Will HammerTap Ever Go Web Based?

If you plan to use eBay to sell items for your home based business, you'll need to research products to sell. Even if you have a good idea what you want to sell on eBay, you would still benefit from researching trends such as the best keywords and the best titles to use. That's where a good eBay research tool like HammerTap comes in.

Tools like this let you put in a keyword or a product and analyze it. You can analyze it for any number of data variables such as sales performance, number of lists, timing of listing, associated keywords, listing success and so on. Tools like these are indispensable for anyone doing serious selling on eBay because it's too time consuming to do this kind of analysis manually.

Over 3 years ago I wrote eBay Research: Terapeak versus HammerTap. In it, I noted that HammerTap, unlike its main competitor was PC 'client' Based and not web based. Since that time, this has not completely changed. HammerTap is still a PC based product. However when you purchase it, you gain access to a simplified web based version called "PowerWeb".

That led me to wonder why they don't go completely web based? I sent that question over a week ago and haven't got a response yet so I'll take a stab a it. It could be that some number crunching simply performs better when software is installed locally. And HammerTap does need to handle huge amounts of eBay data so a local application might return results faster. It may also be able to handle more complex analysis than a web based application can handle.

Whatever the reason, HammerTap's main product is still a PC Client based product. However, they have added a web based component to handle simpler research jobs. So depending on your needs, HammerTap could let you 'have it both ways' for your eBay research.