7 Top tips to game Best Match with Recent Sales

October 5, 2008

Being at the top of eBay’s Best Match is a little akin to winning the blue Buy Box on Amazon, the listings at the top of eBay’s Best Match are starting to attract the lions share of the sales.

Some experimentation over the last week has revealed some great strategies to ensure your listing is at, or near, the top of search results. Best of all many of the tactics won’t cost you a penny to implement.

Recent sales are the surest way to gain exposure for your listing. The big question is how do you kick start sales to get to the top, especially if other seller’s listings have had sales already? Here are my 7 top tips to gain Recent Sales including two ways auctions can be used to boost a BIN listing’s visibility in search results:

1) Featured First

Featured First is the only sure fire way to the top of search results but it’s going to cost you (£44.95 for up to ten days, £134.95 for up to 30 days). Featured First is a great way to buy exposure but, as it’s success starts to be seen, more and more sellers are starting to use the listing enhancement.

If you’re one of just two sellers to use Featured First in a category then you’ll always be at the top, but as more sellers start to use the feature you listing will appear in a rotation and the exposure starts to fall.

This is a feature that should only ever be used once on a listing with good run rate, and then recent sales should be keeping you at the top of search. However, for slower sell through rate, high value items, Featured First is definitely worth considering on an ongoing basis.

2) Auctions to drive sales

Yes auctions are old hat, as a seller you probably prefer to know you’ll get the price you want and many buyers want to buy instantly rather than bid. Well that might be the case but auctions are still sorted using Ending Soonest and are still a great route to getting your listings to the top of search results.

Auctions at an attractive start prices will get buyers looking, strong links from auctions are a great way to kick start some sales on your main BIN listings. Look at the auction as a loss leader to gain attention and drive traffic from the auction to your BIN. Also consider trying an auction with a BIN price for an instant sale because….

3) Auction to Recent Sales Advantaged BIN

… It’s possible to gain a Recent Sales advantage in Best Match from an auction and this is the main reason sellers should be experimenting with the listing format. If your auction sells at a final value price that you’d be willing to sell at (or below), relist it but convert it to a BIN.

In testing it appears that Recent Sales advantage is transferred from a sold auction to a new BIN listing and can propel the BIN towards the top of Best Match at best, and above an identical BIN listing with no sales at worst. Auctions can be used to actively gain a head start for a multi-quantity BIN.

4) Best Offer

On your first listing of a new product always add Best Offer. It only takes a few sales to make a huge difference in search results standings. Some experimentation with this tactic has thrown up some interesting trends, the most significant of which is that early sales will tend to be Best Offers, but once an item reaches the top of search results buyers start to buy at the full price rather than making further Best Offers.

It’s well worth accepting the first one or two offers at less than you’d normally consider, in order to boost your listing in search results. Offers are worth accepting even if you make a slight loss on a couple of sales - it’s still probably still cheaper than paying for Featured First, to get to the top of the page.

5) Email Marketing

Get smart about your email marketing, use it to drive traffic to the listings you want to sell. Use emails to highlight new listings that you need to gain Recent Sales to increase Best Match placement.
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Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured, Selling Tips | 21 Comments 

List sale items free on eBay France

June 15, 2008

This post was written in June 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

On 25th and 26th June, eBay France is holding a free listing day for items listed as part of their summer sale promotion. The rather complicated terms of the offer are that

  • business sellers who have an eBay Shop should
  • list items at fixed price or 30 day BIN
  • using the word ’solde’ or ’soldes’ (sale) in their item title and
  • use Markdown Manager to apply a discount to their item.

Insertion fees will then be refunded within 6 weeks of the listing. Sellers can also have scheduled listing free under the same terms.

Other normal fees apply, and Motors and Media categories which have their own fee schedules are not included.

French sellers are being trusted to respect French law with regard to offering sale items: for those used to eBay UK’s rather more rigid rules about when Markdown Manager can be applied, this will make a refreshing change.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under CLD | 2 Comments 

eBay Germany highlights free shipping

May 14, 2008

This post was written in May 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

kostenloser VersandeBay Germany have just announced the launch of a new icon to highlight items offering free shipping. Germany’s Markdown Manager is also now offering the possibility to lauch “free shipping sales” in Shops.

The same changes were made on .com last month, so sellers on other countries’ sites might expect a wider launch in the near future. As eBay will undoubtedly publicise this very well to buyers, it’s worth considering if it’s something you could take advantage of, even if free shipping isn’t normally your style.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Site Changes, eBay.de | 2 Comments 

.com Markdown Manager adds free shipping feature

April 22, 2008

This post was written in April 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

eBay.com have announced a great new addition to their version of Markdown Manager: free shipping sales. Sellers will have the ability to add a free shipping sale, with distinctive icon, to any of their listings, either individually or in bulk. Free shipping can be added to auction listings as well as BIN and SIF, making Markdown Manager available for auctions for the first time.

In addition, the free shipping icon will appear on any ordinary listings where the seller has specified free shipping. No doubt this will lead to some sellers complaining that eBay are trying to foist free shipping onto sellers; but I’d say try it, especially if you sell in an area where free shipping is not the norm. I’ve been trialling it on some French listings with some pretty promising early results.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Featured | 13 Comments 

MarkDown Manager error identified

January 31, 2008

This post was written in January 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

Back in December we wrote about an apparent bug in MarkDown Manager that was double discounting items on sale. Today a cause has been identified which appears to be the likely culprit for many if not all instances of the discounted pricing.

If an item is placed on a MarkDown Manager sale and the item ends before the end of the sale period the price will remain at the discounted price. If that item is then relisted either through eBay’s bulk relist tool, or through Turbolister then the discounted sale price will be the new price for that item. If the item is then placed on another MarkDown Manager sale it will be further discounted a second time.

In theory if you constantly replenish stock on a SIF item and it’s relisted each time it ends the price could continue to be discounted right down to £0.00

If you have shop inventory format items that have been part of a MarkDown Manager sale you’ll need to verify the price when you relist them, if they ended whilst a sale was still current. Although not ideal, knowing where the problem lies should now give sellers the ability to spot incorrectly priced relisted items and correct them.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under News | Comments Off 

Markdown Manager double discounts

December 22, 2007

This post was written in December 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

Markdown manager has a bug in it! I don’t know what triggers it, but occasionally items are ending and instead of reverting to the original listing price they’re remaining at the marked down price even though they’re no longer showing that the price is discounted.

Markdown Manager ErrorWhat’s even worse is that if you then start a new sale the price is marked down again so the buyer is getting double discount. An example of this is a product which was originally listed at £55.00 and marked down to £41.25 (25% off) when entered into a new sale (at 25% off) ended up with a price of £30.94. As you can imagine sales on that item were suddenly brisk and I was losing money rapidly, until I spotted the problem and ended the listing.

This isn’t the only time I’ve spotted the problem, I have a listing still live on eBay that was originally listed at £14.99, was entered into a Markdown Manager sale with 25% off, and now the sale has ended the price has stayed at the discounted £11.24. eBay support are aware of the issue and working on a fix but in the mean time it’s worth checking your listings when a sale ends.

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Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured | 10 Comments