Atomic Mall Sees Continued Growth, Auctions in the Works

Atomic Mall founder Mike Shannon said the site's April sales were 25% higher than the previous month, and surpassed December's holiday sales figures. Gross revenue has also increased every month this year, which he attributes to growth in listings, which have risen 5 - 7 percent each month, in addition to greater awareness and word-of-mouth marketing. The site has close to 42,000 users and 2,000 sellers, with 265,988 active listings, which have a total value of $163,259,922.74.

Mr. Shannon said that while Atomic Mall allowed buyers to make offers on single items, he recently added "Cart Offers," giving buyers the ability to place multiple items in their cart from a single seller and make the seller an offer. Previously, buyers wanting to negotiate pricing on multiple store items had to send individual offers on each item, and then complete separate checkouts for each approved offer.

Auctions are coming, he confirmed - but in a unique format, not identical to eBay-style auctions. He could not say whether the auction format would be integrated into Atomic Mall, or whether they would be offered on a separate site (he owns the AtomicAuction.com domain). He would not speculate on when auctions would be available, but they did not sound imminent.

Other recent features include a Data Recycler feature that allows sellers to speed up the listing process by storing the most commonly used ad information, so that they only have to edit the fields that need changes when posting new items for sale

In addition, Atomic Mall added direct credit card acceptance for sellers through Authorize.net, which allows sellers to add direct acceptance of Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover to their Storefronts.

Shannon believes ease-of-use is critical to the success of online marketplaces. There is "every conceivable category" on the site, but some of the ones that do the best are DVDs, collectibles, movie posters, electronics and phone accessories and specialty niche products. He was surprised, he said, that specialty foods such as coffee, candy and bulk food have done so extremely well.

Atomic Mall launched a Facebook Fan page on March 17th. Mr. Shannon said traffic is coming primarily through Google Product Search (aka, Shopping) and Google natural search results. It's also coming from Vast, Ooodle, and TheFind.