Topic: "5 Strategies to Increase the Visibility of Your eBay Listings" Host: As Was Date: Feb 10th (Wed) Time: 11AM PST Location: eBay Workshop Board
Description: In this workshop, Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was, will outline what you can do to maximize the visibility of your eBay listings. Learn more about Best Match and how you can create more effective listing strategies to save on fees and show up higher in search results.
Founded in 1995, As Was is a full-service consulting firm specializing in branding, design, sales and marketing strategies, operations management, and training. As Was is an eBay Certified Service Provider and has been working with eBay sellers since 2001.
Visit http://certifiedprovider.ebay.com/ to learn more about eBay Certified Providers and the services and solutions they offer to help eBay sellers.
I'm Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was, eBay's first Certified Service Provider. We specialize in helping eBay sellers start and grow their businesses through marketing, design, and strategy services such as custom and unique listing templates and eBay Stores, personalized listing strategies, training and instruction, and design of printed marketing materials.
Today, we have an all-new workshop about five strategies that will help your items show up better in Best Match search results. It's all about strategy. You can't just throw stuff on eBay and hope it sells. Serious sellers have to really think about these things!
The higher your item shows up in search results, the more likely you are to make those sales! In fact, at eBay's Developer Conference in 2009, eBay staffers giving a seminar on Best Match said that most sales are made from the first page of search results. So if you are not on the first page, you are unlikely to make the sale.
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
Once upon a time, a seller with great feedback who met some other criteria got a PowerSeller logo. That was nice, but it didn't mean as much as it could mean!
Now, eBay rewards you for getting high ratings from buyers. DSRs play very heavily into where you show up in Best Match. Check your Seller Dashboard to see if your search status is Raised, Standard, or Lowered. Also make sure that you know eBay rules, and are completely compliant. Sellers who have items taken down or get suspensions might see that affect their search placement for up to six months.
So tip #1 is to keep your ratings high... as close to perfect 5.0 averages as possible. This will help your items be found in search. If you look like a seller that is making buyers unhappy, eBay may lower your items in search results. eBay wants to highlight sellers who make buyers happy, so make sure that's you!
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
Most sales on eBay are made from people searching for what they know they want. Many of those searches are looking for words and phrases inside of item titles. Therefore, the best way to show up in search results is to get great words into your titles!
Remember that many items have a variety of relevant words. For example, is it a purse, handbag, pocketbook, or clutch? Someone might use any of those words, so you should pack in as many as are relevant to the item. Is it a cell phone case, holster, or pouch? Think like your shopper, and use the words that he or she is likely to use.
However, you should know that eBay has rules against using brand names that your item isn't, or saying something is "like" something. So if you think people who like Gucci will like your item, you CANNOT say (in your title) things like "like Gucci," "Gucci-style," or anything mentioning a brand name unless your item IS that brand name. You also can't say something is "like new." Either it's new or it's not!
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
Some people think that item specifics are just optional, extra info that you don't really have to fill out. They've always been important! As people use the left side of the search results page to narrow things down, they are going through eBay categories and item specifics. So you want to categorise your item correctly so that eBay knows to show your item.
But now, item specifics are being worked into search in a new way. Some info in item specifics is being treated like it's a keyword in your title. For example, you can now leave "new" out of your title, mark it "new" in item condition, and it'll come up if someone searches for "new." I imagine this will only be expanded, so fill out item specifics to increase your chances of being found in search!
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
Strategy Tip 4: Auction or Fixed Price? eBay made a number of changes last year to how Best Match shows items. You may already know that Best Match is taking things like DSRs into consideration when ordering your items among search results. However, choosing auction or fixed price can matter also!
Currently, the strategy goes like this:
If you have multiple, identical quantity in an item, it's best to use the Good 'Til Cancelled Fixed Price format, aka FP GTC. Our clients (with great DSRs) noticed that using FP GTC with a multiple quantity made their items move up in search results.
If you have only one of an item, or the item has a value that might vary because it's popular or rare, then an auction is the way to go. If you have only one, and you know your shopper prefers the fixed price format, just run it as an auction with a Buy It Now.
These are the strategies eBay is suggesting, and they are fine tuning how Best Match shows things to reflect what they're suggesting. That means these aren't just suggestions. These are the ways to show up high in search!
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
Strategy Tip 5: Multiple Quantity Listings Want to see that fixed price item rise up even higher in search results and get more visibility? eBay's "Recent Sales" aspect of Best Match means that as your item sells some of its quantity, it will be pushed even higher in search. Why? eBay's idea is that if somebody wanted this, others will want this too, so let's give it more attention.
The mantra is "the better it gets, the better it gets." Keeping the momentum of your Recent Sales is really important. The best way to do this is to keep the item running (Good 'Til Cancelled) and only revise it to add more quantity. If you revise certain aspects of it, eBay might think it's a new item, and eBay may reset your Recent Sales.
One "unknown" is that eBay is taking into consideration how many times your item shows up in search results to make a sale. They call this "impressions." eBay wants to push up the items that don't have to show up much to make sales... compared to items that show up a lot and get seen by shoppers, but are not bought. So once you have adjusted your strategy so that you're showing up better, the next thing to fix is your listing! We need the listing to make the sale... otherwise, hey you didn't make the sale! But also, eBay may see you getting impressions with no sale, and that can affect your placement in search.
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
A note from our Legal Department: The statements and opinions made in this discussion board are those of the workshop host only and do not reflect eBay policy or eBay's opinion with respect to such statements.
Welcome and thanks for joining us today! The workshop is open!
To attend the workshop, you just need to be logged into eBay.com with your eBay User ID. Once you are logged in and are reading this message, you can post questions directly to eBay Staff and our host, As Was.
Take advantage of this great opportunity to ask the As Was team how you can increase your eBay listings visibility and reach more buyers.
Workshops are interactive, so please feel free to ask your questions that directly relate to this topic. We will answer all questions!
I understand that the higher my DSR's are, the better placement I will have. However, I find that some buyers do not leave feedback nor do they understand or care about the importance of the DSR's. Any suggestions for educating the buyer's the importance of DSR's to us sellers?
Although I've done only 150+ auctions since 1999, I attribute my buyers' satisfaction to a thorough and honest description. It is smart not to leave room for guesswork for the buyers. I have watched many auctions end without a sale and yet they had good market potential. I think this happens because the seller failed to point out features, benefits, conditions, dimensions and a propose way to get the item transported. The other cause of failure is that sellers won't start their sale at $.99 and put a Reserve on the item. In a buyer's market such as what we face this decade, a low price catches buyer attention.
twobadcats: It's a hard thing to do. eBay now has rules against bugging buyers about leaving feedback or ratings. We suggest a friendly postcard or flyer in the box, but do NOT say anything that makes it sound like if they leave anything but perfect ratings, they are ruining your life. No emotional blackmail!
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
infosystems: Pretty much always better to do one listing, Fixed Price, Good Til Cancelled, with the multiple quantity in the ONE listing. Having more listings doesn't help you in search like it did years ago. It's better to have ONE listing with lots of available quantity, and work your way up in search by selling from that listing.
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
With "item specifics", you don't have to spend time engineering words in the title. I can use "Raybestos Brakes" in the title and the REAL relevant content in item specifics will do all the work for me. If they search Raybestos Silverado keywords, my listings pop up!
First thank you for the above strategies. My question pertains to GTC vs 30 days. Is it better for the Best Match qualifications to list at GTC vs 30 Days if no edits other than qty is done? And if edits other than quantities are done does this effect both the GTC & 30 day listings in the placement?
It has been my mission to offer the best customer service I can. I answer emails asap, I have spelled out in my listings and on a separate store page my policies, my shipping costs, and how long it takes to send out the buyers purchase. They also receive an email with the shipping confirmation not to mention the email from USPS with tracking information.
When you don't know what the best search words are would it be good to list with certain words and then re-list with others to do a comparison? How do you do testing to see what is best?
mrmagoo: As far as I know, GTC and 30-day are given the same attention in Best Match. The main issue is to you. If you do 30-day, then after 30 days, you have to go renew it. Some people relist incorrectly, and lose their Recent Sales bump.
So I do like GTC. You can let it run, and end it if you need to.
Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®. Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.
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