eBay has begun previewing a web site called eBay Express that offers fixed prices from eBay merchants to help shoppers avoid the sometimes-disappointing auction process. The company also reported it bought a Swedish auction site, Tradera.com, for $48 million.

The eBay Express site, which eBay introduced Monday, works the same way as many other e-commerce sites, but from a wider variety of sellers, and puts eBay more squarely into competition with other leading e-tailers such as Amazon.com.

The site accepts payments through eBay’s PayPal payment service, as well as credit cards, with a single click. eBay is introducing a shopping cart function for the first time with the new site.

The San Jose, California-based company plans to run the site in a preview phase for several weeks as it gathers user feedback and makes enhancements.

Shares of eBay fell $0.42 to $34.51 in recent trading.

Like the Buy It Now option that eBay introduced several years ago, the site attempts to eliminate the hassle of the drawn-out auction process and allow buyers to guarantee that they can get an item, even if they elect to avoid any haggling that could reduce the price.

“eBay Express is for buyers who prefer a more conventional online shopping experience,” Bill Cobb, president of eBay North America, said in a statement.

He expects eBay Express to attract new buyers to eBay and prompt existing buyers to use eBay more often.

Making Buyers Feel Secure
To keep the site from running into the kinds of fraud complaints that eBay is accustomed to dealing with, the Express site is only open to sellers who have achieved a positive feedback score of 98 percent or more. They also need to have accumulated 100 points or more in feedback from buyers. All the merchants are based in the United States.

To make buyers feel even more secure, all their purchases are covered by a purchase protection system that allows them to recover the full purchase amount from sellers who do not deliver the items as promised.

The site includes a search engine designed to learn about users based on their previous selections in order to deliver more relevant search results. The site divides up the items for sale into different channels that run along the top of the page, such as apparel & accessories, books, computers & networking, consumer electronics, home & garden, and jewelry & watches.

The home page also includes different selections such as DVDs & movies, musical instruments, office supplies, sporting goods, stamps, tickets, and other categories.

Bolstering the Business

The acquisition of Tradera should help eBay bolster its traditional auction business, especially in the European market. Tradera includes many of the same categories that eBay already has.

Tradera offers more than 750,000 auction listings. According to the Internet Data Group, the company had over $7 million in revenue and employed 27 staff members last year.

“Given that eBay launched its own Swedish site only a year ago, we find this acquisition interesting given eBay has traditionally attacked European markets through organic expansion,” wrote Thomas Weisel Partners analyst Christa Sober Quarles in a research note.

She believes the acquisition signals a change in eBay’s strategy. That can also be said of eBay Express.

“While international markets are expected to buoy eBay’s growth in 2006, we believe eBay Express could be a more important catalyst for the stock later this year and beyond,” wrote Ms. Quarles.