Hello, I am Devesh Tanna from VeeDeeDirect. I have been selling online for a long time and have a retail and whole sale business experience of over 15 years. I have been invited by eBay to share my experiences about the Mark Down Manager with the community.
eBay recently introduced a great tool for shop sellers called the Mark Down Manager. I have been using it effectively for the past month and a half to grow my sales on eBay.
The tool allows you to:
“Provide a temporary discount across specific listings, categories or all Fixed Priced and Shop Inventory listings and market the new 'sale' price to buyers.
Sales help add excitement around Fixed Price listings and create an exciting experience for buyers who purchase an item that's "on sale".
The Markdown Manager "Sale" treatment includes:
• Original price shown as cancelled out
• % off icon
• Sale end date (when less than 7 days exist for the sale to end)”
To know more about the Markdown manager, and set up discounts on your listings, Click Here.
My experience with the tool has been nothing short of exceptional. When I first mark downed one of my product, I got double the number of buy orders than I was getting in the previous listings. More important was the fulfillment was 3 times higher than average. My average fulfillment is about 20%-30%, but for this listing it was 80%.
I generally use the markdown manager on my fast moving products. I list most of the product with varying discount between 5% and 25%. I have got the most response from 10% discount. The tool allows you to offer discounts up to 75% or a flat amount as discount. Sellers can experiment with higher or lower discounts and than decide what suits their business model best.
The next question is to offer discounts on which products and when to offer discounts. Offline there are various business formats such as discount stores where all products are marked down all the time. Than there are those department and lifestyle stores which offer end of season sales. Some stores like home furnishing have a curious practice of offering discounts during peak season. Some stores need to clear huge inventories of slow moving products and offer stock clearance sales. Hence a seller needs to define his business model, and than focus on which products he wants to offer discounts on. He may choose to offer a flat rate on all his products or mark some products for discounts while continuing to sell other products without discounts. He may choose to have a sale whole year round or may define specific periods of sale which suits his business model the best.
The important point to note is that having a Sale is not enough to generate sales. You have to let the world (your potential customers) know that a sale is on. You need to advertise your sale to make it effective. The different ways of advertising you sale is:
1) Using shop mailers to your regular customers.
2) Promoting your items using enhanced listings such as home page, featured plus, etc.
3) Cross promoting your items. I have seen a seller doing this very effectively even when the Mark down manager was not available. He has two products which he focuses on every week. He has two templates which he puts on top and bottom of all his regular listing announcing the mark down on the particular product calling it “Deal of the Week” I have seen him generating huge sales through this method.
There are points which have to be kept in mind to save your Mark Down from being a huge failure.
1) The products which are marked down should look genuine to your customer. Do a completed items search and see that other sellers are not offering a better price than you. It would hurt your image if you are selling your product at Rs.800/- after a 20% markdown and buyer finds another seller selling the same at Rs.750/- without any markdown.
2) You need to decide which products to offer a markdown on and not offer it on all your products unless you want to project yourself as a discount store which in fact is not such a bad idea.
3) The quantum of discount should be par with the market. So if your industry works on a mark down of say 10% and you start offering 50%, buyer will think there is something fishy. If it is the reverse case, than the sale may not be effective.
4) Arrange to carry minimum amount of stocks of the markdown products. It does not make sense to generate orders and tell you customers that there is no stock. This may result in huge dispute and negative ratings.
This is a basic insight in the Markdown Manager. Now I will questions from the community.
Warm Regards,
Devesh