Frooition provides bespoke, custom branding for
eBay businesses. CEO Phillip Molloy shares his advice on how to get
the most out of eBay.
1. A picture is worth 1000 words
Check that your product images are up to scratch. It's too easy
to delete an image from your webhosting, and a missing image will
probably mean a product that doesn't sell. Check both your website
and eBay listings and make sure that all items have pictures. If
you have any old or blurred images, take the time to take new
product shots.
2. eBay gallery pictures
On eBay, your gallery picture is often the first thing that
catches a buyer's eye, even before they read your listing title or
subtitle. Crop any picture to a square - that way it'll display at
the maximum 80 x 80 pixels in List View and 96 x 96 pixels in
Picture Gallery view. Square pictures will appear bigger to
potential buyers whilst rectangular pictures will have wasted white
space. Consider adding a border, logo, or short message such as 'UK
Seller' to your gallery pictures for even more impact. If you don't
have your own image editing tool, try this one -
it's free.
3. Price competitiveness
eBay is becoming increasingly sensitive to prices. If you want
to be at the top, Best Match price is one of the key factors in how
highly placed your listing will be. It's all too easy to list a
long-duration eBay or website listing, and forget that the market
value of items generally declines over time. Make sure that your
competition isn't undercutting you. There are plenty of tools
available that are great for researching product prices based upon
recent sales on eBay.
4. Review your product titles
eBay allow 55 characters for your product title, so make use of
them all. Include key information such as the brand, models and
specifications.
eBay now use search impressions as part of Best Match. But don't
keyword spam (use keywords in your title that aren't relevant to
the product). You may initially get more people seeing your item in
search results, but if they don't buy it eBay will show your item
less and less often.
5. Branding
Make sure you have consistent branding across your ecommerce
business. A great logo for your brand is a good place to start, and
can be included in your eBay shop, eBay emails to customers, all of
your eBay listings and of course on your own website. Use
consistent colours across all your listings, website and
communications to customers.
Although your brand might not be as recognisable as IBM or
CocaCola, once a buyer has seen one of your product listings they
should be able to recognise your other items. If someone has had a
good buying experience with you in the past, your branding should
welcome them back and remind them that you are a great business to
buy from.
6. Cross merchandising
Once you have a buyer viewing your item make sure they know what
else you have for sale. Highlight best sellers, make sure you have
links to your key product categories so that buyers can browse for
similar products. Let buyers know you stock similar products, other
sizes and styles and highlight key brands that you sell.
Also don't forget to cross sell complimentary products and
accessories. Shops like Argos (Would you like batteries for that
toy?) and McDonalds (Would you like fries with your burger?) are
experts at increasing their average sale price. If you can increase
your average sale by just £1, it'll make a huge difference to your
profits over the course of the year.
7. Consider video
Pictures are great, but there are some products that, no matter
how good your images are, a video can really bring to life. Buyers
have to make a decision to buy based on the information in your
listing - if they can see the item working, whether it be a remote
control toy or a food processor it gives extra reassurance that
it's the product for them.
Video has a second benefit over and above confirming product
information. The longer a buyer spends looking at your listing the
more likely they are to buy it. If you can engage buyers and hold
their attention you're half way to getting the sale, and as soon as
they click to play a video you'll hold their attention.
Videos don't need to be long, some are as short as 10 to 15 seconds
and ideally most product videos should be no longer than 30 to 60
seconds.
Find out more about Frooition