Tips for sellers selling on eBay

[indraneel@ebay.com]

It has always been our endeavour to understand how buyers use different sort functions on eBay to search for the deals they are looking for.

What are buyers looking for?

Today’s consumers want choice, great deals, unique products, customization and specialization. Now this is not to say that we’re seeing the end of mass marketed, commodity products. It’s only to say that buyers are also hungry for something unique. They like new ideas, bundled offers, products and concepts. They like hard to find, obscure, up and coming brands. All this at great prices!

And the easiest way to find success as an eBay seller is to offer these kinds of products. Buyers in this segment are happy to search through 10 pages of results to find the product that is right for them. It pays off handsomely in terms of steady sales.

Specific & relevant selling

This means which listings are the most relevant to the buyer’s search. The more generic your product is, for example “silver hoop earrings”, the more likely those buyer search results are to return thousands of listings and pages and pages of search results.
And the harder you will have to compete (with all the other listings) to get your listing on those first pages of eBay's search results.

Importance of Keywords

In ecommerce, KEYWORDS play a vital role. Keywords, much more than browsing, are the way that the majority of people will find what YOU have to sell. Therefore, it is important, that no matter what you sell, you pay close attention to the keywords you use to describe the products you sell. Are they accurate? Are they relevant to your product? Are you using brand names, model numbers, colors, styles, descriptions, feature names, describing the functionality of the product?

Even if you STOCK the best products in the world, if you are using vague, non-descriptive keywords in your title and listing descriptions, shoppers will be hard pressed to find your products.

How shipping charges impact your visibility in search results?

With the increased competition in eCommerce, buyers have become much more sensitive to shipping costs on eBay. Expensive shipping is a reason some buyers leave eBay.

Hence eBay has made arrangements for listings that provide good shipping prices and offer the best opportunity to deliver great buyer satisfaction. Factors such as Relevance, Time Ending, Seller Performance, and Shipping & Handling decide where you are placed on the search results. The better you are on the above fronts the higher buyer visibility you gain through your listings placed on the first set of pages with search results. We recommend that you offer ‘Free Shipping’ which helps you increase your Shipping & handling DSR scores and thereby catch the first sight of the buyer.

Offer ‘Free Shipping’ to enjoy buyer’s preference

Free shipping deals play a major role in whether consumers buy in a store or online. 18% of respondents said they shop in stores so they won't have to pay for shipping and 33% said they have bought from web site instead of a store because the retailer offered free shipping. Three out of five online customers said the availability of free shipping greatly influenced their choice to shop at one e-retailer instead of another.

Avoiding shipping costs was the third most common response for why shoppers choose to buy in a store rather than on a retailer's website, behind the ability to receive the product immediately and being able to see or feel an item before purchase.

Moreover, consumers gave the retailers offering free shipping higher scores in every satisfaction category than those not offering it. The categories include: likelihood to purchase online, brand commitment, likelihood to return, likelihood to recommend and overall retailer satisfaction.

E-retailers are realizing that free shipping is a major selling point, the study shows. 68% of shoppers recall some kind of shipping offer – a percentage that has increased steadily over the last three years, 20% of holiday customers surveyed said they saw no free shipping offers over the holidays, while 12% did not remember.

Join this workshop to learn more about how buyers search for deals, variety and exclusive items on eBay.

See you on –
Wednesday, 11th February, 4 – 5 PM to learn more on selling on eBay.

Please feel free to ask any questions regarding 'Selling on eBay' on this thread.



Regards,
The eBay Team

[2908_s]

Does ebay help refering the courier peoples. In chennai i find difficult to find one who ships mobiles.

[solartroniksonline]

I agree with home and lights that Ebay is lenient to buyers and strict with sellers. I have a buyer on whose mobile number is wrong and as per ebay rules, the buyers accoutn will be disqualified, but inspite of repeated complaints to ebay the buyers account is still active and the telephone number is still in error and no action is bein taken on the buyer!!!

[kmchoksey]

Hello...

I am new at ebay and i am trying to sell my collection of coins and stamps can you please give me some tips for selling as I haven't got any response for the product which I was trying to sell

Regards
Payal

[indraneel@ebay.com]

Dear All,

Welcome to the Online Workshop - 'Tips for sellers selling on eBay'.

Before we start this online workshop, a piece of knowledge for Indian sellers selling on international sites. Some of the sellers might have noticed that there is a new default search filter on most of the other eBay international sites instead of ‘Time Ending soonest’ called as ‘Best Match’.

Let's know more on this so that we can have participation from sellers who sell both on domestic as well as international sites.

[indraneel@ebay.com]

What is ‘Best Match’?

Best Match is the site-wide default for search results on some eBay International sites. The Best Match feature gives buyers a way to organize search results so they can find items more quickly. One of most important elements in this calculation is the historical buyer behavior on the site for similar searches. This is known as ‘relevance’. Best Match considers factors such as Time Ending, Relevance, Seller Performance, and Shipping & Handling.

Therefore it becomes increasingly important for you to understand how and where your listings are being shown up in the search results while an item is being searched for.

[indraneel@ebay.com]

How ‘Best Match’ works?

Searches based on Relevance + Seller Performance + Shipping Charges = Best Match.

Relevance

Best Match sorts the listings you see based on a concept called "relevance." A particular listing's relevance is based, in part, on past successful buyer behavior for similar items.

In other words, if buyers running a particular search often end up viewing, bidding on, or buying a certain type of item more often, this will be factored into our relevance calculations. These types of items might then display higher on the page in subsequent searches.

Seller Performance

In addition to sorting based on relevance, Best Match will also sort based on sellers who provide great buying experiences and the small percentage of sellers that don't. Making greater use of Detailed Seller Ratings and sellers' overall rate of buyer dissatisfaction enables us to reward great sellers on the site with increased listing exposure, and reduce negative buying experiences from sellers with high rates of buyer dissatisfaction.

Shipping Charges

To reduce the negative impact of excessive Shipping & Handling on the buying experience, sellers with the lowest Detailed Seller Ratings for Shipping & Handling Charges will also see a decrease in the exposure that their listings receive in search results. Also listings with ‘Free Shipping’ get preference over those with Shipping Charges.

[indraneel@ebay.com]

To summarize, with Best Match as the new default for search and browse, buyers find the items they are looking for more quickly and easily. Adding Seller Performance and Excessive Shipping factors to Best Match increases the probability that they will have a positive experience during the transaction – combined, these two benefits of Best Match greatly improve the overall buying experience.

Remember, that only a very small percentage of sellers will experience a decrease in the exposure of their listings. The end result will be a benefit to the whole Community, including both our good sellers and our buyers.

[indraneel@ebay.com]

We hope that the information on Best Match would be of great help to the sellers selling internationally and would love to address the concerns/doubts that members should have in this regard.

We thank all the members who have posted on this thread and either me or my colleagues would respond to them.

[yash@ebay.com]

Hi Raja (Rajasah.7932),

Thank you for posting your concern and starting the discussion on this Online Workshop.

Yes, you can put the said product for sale on eBay as long as you ship across the downloadable version of your subscription on a CD to the buyer. This is in light of the policy update made on 16th April 2008, where we announced that “digitally delivered goods and items which are transferred electronically will no longer be permitted on eBay.”

Hence you will have to ensure that your listing mentions that it’ll be a CD that will contain this subscription which will be shipped across to the buyer. Also since this subscription is unused as yet (as claimed by you) then you can list it as a ‘New’ item. Also if that subscription has an expiry date or a start date then you should also mention the same clearly in your listing.

I hope I was able to address to your concerns. Regards

Yash

[indraneel@ebay.com]

Hi Joge (Shivamemory),

Trust you to come up with such witty responses!! 😉

You might try the above to attract buyers if at all this becomes a part of their search filters while looking for the products and deals they have in mind which I’m sure will not be. Even if I assume that you’d use ‘Gallery plus’ to display a larger picture of the gallery Picture, you can attract only those buyers by this who keeps on browsing pages after pages of search results but the smart ones just do an advanced search.

Moreover, I feel including such a picture in the search results in ‘List View’ is a challenge.. Isn’t it?? 🙂


Keep posting!!


Regards,
Indraneel