Saturday, March 14, 2009

Escrow.com - 300/unit

Escrow.com is a trusted third party people can rely on when doing business online. Basically, it is an e-business site that serves as a meeting place for buyers and sellers who don't know each other. It offers service of holding an amount of money/property granted to somebody and releases it after a specific condition has been set, thus the name "escrow".

According to Alexa.com, the site has a traffic rank of 42,984. Also, it receives an average weekly hit of 0.0026% from global internet users, 43.3% of which are from the United States.

As have been mentioned, this site targets online sellers and buyers and offers trusted escrow services to them, offering a new way of doing e-business.

On the business aspect of the site, Escrow.com gives the following promises to sellers: Knowledge regarding the buyer's funds (that they are already authenticated and held before shipping of merchandise), Opportunity to reach new target markets, Lesser expenses on bad debts, Faster transactions, access to the site's customer service, updates on order status anytime, streamlined distribution, transaction details maintainenance for 7 years, and proactive sequencing deals.

On the one hand, buyers are guaranteed: right to inspect merchandise before Escrow.com's release of payment to seller, fast transaction of orders, lesser procurement expenses, access to customer service center, updates on order status online, early receipt of goods, access to a large number of suppliers and details maintenance for 7 years.

The site may want to tweak more its over-all look (i.e. inclu de pictures of their happy customers and the like). Yes, it may be true that its main purpose is to conduct business and thus made their site look "straigh tforward", but it should keep in mind that business sh ould be fun too.


Moreover, its value proposition is not that clear. By just looking on its homepage, it won't make people think that it does escrow business for people on different goods.

8 comments:

  1. a great venture online! its nice to know that these kind of sites do fucntion and operate for business operations. but.. parang i cant relate that much because im not part of its market yet. hopefully in the future this can be handy to us :)
    (In Between Names)

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  2. escrow.com is just like e-bay.(?) looking for the right buyers and the right sellers. however, this site is overshadowed by e-bay, in terms of popularity, however, they serve the same function. the group presented concise background and information of the site, which i think gave the readers the idea of what escrow.com is and what is it for. good job.

    -99stars

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  3. -Jjam Ppong-

    There are other websites doing the same thing as what Escrow.com is doing. They have to advertise more so that they can also attract customers from other countries. Do buyers have to pay for an extra amount of money in order to display their goods in the website? The group is right about saying that the safety of the customers from buying goods that are fake and damaged is guaranteed.
    The website review is very intuitive. They explained the objectives of Escrow as well as its components and shortcomings concisely. They pointed out only the very important things that we need to know about Escrow, which I think is good. =)

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  4. I think escrow is a good idea not based on it's capacity to earn but in it's attempt to solve the lemons problem in the internet market. Basically it acts as an intermediary that aids in risk management by eliminating problems on asymmetric information. Sites like escrow greatly improve market structures and I hope to see more in the future!

    Electronica

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  5. Though escrow.com is much like those online shopping websites like eBay and Amazon, I think that escrow's services are more beneficial than the others as it guarantees smooth business transactions between the sellers and the buyers.
    Unlike in eBay where you will have to rely on other people's testimonials (which may have been rigged), escrow.com's services is by far less risky.

    The downside however, is that it seems to cater only to big sellers and buyers. Also, I agree with you that this site is quite lame in a sense that it doesn't show its visitors the products they sell in its homepage.

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  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  7. Putting your assets into the hands of an escrow agent definitely entails much risk. But since e-business has its own laws (that we expect sites such as this comply with),we don't need to worry so.

    I must agree with what the reviewers commented :"to tweak more its over-all look". Indeed, good appearance of the site helps attract customers.

    (Matri-6)

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