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Buy, Buy, Buy - £1000+ unexpected sales on eBay

Do you remember opening a new eBay ID? It’s a while since I’ve done so but some consultancy today reminded me just how exciting buying on eBay can be.

A company is looking to set up their first shop on eBay and like everyone else have started out with zero feedback. They need to open a shop (minimum 10 feedback or PayPal verified) and want to make use of fixed price listings (minimum 10 feedback and PayPal verified) so the quickest way to achieve this is from buying.

Needless to say when I advised them to get a budget from their manager and go spending they had no hesitation in doing just that. A spending spree on office funds, what could be better? I suggested mundane items such as paper, ink, toner and staples but they had much better ideas. £700 for a new CCTV system? Not a problem, we’ve been meaning to get one for ages!

Two hours and well over £1000 later and they’ve already got their first two feedback from sellers that leave feedback on payment. Just another eight to go which in all likelihood will come from sellers with automatic feedback left on receipt of feedback so it might take a couple of days. They’ve bought more than 10 items to make sure they get more than the 10 feedback needed

Buying is fun though, even when it’s at third hand it’s still exciting. Most sellers spend all their time on eBay selling - if you’ve not been on a buying spree for some time then Christmas is just the excuse you need to go spending.

There’s a good business justification for buying on eBay as well - how will you know the pitfalls your buyers have to face and how search works unless you genuinely use the site yourself as well? Buying is the perfect way to spend a morning and it’s justifiable as “work”.

Which eBay shop is best for you?

I’ve always believed that an eBay shop was worth more than the ability to use SIF listings, so the announcement that SIFs are to be retired in September is not going to convince me to close my shop.

In view of the fee changes and possible discounts which level eBay shop should you subscribe to? eBay have a microsite which goes into the changes in depth including a cute (and useful) shop fee illustrator.

What this site doesn’t cover is the added benefits of shops over and above pure fee discounts, however as a start point it’s worth looking at when BINs justify a shop on their own merits. The following table shows the level eBay shop you should choose based on the number of fixed price listings you have on the site.

Shop/Cost	No Shop	Basic Shop	Featured Shop	Anchor Shop
Shop Cost	£0.00	£14.99	£49.99	£349.99
BIN Insertion Fee	40p	20p	5p	1p
Number of BIN listings	0-74	75-226	227-7499	7500+

An anchor shop had no real advantage over a featured shop in the past, so it’s good to see real anchor shop benefits introduced. Anchor shops are still not suitable for most sellers, only those with over 7500 product lines (not listings!) will be able to justify the cost.

If you already use SMP and/or wish to make use of scheduling then the benefits of a featured shop really start to stack up. Sellers with a basic shop but subscribed to SMP should upgrade to a featured shop if they have more than 160 BIN listings live on the site at any one time.

Anchor and Featured Shop subscriptions will come with telephone support, a great bonus for non-PowerSellers who would otherwise be reliant on email support.

Which ever level eBay shop you consider remember that your listing strategy is likely to change.

eBay are encouraging sellers to list just one fixed price listing for each product line. In the past you may have listed the same item on a daily or even hourly basis. When choosing your shop subscription from 24th September you should factor in a reduction in your total number of fixed price listings.

It’s worth considering auctions, even if you don’t currently have them in your listing mix. Fixed price listings will no longer be sorted with “Ending Soonest”, but auctions will. The one way to ensure visibility of your items on the first page of search results is to run auction listings.

The mix of auctions and fixed price listings on the first page of search results will vary by category. In collectible categories I’d expect to see more auctions and in commodity categories it’s likely a higher percentage of fixed price listings will be displayed. It will be worth experimenting to see if auctions attract more buyers both to bid and to drive traffic to your fixed price listings.

We are aware that the changes to shops are making it unprofitable for sellers of low cost, low sell through rate, unique items to list their inventory on eBay. Currently there is no easy solution and it’s hoped eBay will address this situation prior to the changes going live on 24th September or hundreds of thousands of products will disappear from the site.

For sellers of higher priced items the reduction in listing fees and change of listing strategy should make it economically viable to list more product lines in greater quantities.

Finally there are still some notable holes in the fee structure to take advantage of:

• Technology and Media products have lower final value fees
• Multiple quantity fixed price listings will now have lower insertion fees than Dutch Auctions
• Listing enhancements will cost up to 3 times as much for 30 day listings - consider shorter fixed price listings if you have limited stock.

eBay UK testing shops in search?

There’s an intriguing announcement from eBay UK this afternoon:

over the next few weeks we’ll be testing how buyers react to different displays of Shops items on eBay UK search results pages. These tests are part of our continual efforts to optimise of how we display items to buyers on eBay.co.uk. The testing will affect a minority of buyers; sellers aren’t required to do anything different or new.

If anyone spots the new search display please let us know what’s being done, or better still grab us a screen shot.

My eBay shop design : Going live

Having given Frooition the approval on the final design for my new eBay shop it was installed in one afternoon.

Alun, the designer, has done a fantastic job although I still need to tidy up a couple of custom shop pages. I especially like the way he has changed my brand colours slightly making them deeper and more “mountcomp” than they were before.

One of the things I like best about standard eBay shops is the white space which helps to keep the page clean and fresh. Alun has managed to achieve this whilst injecting colour into the page but without heavy backgrounds.

The shop categories menu now works better than ever - Alun has styled it to make the categories stand out from the sub-categories to assist buyers to find the items they’re looking for.

One of my biggest dislikes of eBay shop search has been removed - I now have a search box which searches titles AND descriptions by default. It also searches my entire shop by every time, instead of just the category the buyer is in. This means if I have products matching a buyers search they’ll always be found. eBay’s standard shop search only looks in the category a buyer is currently browsing, although to be fair eBay do at least now display additional items found in all categories for null search results.

What was most important to me was that the shop looked and felt as much like a standard eBay shop as possible, whilst leveraging the advantages of Frooition technology. This has been achieved admirably retaining the eBay promotion boxes with curvy corners and carrying that theme across to the other display areas on the page.

I’m able to display six key products, automatically select from those available either by price, newly listed/ending soonest, shop category, or a mix of criteria. This enables me to showcase a star item, either an item with great profit, or one that I have large quantities of, and to display a further five items which currently promotes the printers I sell. Whilst the products are chosen automatically from those available a judicious use of criteria pretty much means I can identify the exact products I’d like promoted.

There’s just one thing letting my shop down at the moment, and sad to say that’s down to me and not Frooition - my product photos just aren’t up to standard and all need reshooting and tidying up.

My next job will be to update all of my listings to a new template to match my eBay shop, and that’s where the work begins for me. Up until now Frooition have done all the hard graft. I’m looking forward to it, if they look half as good as my shop they’ll be worth the effort.

Overall I’m extremely pleased with the new design, it’s cleaner, more professional, gentle on the eye, and most important of all it retains everything that was great from a standard eBay shop template and then improves on it.

It’s so much better than my old eBay shop. Quite honestly I think it’s the best looking eBay shop I’ve ever seen.

How to get top placement on Google for free

Not only is my eBay listing the first one returned in a worldwide Google search but I get a shopping bag icon beside it. The secret behind how to do this is Google Product Search (also known as Google Base).

Google Product Search is a shopping comparison engine, and one that all eBay sellers and ecommerce website owners should become familiar with. According to Scot Wingo we can expect to see a 10x increase in traffic from Google Product in the UK sometime this year, and sellers should be prepped to take advantage.

When Google Products are displayed in search results they’ll be shown as “Shopping Results” and displayed between the three sponsored links (paid adverts) and the natural search results. (In the example pictured there were no paid adverts)

There are a multitude of shopping comparison engines out there - everyone from eBay’s shopping.com to shopzilla, Ciao, Kelkoo and and Nextag. Each has a different format file which you need to create known as a “feed”, and they all have different pricing models. Some charge you on a Cost Per Click basis (CPC), others charge when a buyer makes a purchase (CPA/CPO - Cost Per Acquisition / Cost Per Order), and some like Google Product are free.

Companies such as ChannelAdvisor can manage your feeds and your budget, to list your products to multiple shopping comparison sites. They can adjust the amount you pay per click/acquisition tailoring unique offers and search terms that drive traffic and convert customers. A good feed management company will also filter out items which are not profitable from your data feed, so that you’re not paying for hits that don’t generate business.

Google Product however makes things slightly easier than other shopping comparison sites - they have Google Base Store Connector which can link eBay, Yahoo, or osCommerce shops to Google Product Search for free.

Simply download the Store Connector (software which runs on your PC), and enter in your shop web address. You’ll need to have a Google account, but if you have gmail or use another Google utility you’ll already have one. Store Connector will download all your listings and then it’s the click of a button to upload them to Google.

The downside to using Google Store Connector is that your products will only be indexed for 30 days, so you’ll need to upload your feed monthly at a minimum. To balance this it works with both eBay, and osCommerce shops. Alternatives are to upload your feed manually, set up an automated feed, or to use a third party to do the work for you. ChannelAdvisor have a free evaluation offer if you want to try a Google Product feed from your website.

It’s worth pointing out that it’s possible to generate a product feed on eBay suitable for Google, however that feed will only contain your eBay shop listings. By using the Store Connector you can post both SIF and BIN listings to Google Product Search.

One word of warning… once you’ve set up your Google Base account make sure you edit your display details prior to uploading products. I was daft enough not to and I now have several hundred products on Google Shopping with my email address instead of “Mount Road Computers” as the merchant. Doh!

Everyone selling products online should be uploading a feed to Google, it costs nothing and it should get you more traffic and more sales. Download Google Store Connector and give it a try today.

My eBay shop design : The brief

I’ve always liked my eBay shop design, which is pretty much a standard eBay implemention with a header. Even the header has been designed to resemble ebay shop promotion boxes with curvy corners (thanks to Sue and her code magic).

The time has come for a refresh though, and it’s down to Sue and her experiment with Frooition.

I’ve always had reservations with Frooition’s offering, along the same lines as Sue, in that anything that’s not eBay must be off-putting to buyers. That’s not proved to be the case though and with Sue reporting a 33% increase in sales I simply can’t ignore the results.

So I’ve bitten the bullet, admitted I was wrong, and am in the process of having Frootion re-design my eBay shop, and I have to say the initial design preview which the Frooition designer, Alun Widdowson, sent across yesterday is simply superb!

My shop has worked, and worked well over the years. Importantly it has been able to sell more product than I could physically pack. One of my main objectives will be to establish if a Frooition shop can deliver the same number of sales from fewer listings and save on eBay fees.

My brief to Frooition was to create a simple but professional design keeping my current colour scheme. I found it very difficult to describe what I wanted, as I was asking for less not more. I don’t want a complicated graphics heavy design, simple and to closely resemble a standard eBay shop was the main requirement.

I’m convinced that it’s not easy to design a sleek clean look, but that is what I wanted and the Frooition designers have come up trumps.

Simple, stylish but minimalist was the way I summed up the look and feel I wanted and that’s exactly what they’ve delivered.

As always I’m incredibly impressed with Frootions graphics, they’re simply superb and I love the way they’ve managed to weave my logo into them.

I’ve saved a screenshot of my old eBay shop for comparison. Now I can’t wait for my new shop design to go live!

eBay Italy: EUR0.01 listings, free Gallery, Best Match

From June this year eBay Italy will be the first site to make major changes to Shops, scrapping existing SIF listings and combining them with BIN to make a new format - “Buy It Now with full visibility in the search”.

In addition to the standard listing lengths there will be a new 30 days format BIN which can be automatically renewed. Gallery will be free on all listings from June.

At the same time new Shops will be introduced - Base, Plus and Premium, with varying insertion fees. Sellers who select the Premium Shop costing €99.95/mth will have free BIN listings until August 31st, and from then on the cost will be just €0.01.

Best Match will be introduced for fixed price listings although Auctions will still appear with ending soonest sort. In order to advantage the longer listing formats multiple item listings with the MOST sold items will appear first in search results. It becomes more important to list multiple quantity items than duplicate listings of a single item (which many sellers have done in the past to increase visibility).

There will also be a new Showcase feature, using Showcase will allow sellers to buy their way to the top of Best Match in order to gain sales, once they have sales the listings will rise to the top of Best Match on their own merit.

Seller Standards will become more important than ever on eBay Italy. Not only will sellers with poor feedback, excessive shipping, or multiple INR complaints be disadvantaged in search, they will also lose the right to open Plus or Premium eBay shops and access to virtually free listings.

Working towards free insertion fees is a stated long term aim for eBay. Italy is the first country to experiment with this and if it’s a success we can see it introduced in other eBay territories, possibly as soon as Autumn this year.

eBay France free boutiques listings promotion

eBay France is offering free Stores listing fees during May, June and July to sellers who use prefilled information in their listings. Prefilled information is available on eBay.fr for books, films, music, video games, PDAs, digital cameras and mobile phones.

The promotion is open to business-registered sellers only, and is valid for Stores (Boutiques) listings for a 30 day duration. Good Til Cancelled (valide jusqu’Ã annulation) listings will also receive free insertion fees for each 30 day period beginning during the run of the promotion. Shop listings which don’t use pre-filled information will be charged at the normal rates.

Red Letter Days and branding

Today at the Catalyst Conference Bill Alexander, Managing Director of Red Letter Days spoke on the importance of brand. When Theo Paphitis and Peter Jones bought Red Letter days in 2005 it was in administration with £17million of outstanding vouchers, just £3million in the bank, but with a brand name that could allow the business to be rebuilt.

The three point strategy to rescue the company was 1) Service, to be best of breed, 2) To differentiate themselves from the competition, and 3) To look after the customer up to and after their Red Letter Day.

One of the big messages from the talk was that an online presence could drive off line sales. Not every buyer would buy online, but an online presence coupled with off line sales pays dividends… some buyers want to talk to a human before committing to a purchase.

Red Letter Days combine SEO, Pay Per Click adveritising, affilate schemes, retail sites (such as eBay) and email marketing but importantly all sites look and feel the same. Whether it be their eBay store, their own website, or an affiliate site the Red Letter Day branding is consistent across all mediums.

eBay sellers can learn much from this strategy, as eBay has emphasised recently and backed up with incentives, customer service is essential to building a long term business. Branding is key, your eBay shop, listings, about me page, email marketing, literature (eg shipping notes) and your own website should all carry the same branding, colours, look and feel.

When a customer lands on any of your online pages your brand should instantly remind them who you are, and the service they received last time they traded with you.

Positive brand protection on eBay

It’s always bemused me why big brands either ignore eBay entirely, or sign up to the VeRO program but do nothing to establish themselves on eBay. I’ve long been of the opinion that brands would do well to have an active presence on eBay even if it wasn’t a profit making operation.

Many brands and even ticket promotors have attempted to control the eBay marketplace and and yet done little or nothing to make their products and brands legitimately available on the site. Step forward Red Letter Days, they have just announced the launch of their eBay shop and part of the reason for wanting a strong presence on eBay is to protect their brand.

The MD of Red Letter Days, Bill Alexander, will be speaking at Catalyst later this month on the importance of building a strong brand and how to translate brand awareness into online traffic and sales. It will be interesting to hear more regarding their plans for eBay and how this fits into their overall brand awareness campaigns.

It’s refreshing to see a company building their brand and approaching the eBay marketplace in a positive manner, rather than just rushing to fill out VeRO forms. eBay is now maturing as a marketplace and brands that embrace eBay can expose themselves to the 14 million plus active users in the UK. That’s got to be a better strategy than simply attempting to prohibit others from selling your products on the site.

Get your own eBay-friendly webstore

eBay sellers often fall into online selling more by accident than design, and once they’ve built up a successful online business the natural next step is to start their own website. And that’s where things can get complicated - Which hosting package to use? What web hosting do you need? What about your own web address? How do you keep it secure?

A new offering from daily.co.uk aims to make the choice simple with their eShop package designed specifically for users wanting their own ecommerce enabled website. What makes it unique is that it’s an off the shelf package which fully supports launching eBay listings from within the management console.

Setting up a daily.co.uk eShop is simple using a WYSIWYG editor with a choice of 100 different templates allowing you to personalise your eShop to your business. Once you’ve created your products, the integrated shopping basket and choice of payment methods (including PayPal, Google and card payments), you’re ready to launch your first ecommerce website.

eShop is set up to supply feeds to Shopping Comparison Engines such as Ciao, Google Base, Kelkoo and Shopping.com. It’s also simple to register with Google so that your shop products will be indexed for search.

The part I like most about daily.co.uk’s eShop is the eBay integration. Once you’ve listed a product in your eShop it’s just a few simple clicks to list the same item on eBay.

If there’s one complaint it’s that I don’t like the templates supplied for eBay listings. There are 100 eShop templates to choose from, but only three eBay templates (with a colour choice). That said they’ve built in the tools to allow you to customise existing templates or to build your own template with shortcuts to drag the product pictures and descriptions from your eShop product profiles.

If you’re looking for an ecommerce enabled web site with eBay integration then a daily.co.uk eShop is well worth considering. They offer three different packages tailored for sellers of all sizes. Costs start from just £8.99 per month, and that includes hosting charges. You can also try before you buy with a 14 day free trial of an eShop.

TameBay discount for eBay templates

You may have noticed an advert on TameBay for custom eBay auction templates and shop design from Just Template It (the same company that runs the Pay Per Parcel delivery service). Today they’ve announced a 20% discount on auction templates and shop designs for TameBay readers.

The design work includes the one item eBay sellers often ask about where to source - a high quality logo. There are three different packages on offer from £375 for a custom listing template and logo (Saver), add in an eBay shop front design for £475 (Silver) or the top package which includes flash animation in the design for £675 (Gold).

If you’re looking to update your eBay image with a professionally designed new look check out Just Template It and don’t forget to mention TameBay for a 20% discount.

Top UK eBay sellers analysed

Have you ever wondered what it takes to be successful on eBay? What listing tools should you use? Should you pay for a professionally designed custom eBay shop and listing template?

I wondered too, so I looked at the top UK sellers to see what they were using. From the Nortica eBay 500 list from December 2007 I selected the top UK eBay sellers by number of feedback received. Out of the top 500 sellers worldwide, this gave me 32 UK sellers of which four were excluded - three are NARU (no longer registered users) and one has private feedback.

The top sellers are based on total lifetime feedback, the data is not necessarily reflective of the current top sellers on eBay. It excludes sellers such as aceelectronics_uk who have accrued 56130 feedback in the last year but still just outside the top 500 worldwide. However I believe it does reveal some interesting trends.

Top Seller Feedback

First of all feedback, with DSRs affecting search placement how are the top 28 UK sellers stacking up? The average feedback rating is 99.3% ranging from a low of 98.1, to two sellers with an astounding 100% record. More interesting some of the sellers with the highest feedback percentage have the lowest number of withdrawn feedbacks. The average feedback withdrawals per seller is 207, with the highest withdrawn feedback for a single seller being 1079.

Average DSR scores for the top currently trading 28 sellers are:

DSR	Average	High	Low
Item as described	4.84	4.9	4.7
Communication	4.72	4.9	4.4
Dispatch time	4.64	4.8	3.8
Postage and packaging charges	4.53	4.7	4.0

These figures put the average top UK seller into the average/bottom 25% of all sellers for DSRs based on latest eBay information.

Shops

I was interested to find out if the top UK sellers all used the same listing tools and how they used their eBay shops and listings. The first and unsurprising discovery is that all 28 have an eBay shop. What was somewhat surprising is most appear to have a basic eBay shop with no frills or customisation. Just five users had a Frooition shop template, four had customised their shop or had a custom shop landing page. 19 out of 28 of the top UK sellers have no customisation at all although four have inserted a shop header.

One thing I find off putting is landing on an eBay shop where the products aren’t the first thing I see. If I want to know a sellers terms and conditions or more about them I’ll visit their about me page. Four of the top sellers however have shop landing pages that don’t display products.

Listings

I expected to find custom templates designed for the top sellers, and in most cases I wasn’t disappointed. Top UK sellers had complex HTML designs with the one common theme being links to their other listings and eBay shops. Just two sellers appear to have used Frooition templates (five have Frooition shops). What was surprising was that five of the top 28 sellers (17%) have no template and use simple text based eBay listings. Even one seller who has invested in a Frootion shop has simple text based eBay listings. It would appear that it is possible to be a prolific seller without complex HTML skills.

Sadly out of 28 top sellers three have HTML scripts classed as site interference risking their listings being cancelled.

Tools

Eight of the top sellers use ChannelAdvisor to power their eBay listings. Fifteen use eBay Tools (either TurboLister or Selling Manager Pro). Four sellers use Auctiva/Sellathon with just one using Vendio. It would be interesting to know if there’s a correlation between the sellers using ChannelAdvisor and those that also sell on Amazon or their own websites.

Summary

The most noticeable feature of feedback is that the sellers with the highest feedback percentages have some of the lowest numbers of withdrawn feedback. Conversely sellers with the highest numbers of withdrawn feedback have some of the lowest feedback percentages.

If the withdrawn feedback was added back into the mix those with the worst feedback would have a much lower feedback percentage. Sellers who give the best customer service definitely appear to be rewarded with better overall feedback.

The top UK sellers don’t all have complex shop designs, a basic eBay shop works just fine. Although links to sellers other listings and eBay shops are favoured you can be successful with a basic text based auction. Many top sellers rely on simple eBay tools such as TurboLister, Selling Manager Pro and even the Sell Your Item form. If a third party tool is used ChannelAdvisor is the favoured choice.

If there’s one thing that I’ve learnt from the top UK sellers it’s to include more links to other products in my auctions. I’m not going to run out and pay for auction management services or expensive listing templates, if the top sellers don’t need them then neither do I.

Sponsored links downgraded, SIF upgraded

In welcome news to sellers eBay have posted on the community forums that sponsored links will be moved below all eBay listings in the future.

In November eBay confirmed that sponsored links were here to stay but the placement was still under review. If they negatively impacted eBay sales they said they would “react quickly should we detect negative trends” and it appears that they have done.

The important part of the statement is “We have analysed the latest data and have come to the same conclusion as many of you: sponsored links should not appear above Shop Inventory Format (SIF) items. (As a reminder, SIF listings currently appear in core search results when there are 50 or fewer core results returned.) So from now on whenever any eBay listings are available in response to a user’s search (be it core auction or BIN listings, SIF listings, or listings from international sellers) these will be shown first. Sponsored links will appear only underneath eBay listings.”

Another bit of news gleaned from the statement is that SIF listings will appear below core search results if fewer than 50 items are returned. In the past SIF listings appear to have been displayed if only 30 core listings were displayed in search results. From now on sellers should notice more sales from shop listings from the increased visibility.

Markdown manager new features

Markdown Manager is getting two new features this week. The first is the ability to email anyone who has subscribed to your email marketing lists to inform them you’ve started a sale. By default this will be turned on, so if you’d prefer to send a customised email make sure you untick the boxes to stop the automatic email being sent. Don’t forget this will count towards your free email marketing allocation so make the best use of it (although traditionally email marketing is one of the most under utilised features of eBay shops so sending anything will be an improvement for many sellers).

The other change that will be added is the ability for sale items to be searched for by buyers. In a drop down, in the left navigation bar under buying options, buyers will be able to specifically look for reduced cost products. Whether this will come to the UK site remains to be seen. There are still significant differences between Markdown Manager in the US and UK, such as the ability to add Buy It Now listings to sales in the US. In the UK only Shop Inventory Format listings that have been live on the site for over 28 days are eligible to be included as sale items.

Making it easy for sellers to send email marketing and giving buyers the ability to search for items on sale makes perfect sense though. It can only encourage more sellers to use Markdown Manager to attract business.

Smarter Shop searches

A nice tweak today - or maybe I only just noticed it! - to eBay Shop searches: the same smart searching you get on the main site now works in shop-internal searches too. Searches that return zero results, but some close matches now show you the close matches:

I still think that eBay are sadly under-utilising the power of eBay Shops (Stores in the US, Boutiques in France and so on), but these little tweaks they are making in the way that Shops’ search results are presented do at least make them easier to use once you have the buyer in the door.

Your Featured shop is now a Premium Shop

eBay.com have signalled a change in the way eBay shops will be viewed in the future. It’s often been question exactly what a “Featured Shop” gets over and above a basic shop, but the new name of “Premium Shop” more accurately reflects it’s benefits. Featured shops were slightly elevated in the left navigation bar of search results but that is about as far as featured went. Premium implies additional benefits and that’s the real value.

In line with Germany eBay.com are cutting the price of Anchor Shops by 40% to $299.95. For both Anchor and Premium shops the number of email marketing that can be sent free is to increase and MarketPlace Research will be included in the price.

Of significantly more value all Premium Shops (in the US only) will gain access to eBay telephone support around the clock. If anyone’s ever wondered if it’s worth paying extra for a Featured shop 24/7 phone support has to be a compelling reason to upgrade!

It’ll be interesting to see how this translates to the UK. I’m guessing we’ll get a reduction in price of Anchor shops and MarketPlace Research included in the price, but I can’t see all eBay shops users getting telephone support just yet…. Maybe next year?

Shops links: eBay giveth, eBay taketh away

We were celebrating earlier this week that the Shops’ hub link has been added to the eBay UK header, but it seems the fight to get Shops’ links back where they belong (i.e. in buyers’ faces) isn’t over yet.

eBay announced at the beginning of the month that they’d be testing some new ways of displaying search results. One of the lucky 5% of members selected to see the new version was Martin from The Whirlpool Bath Shop, who was searching for his own items on eBay, and got taken to this page automatically. Conspicuous by its absence from the left hand side bar is the block of four featured shops.

As there is a huge white space just begging for a bit of content, it would be nice to know that this is just an oversight during the development process, and that in the final version, whatever it may be, the links will be restored.

Shops link in UK header

Some long-awaited good news for Shops’ owners this morning: the link to the Shops hub has finally appeared in eBay UK’s page header. I still think there’s a sad lack of awareness amongst buyers that Shops exist, and of what they do, so now’s the time to start pushing your Shop in your listings, and get them into the habit of clicking that lovely new link!

Shop Inventory could be harming your business

I recently had cause to examine listing strategies, for selling high value items, on eBay. Looking at items in the £2500.00 range there are normal choices of core, (Auction and Buy it Now (BIN) listings) and Shop Inventory Format (SIF).

Due to the high ticket price of the items auctions can be high risk, unless reserve prices are used. Although there’s a healthy market on eBay, if too many auctions are listed they will inevitably fail to reach acceptable prices, if you flood the market with auctions. Limiting the quantity of auctions will increase bids and it’s just not viable to list several per day to keep sell through rates high.

Reserve fees are punitive, at 2% for each £2500.00 item listed the reserve fee is £50.00, and it’s non-refundable! The only way to keep exposure on core site, to drive traffic to your eBay shop, is to use BIN listings.
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Shops links coming back home

Some good news for eBay Stores and Shops owners today. Firstly, the Stores link in the eBay.com header is coming back “over the next few days”. Changes are also on the way for the .com Stores Hub, adding “excitement, discoverability, and personalization” for Stores shoppers: hopefully this is an easier way to access favourite Stores and see more Stores in your favourite categories, which would be a great development.

Meanwhile on .co.uk, the return of the Shops tab to the homepage, alongside Motors and Express, has been promised for the end of this month. Though this was originally included in the UK’s new home page, it subsequently vanished in mysterious circumstances. We look forward to its safe return.

eBay Metrics from Top Sellers

There were four prolific sellers, Bob Buchanon, Jeniffer Canty, Cory Kosick and Chris Maki in the session hosted by eBay’s Matt Ledwith from Top Seller Development.

Questions were varied from the ever popular “Where can I source stock” Where Cory answered the time honoured “Research, research, research!” Then drop shipping, only Cory drop ships some product and even he recommended sellers start out with holding stock yourself to get experience on eBay and managing your buyers before you start outsourcing tasks.

Time saving was a big topic with two solutions offered. Some of the panel prefer to use third party software to automate tasks and several employ staff for everything from Customer Service to listing auctions. Jennifer has customer service reps working from home who handle enquires from potential and actual buyers which works well. Looking for student employees and offering flexible hours gets high calibre staff for lower than average wages.

Third party solutions used by the panel included ChannelAdvisor, Marketworks and Bob actually employed a software engineer to write a custom solution for finance and consignment tracking.

A great question was how do you grow and take your business forward without funds. Advice ranged from loads, to drop shipping to growing organically and Chris prointed out he left profits in the business for expansion.

The only weak answer was how do you raise the profile of your listings internationally. The suggestion to add postage costs to countries you want to ship to was good, but none of the panel suggested listing on eBay sites in the territories you want to sell to. Jennifer pointed out that selling to Europe is great for US sellers as the dollar is so weak at the moment.

If there was one thing that would have made the session more enjoyable it would have been for Cory not to push his software product quite as much. He did at times explain how sellers could save money, eg you need to analyse how many times you list an item before it sells and just how much it costs you in fees. His software can assist with this but mentioning it in every answer was over kill. Transfering slow moving items into shop (store) inventory instead of core listings is a great suggestion as well as cutting out slower moving lines entirely.

eBay Guardian Business Sense competition results

THe Guardian Business Sense Challenge 2007 winners have been announced. As predicted at the start of the competition the overall winner was laptopscrapyard aka Joe Williams who set out selling parts scavanged from broken laptops and fully-refurbished machines. Of course he had a head start as he already ran an IT support business and set up his eBay laptopscrapyard as a second income stream.

The runner up was Diane Davidson who sells Mexican hammocks on eBay as between-the-trees. She actually sold more in monetary value on eBay although laptopscrapyard completed more transactions. Diane also won the best packed item in a mystery shopper challange. The big challange for Diane was the two months it took to set up her business but says it gets easier to run as experience is gained.

Other contestants faced their own challenges, onegiantstepfootwear failed to secure a supplier and purchased goods at retail from UK highstreet stores. Although buying from the comfort of your home has it’s advantages paying retail prices for stock is never going to make a successful business, he’s already closed his eBay shop. Now Karl hopes to take the seed money from the competion to design and manufacture his own range of shoes.

David Hallworth of 100percentpurecotton admits he was unsure of his ability to sell quality cotton school uniforms on eBay and intends to set up his own website instead. Phyllis Avery trading as dollydoodle2007 found it tough setting up her business while holding down a full time job. Because she was manufacturing her own goods there just weren’t enough hours in the day but she’s in talks with publishers for the book rights to her creations.

Although I always thought laptopscrapyard would do well I’m impressed with the runner up, between-the-trees. Starting from nothing Diane has started a business with the potential to build for the future. She’s also making much better use of her eBay shop with promotion boxes to cross sell other items - click through her shop categories and see for yourself how she markets her products!

Who ate my breadcrumbs?

If you have an eBay Shop, you probably used to see a line of links across the top of your listings, showing which category and subcategory your listing was in. They were small links, but beautifully formed, enabling buyers to easily move up one level and see other items in your shop, even if they’d found you through a core listing rather than through your shop front. They were great… and now they’ve gone.

I noticed the links being missing a few days ago - though who knows when they actually went - from all my own Shops, and from those of half a dozen other sellers I’ve looked at. I assumed it was a temporary glitch, but obviously not. It remains to be seen whether this is another bug that will eventually be put right, or one more nail in the coffin of eBay Shops.

WAGs Boutique eBay shops success

It’s been a busy weekend for the WAGs selling in their eBay shops. They’ve sold an enormous amount of charity Willow Foundation and Great Ormond Street (GOSH) Hoodies and T-Shirts and their eBay shops have proved to be a roaring success. The picture shows just part of the shipment on it’s way to the Royal Mail today to be delivered to their buyers.

eBay has proved such a success they’re struggling to keep up with supplies but have more on order so it looks like another busy week for selling. They’ll be taking advantage of the cheap listing day on Thursday, but will be listing new items every day of the week so if you haven’t got your WAGs Boutique clothing on eBay yet it’s not too late!

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• Recent Comments

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