Friday 10 August 2012

Top tips to make more money for your eBay store

For all eBay store owners the aim of the game is to try and make as many sales as you possibly can. We are eSellution are constantly looking at ways to help you increase the number of sales your eBay store can achieve no matter how long your store has been active for. 

If you are just setting up your own eBay store for the first time, these tips will ensure that you get off to the right start, maximising the potential sales your store can achieve. 

Earlier this week we looked at the foundations you should cover when setting up your eBay store: Build Your Business on Olympic Foundations. Rather than focussing on how to research and prepare your store for success, today we are going to look at some of the ways you can help improve your store when listing your various products for sale. 

Correct title - When selling a product, what you don't want to do is include a number of descriptive words such as 'great', 'awesome', superb, etc. Your product title needs to only contain words that you know your customers will be searching for. If you customer is trying to find denim jeans for example, they are not going to type 'great denim jeans' into the search bar. Keep your titles simple and only include the most important information that customers are actually going to search for.

Lots and lots of pictures - The more pictures you have of an item, the more chance you are going to have of selling it. Allowing your customers to see the product they could potentially buy from a number of different angles is going to reassure them that they can trust your eBay store and that the products you sell are reliable and of a good quality.

Sell as many brands as you can - Like having lots of pictures, selling items that are household brands is going to make your products seem much more reliable. In addition to this, it will greatly help your search relevance as many customers may be looking for a specific item brand. Although selling items that have no major brand label is going to cost you much less from your supplier, having a brand label will most likely be more popular with visiting customers, resulting in more sales. 

Constantly re-evaluate your products - Constantly monitor the sales levels of each of your products to see how well they are performing. Even if a product was incredibly popular for you in the past, if you find that the sales levels are now dropping off, you may need to think about removing that items entirely from your stock.

Host your own pictures - Hosting your images ensures that you avoid the eBay's image hosting fees. However, you can also purchase some ecommerce shopping cart software that will not only drastically improve the the efficiency and sales of your online store, it will also allow you to place as many images as you like on your eBay store at no extra cost. 

Keep it true - When providing information to your customers about each of the products your online store sells, make sure that the information that you add is accurate and truthful. Although you may think including information that stretches the truth is going to allow you to get a few quick sales, it will seriously damage the long term credibility of your store. If you lie about your products and they don't live up to what the customers expect based on your information you provided, they are going to no longer trust your store. This will mean that your eBay store will gain a bad reputation quickly and your sales figures will dramatically decline. 

Choose the right categories for your products - When listing your products, having your products in the correct categories is going to play a big part in whether your product gets found by customers. When a customer carries out a search for a product, they tend to filter their search results to the specific category of item they want. If you have your item placed in an incorrect category, it is going to result in customers not even coming across the product as it won't even appear in their search results. 

Detailed descriptions - While the title of your products needs to be short and concise, the description you provide for each product needs to give the customer as much information as you possibly can. Like having numerous images, the more detailed the description, the more of an informed decision customers can make. If you can provide your customers with plenty of information about the product, it builds up these all important levels of trust and makes them more likely to them purchase the product. 

However, while plenty of information is important, you need to make sure that the length of the description is not too long. Having a description that is too long is only going to make the customer feel bored, reducing that buying impulse they initially felt, making them much less likely to buy the product. Experiment with your description length across a number of different products to find out which is the best length for your customers, while still including all of the information that they require. 

Factor in all costs - Deciding how much to sell each of your products for is going to play a big part in appealing to your customers. However, when deciding on a product price, you need to make sure that you have factored in all of your costs. These include the cost from the supplier, listing fees and shipping fees. Selling products without first factoring in these costs would be a huge oversight that will cost you a lot of your profit.

Store your items correctly - Depending on the size of your eBay business, the amount of stock you have will differ considerably. Whether you have a few items stored away in your garage or a warehouse full to the brim, you need to make sure that each of your items is stored secure place that won't result in them becoming damaged. Each item that you have represents a profit for your business. If any of your items become damaged during storage, this is going to impact the income your business generates. Not only will it lower your profit, but if one of these damaged items are then sent out to a customer, it is going to damage the credibility and brand image of your eBay store. 

Constantly review your courier - You may have a courier service that you prefer to use more than others due to their price and reliability. However, like all businesses, courier services constantly change their pricing structure in order to generate more business. You should look to check the prices of each courier service often to see if you can find one that offers you the same service but at a cheaper price. The less you spend on your courier service, the more profit your online store is going to make. 

Special offers  - Offering your customers something for nothing is always a great way to keep them happy and returning to your store. Special offers will allow you to generate an increase in sales over a short period, while allowing you to get rid of any stock that may not be selling as well as you would have liked. 

Offer Guarantees - Like I have said throughout this piece, reliability and trust are two important factors in establishing relationships with your customers. When customers purchase a product from your store, they like to know that they have some form of security blanket in the form of a money back guarantee. What this means is that if a customer receives a product finds that it is slightly damaged or not what they expected, they can return the product to your store for an exchange or a refund. While this stipulation may cost you money here and there in exchanging a damaged or faulty product, the trust it builds up in your store is going to increase the sales your store makes. 

When offering a money back guarantee, if you find that you are having high numbers of a specific product returned, you should look at discontinuing that product from your store or finding an alternative supplier who may provide the same product but at a higher quality. 

Carrying out all of these tips on your eBay store will result in you improving your store's image, increasing your traffic and sales, resulting in more money for your store.


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