Creating Business strategy to accommodate price changes (23 Mar 4-5 PM)

[sapana@ebay.com]

Dear Sellers,
As you might be aware, we made certain price changes in all categories on eBay India.
http://forums.ebay.in/thread.jspa?threadID=600001679

We are aware that you might need to make changes in your business strategy to accommodate these changes. In case you need our help and wish to discuss the same with us, we will be present on this thread on 23rd March (4-5 PM).

Please join us for this discussion.

Regards,
Sapana

[basumatari@ebay.com]

Some key metrics that can help you in understanding your business better?

Total Sales: Total sales are a fundamental indicator of the health of your business, as it is the aggregate measure of performance over a given period of time.

Average Selling Price (ASP): The Average Selling Price (ASP) of all the items you sell is also a critical metric. To calculate your ASP, divide your total sales by total items sold.

Success Rate: Success rate is the total number of items you've sold divided by the total number of items you've listed. A full understanding of success rates by format (Auction vs. BIN), product, and price allows you to offer the right product at the right price. This further ensures that you get the best possible sales volume and profit margins.
With warm regards
D.J. Basumatari
Category Team

[basumatari@ebay.com]

What should my listing strategy be in a listing fee world?

Remember, in a listing fee scenario, sellers are likely to list products that they thing has a reasonable surety to sell. This will reduce the number of listings available to buyers and they will have a great buying experience and which is likely to lead to a positive impact on business in terms of increased sale.

However, as you would have to pay a fee to list an item, it is important for you to continuously evaluate your listings to improve the ROI on the listing fees that you are paying.

The following is an outline of the kind of analysis you could do to arrive at a listing strategy which maximizes the return on your investment on listing fees.


Based on the success rate of your listings, you could classify them into various groups

• Group A – the listings which have a very high success rate
  
• Group B - the listings which are moderate success rate
  
• Group C – the listings which have a very low success rate
  
• Group D - the listings which never sell after an extended duration
  

The Group A listings are the ones which you could leverage to drive traffic to other listings by leveraging feature fees. The Group D listings are the ones which you should stop listing. But before doing so, you could try to research the reasons for them not selling. You coul also try to research why B and C are not as successful as Group A listings.
Therefore one possible strategy could be

• List Group A items in the core site. Take feature fees in them to drive traffic to all your other listings
  
• For the B,C and D groups, if you have been able to identify the reasons for poor success rates, list them in the core site
  
• For those items which are slow moving due to variety requirements, or the nature of demand, list them in your shops. Drive traffic to these items from your core site listings
  
• Divest of all the Group D listings in which you are not able to offer a significant offer to your buyers
  

You could arrive at many other listing strategies. The important thing is to continuously analyze your listings and factor in your learnings into your listing strategy.
With warm regards
D.J. Basumatari
Category Team

[basumatari@ebay.com]

Currently I list a lot of items. How should I select which items to list in a listing fee scenario?

1. Evaluate all your listings that have sold once in the past 3 months. Since users have shown interest in these listings, you may want to ensure that these listings are always available to your visitors and buyers..
2. Identify listings that did not sell and explore the possible reasons for the same. Based on our learnings, listings with following characteristics have greater chance of selling:

• The price on the listing is competitive.
  
• Listing has a Gallery image (a thumbnail image on the search / browse page) that makes it more attractive for potential buyers..
  
• Detailed and accurate descriptions help potential buyers make quick decisions on the product.
  
• Buyers have also told us that they appreciate listing descriptions that have more on product and less on seller’s policy.
  

3. Identify the listings that you think have the potential to sell. If there are listings that you think can sell well, you may wish to promote it by various modes on eBay. It is also helpful to keep a tab on the promotions being run on eBay’s Home page, and have your listings featured in those promotions. Following are the list of buyer homepages that are available on eBay:
http://www.ebay.in/?site=203&segment=ActiveBuyer&rotation=1
http://www.ebay.in/?site=203&segment=FrequentVisitor&rotation=1
With warm regards
D.J. Basumatari
Category Team

[basumatari@ebay.com]

Why could some of my listings have poor success rates?

Understanding the reasons for poor success rates can help you in improving the success rate of that listing. Some factors you could look into

• Demand for your product: Understand the demand by using eBay Pulse, Market Place Research, completed listings, offline demand patterns
  
• Pricing of your product: You could research this by looking at completed listings, using Market Place Research tool and also by doing offline research
  
• Great description and images: As you would know by now, these act as your salesman in the online world. So it is necessary to do this well.
  
• Shipping and Payment options: Offer as many services as possible so that customers have the flexibility to choose what they like. But remember to factor in your business imperatives. Example the cost of servicing a product to a very remote location might outweigh all the advantages of that order.
  
• Are you getting enough visitors in your listings? Offering a great product, with all of the above is only the beginning. If there are not enough visitors coming in to see your listings, than it’s success rate will always be very poor. You should monitor the visits counters in your listings to understand traffic
  

With warm regards
D.J. Basumatari
Category Team

[basumatari@ebay.com]

What can I do to increase the no of visitors in your listings?
Getting more visitors is one of the key to more sales. In an offline world, if no one is walking into your shop, than you will never sell anything. You would than have taken some steps to increase the no of walk ins which could have been things like putting up a glow sign, distributing brochures/flyers in your locality, putting up advertisements in newspapers and so on.

eBay works at increasing the overall no of visitors to the site. Once they are in the site, it is up to you channelize and increase the stickiness of those visitors for your own listings.

The following are some techniques which many successful sellers use to drive traffic to their listings:

• Use relevant and descriptive keywords in your listing title so that it features when a buyer is searching for that kind of an item, your item should also feature
  
• Use feature fees to highlight and drive traffic to your listings
  
• Use cross promotions to drive traffic across listings
  
• Build a shop where you can showcase more inventory to your buyers
  
• Use the shop header in your listings to increase stickiness
  
• Use shop custom categories in your listings. This has the advantage of increasing stickiness as well as natural search benefits in your shop
  
• Drive traffic to your shop by leveraging natural search in prominent search engines like Google. Visit the workshop on natural search to know how you can leverage this http://forums.ebay.in/thread.jspa?threadID=500001505
  
• Leverage relevant site promotions
  With warm regards
  D.J. Basumatari
  Category Team

[basumatari@ebay.com]

I sell in a category which requires a lot of variety. Example: Apparel & Jewelry. How do I manage my listings?

You can leverage your eBay shops to showcase more variety to your buyers. List your most selling product lines in the core site from where you can divert traffic to your shop listings in case the buyer wants variety.

An example:
Consider a men’s shirt which you believe has all that can make it a good selling product. Now this shirt comes in many sizes S, M, L, XXL and so on. From your past experience you would know, for example, that “Size L” is the most selling of all the sizes. You can accordingly plan your listings – list “Size L” in the core site and the other sizes in your shop. Drive traffic to the “Size L” listing. In case the buyer want another size, you can lead him to your shop listings from the “Size L” listings.
With warm regards
D.J. Basumatari
Category Team

[kritaant]

I am happy about it but kindly pay attentions to the following:

As u all r including listing fees from april ,it is all right .Seeing one way 1-5 rs is not much ,it will increase our sale etc etc but one thing i would like to say that you all are being so strict day by day for the sllers and you are doing nothing for the buyers. They just bid on the items but never pay for it . we have to waist say around 15-20 days after one item right from listing it till UPI is not filed.
So pls show your concern towards the seller buy improving the buyer network or do be strict with the buyers also.
Because ultimately everything depends on the buyer , once the buyer pays for the item and we complete the transaction smoothly why will we be not paying to ebay,rather we would be happy to pay.

Cheers!
Vandana (Kritant's Team)

[basumatari@ebay.com]

Dear meenamanish,

We have forwarded your request to the concerned team. They will get back to you and take you through the selling process on eBay. We wish you great success in selling on eBay.
With warm regards
D.J. Basumatari
Category Team

[basumatari@ebay.com]

Dear mysalesoffer,
We have taken some pro-active steps to tackle fraud buyers in the last few weeks. We believe that those should reduce the incidence of fraud buyers to some extent. We will wait and track results.
At the same time, we would also request you to take full advantage of buyer requirements, specially for your higher value items to reduce the incidence of fraud buyers

Also leverage the eBay shops to list items which are slow moving. This will not clutter the core site as well as provide options to buyers who are seeking variety.
With warm regards
D.J. Basumatari
Category Team

[basumatari@ebay.com]

Dear rammionline,
I was just going through your listings on the eBay site and saw that you weren’t using gallery image. As you would know, gallery image plays a very key role in arousing the interest of a buyer and which makes him want to know more details of the listing. Also, in the current scenario, when there are too many listings of the same items, a buyer is likely to be turned off with the search results. Therefore, all the variety that sellers are listing is actually invisible to the visitor and many potential buyers drop off from buying on eBay.
I would like to pick an example from your listing. The following are a couple of listings which are live on your id
Polo Inc Classic Watch (1064)
Polo Inc Classic Watch (1074)
Polo Inc Classic Watch (1267)
Polo Inc Classic Watch (1376)
Polo Inc Classic Watch (1433)
Polo Inc Classic Watch (1437)
Polo Inc Classic Watch (1460)
Polo Inc Classic Watch (1544)
Polo Inc Classic Watch (1561)
Polo Inc Elegant Watch (1682)
Polo Inc Elegant Watch (1718)
Polo Inc Elegant Watch (1728)
Polo Inc Elegant Watch (1757)
Polo Inc Elegant Watch (1762)
Polo Inc Triple Time Watch (1764)

Now if you don’t have a gallery image, a buyer is unlikely to be able to differentiate between any of these watches and he faces a bad experience. Now gallery is free and it helps you.
The next question you might raise is that if you list all these designs, it is a huge cost for you. But you would know that of all these designs, one of them is the best selling. Just an example, say Polo Inc Elegant Watch (1682) is the best selling. You can list this item in the core site, and the other Polo watches in your shop. You can than lead the buyer to the shop listing from your core listing using any of the strategy I had mentioned in one of my earlier posts.

Incidentally, eBay India gets 2.5million unique visitors in a month, which is HUGE. The potential for sales is huge, and we believe a site full of quality listings helps us in converting more of these visitors to buyers.
With warm regards
D.J. Basumatari
Category Team