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

Thursday, 16 August 2012

The unappreciated strength of buyer promotion

A number of articles I have posted over the last few weeks have stressed the importance of creating a positive customer experience, as it is these customers who will determine future success of your ecommerce store.

However, once you have created these great customer experiences that will result in others talking about your store, you simply do not want to just sit back doing nothing, waiting for customers to come to your store. You can look to be proactive and make use of these satisfied customers by placing testimonials from those customers on to your store for future visitors to read. If you are unsure that a tesitmonial is, it's basically a short sentence or paragraph produced by a customer that states how they found their experience with the store. The great thing about a testimonial is that it is positive advertising but from a third party, unbiased source. This is important for two significant reasons:

  • Trustworthy - Rather than you posting content about how great your store's service is, a testimonial doesn't sound like it is from someone trying to sell them something. For this reason, their opinion will be much more trustworthy in the eyes of visiting customers, as they have nothing to gain by providing the comment. 
  • Great Tiebreakers - If you have a customer that is on the fence, it could be the smallest thing that makes their mind up as whether to purchase from your store or not. A good testimonial could be just the thing to push a customer off the fence and make them purchase a product.

While all positive testimonials will improve the standing of your store from the stance of a customer, some testimonials will be more effective than others. For this reason you need to take your time when selecting your testimonials, ensuring that you select ones that will not only put your online store in a positive light, but also highlight the many benefits a customer can gain by purchasing for your store. Whatever you do, don't edit a testimonial so that it says what you would like. If a testimonial isn't 100% truthful and honest, it shouldn't go up on your site. 

So you've selected the testimonials which you think will best showcase your store to visiting customers, the next question you should ask yourself is where do you place them? When a customer visits your store, most of the time they will do so by visiting your home page. For this reason, you want customers to see these positive endorsements, as it encourages them to delve further into your site, rather than bouncing straight back off the page. Still, you don't want to just have testimonials solely on your home page. Place them throughout your site, allowing customers to read different options as they navigate through your various pages.

What you should also remember is that if you run an eBay store you already have a ready made source of customer feedback in the form of a customer's DSR review. If you find that your seller rating feedback is rather low, you can look to combat this negative feedback by placing more positive testimonials throughout your store. What this will do is alter the balance of positive and negative views, allowing you to continually portray your store in a positive light no matter other feedback may suggest. However, this is only a quick fix solution. If you do have a number of negative customer comments, you need to review your own store and service to determine why you are getting these negative views.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , ,

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

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)