Showing posts with label DSR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DSR. Show all posts

Monday, 12 November 2012

eBay's much anticipated International selling feature up and running

eBay have launched their International Rate Card for eBay store owners who are currently on eBay's Anchor Shop package. 

In the past, whenever a seller has decided that they want to sell Internationally, they had to list each of their products as being available for overseas customers to purchase it. However, the new International Seller Rate Card allows sellers to list their products directly on to a number of different eBay sites within Europe and in Australia. 

This means that rather than a buyer having to come to the eBay UK site and purchasing from there as an International purchaser, the buyer can simply view it on their country's own eBay site as long as they are based in one of the countries within the International Seller Rate Card package. As an eBay seller, it will allow you to dramatically increase the number of users your products are exposed to, most likely resulting in an increase in sales. 

If you are an eBay seller who would like to take advantage of this new feature, you must upgrade your eBay account to the Anchor Shop package at £349.99 a month and then tick the box to "Opt in to eBay International Selling." 

To apply to be part of this new International selling feature you must be a top rated seller. However, should you lose your top rated seller status once you have been accepted, you will not lose access to the feature. Any sales made Internationally will also not affect the Detailed Seller Rating (DSR) that you have in the UK.

Before taking the plunge and upgrading your account to an anchor package, you need to first crunch the numbers in order to make sure that it will be the right move for your business. If you are not already on the anchor shop package you need to check how much you are paying based on the number of products you are listing in the UK as well as how much you are paying to list products on other International sites. For many eBay stores this will be the right move as many businesses are currently paying more than £349.99.

When branching out to International markets, you also may want to look at how you can use ecommerce software to also increase the number of channels your ecommerce store operates in, allowing you to develop your brand image and increase sales. We at eSellution offer a number of different packages to suit all online sellers, ranging from a free ecommerce store to our  Enterprise package.


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Wednesday, 12 September 2012

Biggest problems for new eBay sellers and how to overcome them

With literally hundreds of thousands of people selling through eBay in the United Kingdom alone, online selling is more popular now than it has ever been. While there are thousands of people purchasing products online every day, many new eBay stores face a number of problems that they must first overcome in order to achieve long term success.

Fees

Whether your new to eBay or have been selling on eBay for a number of years, insertion fees are something you are always going to have to pay in order to have your items listed on eBay. However, depending on what you sell and how much you are charging, the amount you will have to pay as an insertion fee will differ. If you sell an item for under 99p it is free for you to list, while at the opposite end of the spectrum, if you list a  product for over £100 then you will have to an insertion fee of £1.30. You can find a full list of all the insertion fees on the eBay website. However, eBay are currently running a promotion for some categories such as "Outdoor Sports" and "Sports Memorabilia," where you will be able to list products for free until the end of the year. 

Feedback 

For a new online store, feedback from your customers will make or break your store. Feedback comes in the form of your detailed seller rating (DSR). A high detailed seller rating shows not only high levels of trust to the customer that they will be able to carry out an honest transaction with yourself, but also tells the customer that the items they will purchase from your store are of a good quality. However, when starting a new eBay store, you are kind of in a catch 22 situation. As you are a new store, you have no feedback, which means that in order to get this trustworthy rating that will entice customers to purchase from your store, you must first have people actually purchase items from you.

In order to get the positive feedback needed to make your store a success, you must make sure that all aspects of your store keep the customer happy throughout their purchasing experience. This means that not only should the product be of a good quality, it should be dispatched in a reasonable time and be delivered to them within the delivery time you stated on your store. If any of these aspects of the purchasing experience fail to live up to the customer's expectations, it is going to result in having a lower feedback rating. Once you have achieved a good feedback level, you will see traffic and sales levels for your store increase. 

Selling Restrictions

If you are do not have an eBay store, but are simply someone who sells products on the marketplace through a regular account, you may find that you have selling restrictions placed on your account, meaning you can only list a maximum of 100 products a month to the value of £3000. In order to remove this restriction, you must get a good feedback level through sales, as I explained in greater detail in the earlier "Feedback" section. However, there is another way around this. If you have another eBay account that you have previously used to sell different products in the past, you can contact eBay and inform them that you have two accounts and they will then remove the restrictions on your account so that they match the limits on your other account. 

Delivery

The delivery process for your ecommerce store is important for a number of reasons. Obviously, the most important part of the delivery process is ensuring that any items purchased by customers are delivered to them on time in order to make them a satisfied customer, who will turn into a repeat buyer. When choosing the delivery company for your business, it is important that you choose a delivery company that has their deliveries tracked. Although the majority of customers are honest when it comes to purchasing items, there are some who will look to essentially scam you. If you use a delivery service that doesn't offer tracking, it will mean that after a few days the customer could claim that they never received the item, even though they may have done. This will result in Paypal refunding the price of the product to the customer and then taking the cost from you. This will leave you without a product and without the money from the sale. If you have a tracked delivery service they will be unable to do this as you will have proof that their product was delivered to them. 

Get your free ecommerce store now: http://www.esellution.co.uk/pricing.html

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Tuesday, 14 August 2012

How to ensure great feedback for your online store

In today's realm of online selling, the majority of the power lies in the hands of the buyers. With a number of different stores all competing for a customers business with great discounts and offers, it is becoming increasingly difficult to make your online store a success.

One of the crucial factors in determining whether your store is a success or failure is customer reviews and feedback. When using online seller platforms such as eBay, the feedback comes in the for of a Detailed Seller Rating (DSR). This rating alone will decide whether a customer purchases from your store or not. To make your eBay store as big a success as you possibly can, you need to ensure that you have an extremely high DSR rating.  

When a customer visits your eBay store, before looking at your products or your delivery charges, the first thing they look at is your feedback and your rating. If you have a low rating, in the eyes of the customer you are unreliable and offer a poor service. This will result in them leaving your store altogether in order to find a store that has a better rating. 

Your DSR rating is determined by four different criteria:

  • Item as described
  • Communication
  • Dispatch time
  • Postage and packaging charges

Item as described


When a customer looks at the images of your products and reads through the description, they get an idea of how the product should be. Once the person has received the product, they then compare their earlier expectations with what they have got, to determine if they are happy with the product. The customer will then leave a positive review if they find that the product they received met with their original expectations.

To give you the best chance of having a high rating for this category, you want to ensure that you everything you write about each of your products is entirely truthful, with no lies or exaggerations whatsoever. If you make a product sound better than it actually is, although this will result in more products being sold in the short term, it will hamper your long term sales as your DSR rating will suffer for it. If you create unrealistic expectations through your descriptions, there is no way the delivered product can live up to how the item was described.

If you are selling any items that are refurbished or second hand, make sure you identify both in the description and through your images, any problems that the item has such as dents, scuffs or other marks. Obviously, advertising a product without stating any marks they have on them is going to come as a surprise to the customer when they receive the product, most likely resulting in an extremely low feedback rating.

Communication


The more you communicate with your customers through the purchasing process, the happier and more satisfied they are going to be. This doesn't mean contact them everyday asking them how they are, but it does mean keeping them up to date with the entire process. This can be done simply by setting up automated notifications for the various stages in the process. This will mean that the customer will receive an email to confirm the order has been placed, when the order has been processed and when the product has been shipped. This also means your customer is fully aware of any issues that may have occurred along the way. Having delays in the order or shipping process are the kinds of things which lower your communication rating if you don't keep your customers in the loop.

Dispatch time


Customers today want everything instantly. When setting up your checkout process, you want to get from the order being placed, to the item being dispatched by the courier as fast as you can. Once the item has been dispatched to the courier any delays are no longer your fault, but a delay in getting to that stage is. Constant reviews of your checkout process will allow you to identify any aspects that are slowing down the overall process. Tweaking this process with improvements is what's going to help you achieve a faster dispatch time, preventing your customer from becoming annoyed by a lengthy process.

Postage and packaging charges


While most customer aren't going to expect you to have no delivery or postage charges when shipping items across large distances, how you stand in comparison with your rivals is what's going to give you that high feedback. What you should look to do is slightly undercut your rival competitors. What this means is visiting the various stores of your competitors to see how much they charge for postage and packing for the items they sell. You then want to have your postage and packing costs at a price that is lower than your rivals, making your's seem much better in comparison.

Although, all these tasks may sound straightforward when running an online business, it is not just doing them well, but doing them to an impeccable standard that is going to result in you gaining as high a feedback rating as you possibly can.

eSellution: www.eSellution.co.uk

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