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

Tuesday, 25 September 2012

eBay selective in latest promotion offering

eBay are continuing their current rise in promotions by offering some users the chance to have free listings on all fixed price items for a 5 day period. However, the promotion is only available to those who have received an invitation from eBay.

This news has disgruntled some eBay store owners as they believe that this promotion is only being sent out to sellers who have little or no feedback. This has resulted in a lot of sellers creating second eBay accounts in an attempt to try and receive an invitation for the promotion. 

However, there are two sides to the argument that are both valid. If the promotion is indeed sent out to only those with no or low feedback (which has not been proven one way or another) then it could be a great way to help people essentially get their online selling presence off the ground and possibly progress into having an online store. Having these users take a more active role within the eBay marketplace makes it better for not only the customers, who will have more choice in terms of where to shop and what to buy, but it will also help generate more traffic to the site which will be a boost for all stores.

On the other end of the spectrum, if the promotion is only aimed at low feedback users, many feel it deprives the more active users on the site from really making use of the free listings, leaving them to simply not be touched in accounts that people probably don't even use anymore. No matter what side of the fence you lie on in the argument, both views can be seen as valid. 

The promotion began yesterday and will run until Friday with users paying no listing fees on up to 5000 listings placed on ebay.com. If you are unsure whether you have been invited to take part in this promotion, check your messages within the "My eBay" section to see if you have received an invitation. 

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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. 

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Friday, 31 August 2012

eBay's free listing promotion

eBay have announced that between the 1st-9th of September, private sellers will be able to list items for free. 

As any listing of 99p or less is already free, eBay have now given users the ability to list up to 150 items over this price with no cost for the first 9 days of September. However, the promotion is only available to eBay sellers living in the UK.

Any products listed below the £1 threshold will not count towards this promotion and will count towards your 100 monthly limit

Items listed in "Cars, Motorcycles & Vehicles" and "Property" will be excluded from being able to take part in this promotion.

Also, if you use professional listing tools such as "Turbo Lister" or "Selling Manager Pro" you will also be unable to take advantage of this promotion. 

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Tuesday, 28 August 2012

July highlights the online retail revolution

Online sales reached it's yearly high through the month of July according to figures published by the Interactive Retail in Media Group (IRMG) which showed a 17% year on year growth.

While these figures show an increasing growth in all online store categories, a particular increase has been seen in clothing and electrical sales, with clothing sales increasing 15 percent on it's previous year and electrical sales increasing 30%. 

When reading these figures, you shouldn't think that this growth only applies to large corporate brands. Small online retailers, such as those who run eBay stores, are also finding a growth in their online sales. While their income may not be as high as other ecommerce brand chains, many customers see small online sellers as a better platform to purchase products as they provide the customers with the products they desire at a lower price.

No matter what product you sell, there will be numerous stores out there who also sell the same products. This competition for customers is what brings about greater value for the customer as online sellers look to gain an advantage over their rivals by offering lower prices on products. This underpins the growing strength of online retail. As more businesses launch online, competition for customers grows. This growth in competition creates greater benefits for customers in product choice and price, enticing more people to transfer from bricks and mortar to online shopping. 

When we look at the rise of online retail, it isn't just sales made via a computer screen. Mobile commerce has seen the biggest growth of all online platforms with an increase of 313% through July when compared to the same point in 2011. However, while this may be an increase on the previous year, it is lower than the figures for May and June. Although this is a decline on previous months, you shouldn't think of this as mobile commerce being on the decline, in fact it is the opposite. 

A recent survey conducted by "InMobi" found that 59% of all people surveyed use mobile devices to complete transactions. Mobile commerce is increasing exponentially and is one of the most successful online platforms with many online businesses both big and small now looking to develop their mobile sales platform in order to gain access to this increased traffic and revenue streams. 

Many customers have now begun using their mobile devices in order to find the best price on products. When a customer finds a product they like in a bricks and mortar store, they then use one of a number of different mobile apps to find the best deal for that product online. This is essentially a win win for an online seller as it not only encourages customers to purchase from an online store, it is the bricks and mortar store that has brought the product to the attention of the customer and the mobile application that has then brought the customer to your store. 

Although many have suggested that this increase could be down to the recent London Olympic games, this growth through July, when combined with online shopping's rise as a whole throughout 2012, is just one more indication of the ever growing dominance online retail has over it's bricks and mortar counterparts. 

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Monday, 20 August 2012

eBay's grand gesture or cunning advertising ploy?

eBay have announced that they are making all sports collectable items free to list until the end of the year. This will come as great news to some online stores as these items can be listed for free on both auctions and buy now listings.

The sports collectibles section on eBay contains items such as signed photographs of sports stars, shirts, match day programs and various other sporting memorabilia. 


It has been touted for many months that eBay could drop listing fees from some items in an attempt to gain an advantage in their battle with rival marketplace, Amazon, who have seemingly been improving their standing with sellers as of late. 

The new setup for sports collectable sellers means that store owners under the "Basic" account setting can list up to 5,000 items without having to pay insertion fees, with "Premium" and "Anchor" packages able to list up to 10,000. Sellers who do not have an online eBay store are able to list 500 sports collectable items without having to pay the listing fees.

However, while this does seem like a grand gesture on the part of eBay to offer some online sellers the chance to list products on their eBay store for free, other believe that this is part of a greater revenue scheme. One theory is that the removal of the listing price for this item category will result in sellers listing more items. The more items that are placed on eBay, the more advertisements that are going to be seen by buyers, which in turn will result in great advertising revenue for eBay.



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How to know if you should be selling on eBay

If you sell items on eBay and are having reasonable levels of success, you may look to try and build on this by creating an eBay store. With many people turning to online stores in order to find products at a discounted price, there is a constant urge for sellers to try and grow their business as fast as they can to try and achieve as many sales and as much profit in a short space of time. However, this over reach can often result in sellers biting off more than they can chew, struggling to keep up with demand and eventually burning out. So, when is the right time for you to try and take your business to the next level?

eBay's guidelines suggest that no one should look to create their own eBay store until they are able to handle having at least 25 listings on eBay at any time. Basically, this is because if you can't handle the demand from these 25 listings, you will struggle to be able to keep up product demand when running a store. Realistically, you want to have been selling on eBay from anywhere between six months to a year, ensuring that you are familiar with the whole process, all of the stipulations and have an understanding of generally what all eBay customers look for when purchasing through this platform. 

The huge benefit of spending this time to hone your skills is that it is going to allow you to build up a decent seller rating. This means that when you do eventually decide to make the transition to opening up your own eBay store, you are already going to have a good seller rating that is going to make you much more trustworthy in the eyes of buyers. Instantly, this sets you out from all other newly formed stores who do not yet have a seller rating, greatly improving your chance for success.

How much you roughly make a month through product sales over eBay is also a huge indication of whether or not to open up your own eBay store. Obviously, if you are not making much of a profit each month, there is no point opening up an eBay store as it wouldn't be a worthwhile endeavour and the added fees would make it difficult for you to turn a profit.

When deciding to set up an eBay store you need to take into account all of these factors, look at your current success and realistically see if growing your business is going to be a worthwhile decision. If you are making a small but consistent profit through just selling a few items of eBay every month, then for you it may be better to not rock the boat and stick with what is already working well. 

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Wednesday, 15 August 2012

eBay Thrown in to Anarchy

Earlier this week, many eBay stores were brought to a stand still as sellers reported numerous glitches and issues on the eBay website, making it almost impossible for them to run their store.

Some of the many problems customers were reporting, included:

  • Changes in Top Seller rating
  • Missing email notifications from eBay and Paypal
  • Photographs missing from listings
  • Missing item specifications

It is believed that these problems will harm eBay, not only in the amount of revenue they generate, but also their overall public image.

This isn't the first time problems have occurred on the marketplace and while you think a platform with over 100 million active stores is bound to have some problems from time to time, one seller shouldn't be able to see the details of another seller through their dashboard interface, which one seller claimed happened to them. These problems have resulted in some store owners becoming annoyed, preferring to leave eBay to go in search of another platform to run their online stores. 


While the problems were being fixed, many sellers were told not to list any products from anywhere between 24 hours to six days. Although this doesn't seem like very long at all when you look at the bigger picture, this is a time frame where your store competitors maybe selling products that you can't even list, possibly resulting in you losing future business from that customer.

This couldn't have happened at a worse time for eBay sellers as it is right smack in the middle of an eBay promotion that allows sellers to add 5,000 free listings in the fixed price format between the 8th and 18th of this month. 

All this comes in the wake of eBay achieving a record increase of fixed price sales by over 33% through July in comparison to the previous year. Ironic, huh?

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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.

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Monday, 13 August 2012

eBay hurting sellers with advertising strategy

eBay's recent addition of placing advertisements on sellers pages has been met with some hostility by a number of different sellers.

The advertising strategy, which was launched by eBay at the beginning of May, places an advertisement under the sellers information, giving customers details about various products on sale by a number of different major brands who have stores on eBay.

Do online sellers have a right to feel aggrieved by this? While eBay have categorically stated that these adverts will not include products from other rival sellers and that the sole aim is to bring additional value to the view item page, the last thing any seller would want is for a customer to open up the page of a product they are interested in, only to be then to be shown an advertisement of a similar product provided by a major brand.

While the product sold by the seller's eBay store could be much cheaper in price, store owners may find that many customers leave the seller's page in order to visit the brand's store, resulting in a loss of sales for that online seller.

The question also arises as to the ethics behind it. With a small ecommerce business spending their hard earned money for the ability to list their products on eBay, should the company be allowed to place advertisements of other brands on pages sellers have paid for without their permission? 

Although the ads on some sellers pages are in house advertisements and have nothing to do with the products a store owner sells, eBay should have some parameters in place to ensure that a conflict does not occur with the brand advert showing similar products to what the seller provides. 

What it seems from an outside perspective is that eBay are using small eBay stores as a platform to advertise their bigger brands. While this will generate greater revenue for both the large brands and eBay themselves, this is seemingly at the expense of small sellers, who could see an impact in their store's popularity and sales as a result. 

To combat this, many users of eBay have now looked to remove these advertisements altogether from their browsers through the use of various ad blocking programs. 

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Thursday, 26 July 2012

eBay's August Update Brings A Whole Host of Changes

This autumn, eBay will be rolling out a new set of updates which will see a whole host of changes aimed at helping both buyers and eBay store sellers. 

Removal of Featured First


This is one of the big changes that have been made by eBay in this update. For some eBay sellers this will be a great update while others will find it very scary. No longer will you be able to pay to have your items placed higher in the best match search rankings. The idea behind this is that you will no longer be able to essentially pay to have your item promoted, the field has been levelled for all sellers and you must now work hard to promote your store in order to make it a success. If you are struggling for ideas on how to promote your eBay store items, check out our "Achieve Higher eBay List Rankings" post.

Report a Buyer that Exhibits Bad Behaviour


If you are having a number of problems with one specific buyer, you can now submit a report about the buyer, stating any problems that you have been having. There are five different options you can choose when making making a report:

  • Buyer has made unreasonable demands
  • Buyer has left inappropriate feedback
  • Buyer abused the buyer protection
  • Buyer misused returns
  • Other problems
There is also an option to select if the buyer has not paid for the item. This will then send you through to the eBay resolution centre which will give you support and assistance in resolving the issue. 


Improved International Selling


Improving eBay's international selling is something that is going to be done over a number of updates, not just this one. The update that will be included in Autumn will allow sellers to input specific postage costs for each country.


Another part of the future International update will be the introduction of a monthly XXL subscription. This is a feature that allows you to post your products on all European eBay sites and eBay.com.au for the same cost as the anchor package, which is £349.99.

eBay Gallery Image Change

eBay will be altering the way you can view product images in the gallery. The thumbnail images will now be much bigger than they previously were, giving you a clearer view of the product.

Also, when you hover your cursor over the image, the information box below the image will expand to give you a clear view of the product name, price and how to purchase it. 

Item Swatch Examples

This is a new feature that allows buyers to see all of the different colour options that a store has available. This means that as soon as a buyer clicks on a product, the page will instantly show what colours you can get the item in, rather than having to select from a menu. 

You can also add images of these different coloured products, you allow a potential buyer to see how each would look in each colour.

Another great benefit of this is that the swatch colour also becomes part of the search parameters. For example, if you sell different colour t-shirts, previously if the main image of the product showed a red t-shirt, only the colour red would be related to the product in terms of its search parameters. Now, even if the main image is a red t-shirt, the shirt will still come up in searches for a blue t-shirt if blue is one of the alternative colours available for the t-shirt. This opens up your product to whole new search results.

As the alternative colour images could now be used as your main gallery image in some search results, you must take care to ensure that all of your images are of a high quality. 

Fast 'N' Easy Logo on Listings

In October, eBay will be releasing their Fast 'N' Easy listings. This simply means that for all items that have a delivery time of three days or less, a small logo will appear in the 'Delivery' section, letting buyers know they will receive it within this time frame. This tool is a simple addition to help buyers decide to purchase an item from your store. 

Unit Prices

Although this may be way behind high street stores and supermarkets, eBay have finally introduced a metric system into some of their items. This means that when you purchase an item, you will be able to see how much one kg of the product will cost. This has been added simply to comply with European Laws about how  the price of certain goods should be displayed.

Customised Condition Feature For Second Hand or Refurbished Items


If you are selling used or refurbished items, you can state in the item condition not only if the item is used or refurbished, but you can also add a description beneath it saying what condition the item is in. This allows you to put it at the top of the listing, with 1000 characters available for you to use.

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Tuesday, 24 July 2012

Achieve Higher eBay List Rankings

When running an eBay store, the position your item appears in the listing is everything! Too low down and buyers will be unlikely to see it. The closer you are to the top of the list, the more your item will sell, it's as simple as that.

If you notice that your product sales are a little low or simply want to try and boost your sales higher than they previously have been, there are a number of different things you can do to improve your item's list position.

Check out your competitors - Lets say the item you're looking to sell is a clothing item. Check out stores which sell items similar to you and see how much they sell these types of items for. If you see that other store owners are selling the item for £30, place it in your store for £25. Generally users list their search results based on cheapest first. So if your product is lower in price than your competitors, it is going to appear higher up the ranking and be more appealing to buyers. However, before lowering the price of an item, you should factor in eBay and Paypal fees to ensure you are still making a profit on the product.

Use more keywords - When placing your item for listing, ensure that the title of the item has the keywords in it that buyers generally search for. There is no point selling a product but having a vague title that only loosely relates to the product your selling. This will result in it appearing way down the list on most search results. 

Become a top seller - High sales figures and a high positive feedback score will result in you achieving top seller status for your account. One of the immediate positives is that your listed products will instantly appear higher in search results. Not only will they appear higher, but the top seller tag will also make you appear more trusting to potential buyers, meaning your items will receive a lot more views and hopefully sales.

Correct categorisation - One of the more obvious solutions is to check that you have listed your item in the correct category. One of the more common mistakes that people make is listing a product accidentally in a category that has nothing to do with the product. This means that when a buyer searchers for items in a specific category, your item will not show up on these results. 

If you implement any of these into your products, you will instantly see a change in your product's ranking within eBay search results.

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