If you want to join 25 million eBay sellers and stand out, then we’ve just the tips for you. eBay generates billions of revenue in sales and is the second leading marketplace in the US, making it a popular platform for eCommerce sellers looking to increase sales through additional selling channels.
In this post, we take you through the top eBay seller tips every beginner needs so that they can win with eBay and push more eCommerce sales with multichannel selling.
1. Start With the Right Products
The first step to winning on eBay is ensuring you sell the right products. Additionally, you should start by testing a few products and then expand as you go. This means choosing products from your inventory that are:
- Original and unique to what is already selling
- Easy to ship without increasing your current fulfillment costs
- Likely to fit into eBay’s most popular categories and trends
2. Put Some Effort into ‘About Me’ Pages
Like with any selling channel, you want to brand your eBay account. This means putting effort into your eBay ‘About’ page to ensure you look trustworthy as a seller and establish branding. Branding it with your logo and providing links to your online store website, other auctions, and stratified eBay buyers.
3. Set the Right Prices and Adapt in Real-Time
Pricing is another crucial element of a successful eBay product auction. You want to ensure that your prices align with the platform’s going rate. If you’re a new seller, you could start lower than the average until you’ve built up demand. You also want to make sure you’re using suitable payment options. On eBay, you have three pricing options for two instances:
- If you’re testing a few products on the platform without opening an eBay store
- Auctions with a ‘Buy It Now’ price - where buyers can bid or buy now
- Fixed price format - where buyers buy the product for the sales price without bidding
- Store item format - which is specifically for sellers with eBay stores
Each of the price formats will have different fees involved. As you grow your eBay business, you will also need to keep a close eye on the current and fluctuating prices and use a repricing tool to adjust, within your margins, in real-time.
Beginner Tip: Here’s a summary of eBay’s subscriber benefits and store fees, which you should consider when pricing your products:
4. Have a Solid Fulfillment Strategy
As you increase channels, you will need to consider that specific channel fulfillment norms. You should be asking yourself questions such as: Can I meet the channel’s delivery time averages? Are there additional shipping costs to consider when pricing for the platform?
With eBay, you can use either your current fulfillment for the channel or eBay’s fulfillment service. The latter is worth considering if you’re a US seller using eBay to break into a new international market. Here’s a full breakdown of eligibility:
If you’re planning on incorporating eBay sales into your current fulfillment strategy, look at delivery times and costs from the platform to ensure you are not losing your profits. Also, don’t forget to investigate eBay’s Guaranteed Delivery.
Bonus Tip: Prepare Your Business for International Shipping in 6 Steps
5. Put Effort into Customer Service
Good customer service goes a long way on eBay, just as with any eCommerce marketplace. This means responding to queries promptly, putting effort into your unboxing experience, and communicating with your customers every step of the sales process. eBay has some automation tools such as return automation rules that streamline your return process. You can read all about the policy in full here.
7. Understand that Feedback Matters
Reviews and positive store feedback go a long way to building trust and pushing eBay conversions. You should be aiming for a good feedback score to ensure eBay seller performance and improve your rating. This means that all your products should be described, and you communicate well with sellers, offer good dispatch times, and accurately display shipping costs - all of which improve seller rating and your chances of good feedback. You will then need to set up systems to try and get satisfied buyers to leave their feedback. Here are a few options to get you started:
- Use eBay’s automated feedback reminder.
- Send messages to customers a week after they receive their product to make sure all is good and request feedback. You can also try including a voucher or promotion.
- Find low-priced products you can quickly flip to build feedback as a new seller.
8. Drive Sales with eBay Promoted Listings
eBay promoted listings will ensure you can boost visibility among the many eBay listings, getting your products front and center to your potential customers. Unlike other marketplace search ads, you are only charged when a buyer clicks on your promoted listing and purchases the promoted item within 30 days. In one case study, an electronic seller could increase their sales by 179% by using promoted listings; with stats like that, it is well worth the spend.
9. Optimize eBay Listings for Search and Shoppers
When loading your products to eBay, you want to optimize your listings and descriptions for potential buyers and the platform. This means using the right keywords in your listings, making sure your category selection is correct, creating clear product titles, and highlighting features in your product descriptions. Here are some tips to get you started:
- Don’t keyword stuff. You want to aim for up to five keywords that organically fit into the product descriptions and titles.
- Make sure your titles and descriptions are accurate, unambiguous, and concise.
- Offer at least two weeks for returns as this will help make you more trustworthy to a new buyer.
- Be transparent with shipping and other additional fees.
10. Manage Your Multichannel Inventory Like a Pro
Lastly, when adding a new channel to your eCommerce selling business, you must stay on top of inventory in real-time. Multichannel management platforms like StoreAutomator will help you manage your product listings, map your content data, create pricing strategies per platform, and manage product feeds and inventory across multiple channels. All are ensuring you can increase your sales without increasing your admin.
Bonus Content: Guidelines for Creating Product Descriptions Per Selling Channel
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There you have it, top eBay seller tips that you need to push conversions on this channel.
Still undecided about multichannel selling? Here are the top reasons to become a multi-channel business in 2019.