They also charge a commission when a product sells, much like Amazon. Their commissions seem to be pretty fair at this time. The issue that comes to attention is that they are charging the same monthly fee as Amazon is, but are not providing anywhere near the same services. This just seems ludicrous to think that retailers are actually going to get on board with this if they look at all the figures. NewEgg Mall might be able to score some smaller retailers and maybe ones that want to try it out, but if they really want to grab more of the marketshare and build a successful marketplace, then they need to revamp the whole system. It looks like it was thrown together quickly without thinking of many aspects. We know that NewEgg has a great reputation and they do things well, so it is surprising that they allowed this marketplace to go live without covering all the basis of a great marketplace.

Have you checked out NewEggMall.com? If so, what do you think and how would you change it for the better?

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