Optimise your eBay Shop - Online Workshop

[sapana@ebay.com]

Hello All,

Shops, a new way to sell, have been introduced on the eBay India site. Shops are the best way to help dedicated sellers maximise their online business. Sellers with an eBay Shop get powerful and easy-to-use tools that enable them to develop their own brand and encourage buyers to buy more.

eBay staff will be conducting an Online Workshop to help you understand how best you can optimise your eBay shop. The workshop is scheduled between, 3 PM to 4 PM, on 15th April, i.e., Friday

See you on 15th at 3!

Warm Regards
Sapana
Community Development Team

[harryfashion_in1]

Hi Sapna,

The best thing I love about Ebay are the "Stores" format.

It's definetly a piece of technical userfriendly wonder which let's us customize our category, style and display our products in a very neat way.

I'll try my best to be online during this workshop to learn more about promoting and utilizing shops at it's best.

Rgds

Haresh

[indianstyles]

Agreed this the best thing happened ...
now we have our own homepage and this the best way to promote our listing and quite affordable
rest i would like to know about selling tools and cross promotions which is still ABC ...to me
rest every thing is fine PaisaPay is still not working for me international buyer are still waiting to pay ...
regards
SHALINI VOHRA
Nesco enterprises

[sapana@ebay.com]

Hello Everybody,

A very warm welcome and thanks for joining us in this online workshop.

The purpose of this workshop is to understand the new way of selling on eBay - eBay shops. We will like to discuss How you can optimise your shops better and gear it for better returns.

Today we have John Anderson from category team and Rajesh Iyer and Tanya Goel from Seller Marketing team to answer your queries and doubts.

Please feel free to shoot all your questions and make the most of this time.

Before we get started, I should also clarify a few things - Please keep in mind that we are expecting lot of questions today, so we will request you to please be patient with us when we're giving answers. If we do run out of time today, then please post your questions here and we can try and find an answer for you later or you may even be able to find your answer from another member!

Also, because of the public nature of the boards, we'll be unable to answer any questions regarding your personal account, or personal situations. If you require our assistance with a particular issue, you may contact Customer Support at service@baazee.com

This workshop will be archived and kept here so that if anybody has any query in future,they can refer to this workshop.

Ok, John, Rajesh and Tanya are with us now, so I will let them take over. Lets start with the questions.

Regards
Sapana
Baazee Community Development

[Anonymous]

Hi All..

I am Rajesh from Ebay.in - Seller Marketing Team. I would like to start this workshop by asking you all a very simple question - What is an ebay shop? and How many different types of shops are there?. Parallely if you have any questions on shops please do let us know

Thanks
Rajesh

[Anonymous]

Driving Traffic to your eBay Store

Lets look at How to Make your Ebay Shop Successful? :

A store will only be as successful as the Store Owner makes it. It is up to each and every store owner to take responsibility for their success and develop creative and successful ways to drive traffic in.

1. In order to effectivley drive traffic to your Store you must know who your target market is.

2. I'm sure you have all heard the phrase "If you build it, they will come". With more number of shops on the site it is very easy to get lost and so its important to realize that YOU must drive traffic to your Store and YOU must set yourself apart from the rest.

3. When building an eBay Store it is important to keep in mind the "shopping experience of your prospective buyers". Customers need simple navigation, a sense of security, great customer service and a comfortable, familiar, delightful shopping experience. The basic eBay Store now has five customizable pages. Use those pages to their full advantage to create a memorable shopping experience.

Warm Regards

Rajesh

[sapana@ebay.com]

Greetings all -

Let's start with a quick concept of why shops can be so important and how they show up on eBay...

First, Shops are a great way to aggregate all your lisitngs in one place - whatever the format. Shops essentially create a hub for your buyers to search for just your items.

Second, shops listings (different from normal auction, fixed price listings) persist on the site for much longer than normal listings - this means its easier to create and maintain many many listings on the site.

The important thing to remember, though, is that shops inventory format listings do NOT normally show up in normal searches on the eBay.in site.

There is one VERY important exception to this, which is when there are under 10 items showing up in a certain search.

[sapana@ebay.com]

Here's an example...

if a buyer searches for Book, for example - you will not see any shop listings in the normal search result. THis is because there are more than 10 normal listings.

BUT,

If a buyer searches for a specific book, which may have very few listings on the normal site, but does have items in shop format, the buyer WILL see these shop inventory items...

Here's an example
http://search.ebay.in/Success-vs-Joy_W0QQbsZSearchQQcatrefZC6QQfposZPincodeQQfromZR10QQfsooZ1QQfsopZ1QQftrtZ1QQftrvZ1QQga10244Z10425QQsacatZQ2d1QQsadisZ200QQsbrftogZ1QQsofocusZbsQQsojsZ1

[sapana@ebay.com]

Here are some tips on driving traffic to your store:

Traditional Methods to drive traffic to your store:

1.Include your Store URL in any and all printed material (business cards, invoices, Thank-You notes etc…). Remember to use the Store Referral Code.

2. Be sure to include your Store URL in any and all email correspondence with customers, potential customers, family, friends etc…) Once again, be sure to use the Store Referral Code.

3. Word of Mouth Advertising. Be sure to talk about your business with anyone and everyone. Leave business cards with family and friends to pass out.

4. Cross Promotions - Cross Promotions are an ideal way to create "serendipitous shopping". Cross Promotions appear when:

A) A buyer bids on your item
B) A buyer wins your item
C) When a buyer views your auction listing (Store Owners Only)

Each Store Owner has three opportunities to use Cross Promotions to their advantage. It is the perfect way to promote matching items, add-on items, or additional items of the same nature.

Learn how to properly set Cross Promotions here:

Cross-Promoting Your Items: http://pages.ebay.in/help/sell/cp-overview.html
Cross-Promotion Strategies: http://pages.ebay.in/help/sell/cp-strategies.html

5. Promotional Items - Considering adding "promotional items" to your packages. They can be magnets, pens, key chains, pencils, lanyards & more. All of them were personalized with the Sellers logo and Store URL. Sometimes it is these extra little touches of appreciation that will draw the customer back into your Store.

6. Future Purchase Discounts - It is important to give your customers every opportunity to return to your Store or recommend your Store to others and discounts on Future purchase is a great way to do the same.

[sapana@ebay.com]

Creative Methods:


7. Build a Community through the use of an opt-in Newsletter - When Shop Owners think of "driving traffic" into their shop, they most often think of brand new buyers. While gathering brand new buyers is extremely important, the success of your store will depend on your ability to gather and *maintain* those customers. Repeat Customers are the bread and butter of any business, eBay Shops included.

Besides having an easily shopable store with competitive prices, create a "community" for your loyal customers. Send out a monthly newsletter, alerting them to special sales, upcoming items in your store, sneak peeks, and informative information about your products. For example, If you sell children’s clothing, write an article about upcoming fashion styles, what’s hot and what’s not. Make your newsletter a place to sell your eBay Store, but also a place to inform your customers. Give them a reason to keep coming back to YOUR store and not your competitors.

8. Optimize your store for search engines - Search Engine Optimization is an interesting subject as Google, along with other Search Engines now crawl and index eBay Shops. Here are some tips to optimize your shop:

a) Choose a Store Name carefully and try to include keywords of the products you sell.

b) Include keywords that describe the contents of your Store in your Store description. You could include some of the names of your Custom Categories.

c) Choose names for your Custom Categories that include product keywords that you expect buyers to search for.

The following link is a good read to Optimize your eBay Shop for Search Engines & Comparison Shopping Sites
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?forumID=21&threadID=410200930

9. Run Promotions & Contests - A smart business owner will go out of their way to make their customers feel special, rewarded, and involved.

10. Store Owners BE SEASONAL! - It is good idea to keep on loading new type of products that match with the season.