Securing and maintaining eBay’s Top-Rated Seller status should be high on any seller’s to do list. eBay education specialist Mark Buckingham offers a few top tips to help you bolster the fortunes of your eBay Empire …

 

Introduced in October, the Top-rated Seller programme distinguishes the cream of eBay sellers. There’s little proof thus far that not having it will significantly hurt your eBay sales, but it’s well worth going the extra mile to attain such hallowed status. Arguably, eBay have raised the bar a little too high for certain sellers – there are mixed feelings in the Powerseller community, especially amongst those selling large, heavy, or fragile items more prone to delivery complications – but TRS is here to stay and it is achievable for the majority:

• Strive for 5 stars: Avoiding low 1 and 2 stars is key to the Top-Rated programme, so communicate to your buyers the importance of Detailed Seller Ratings and feedback. Use your custom emails in Selling Manager Pro to keep your customers apprised, add compliment slips to remind your buyers where they bought the item from and highlight other special offers, and don’t hesitate to pick up the phone if a buyer isn’t happy.



• Get to grips with Best Match: From meeting eBay’s basic seller standards, to understanding recent sales score and impressions it’s well worth doing a little homework to get to grips with exactly how Best Match sorts matching listings. I’d go as far as to say this is the single main area most sellers I’ve talked to continue to neglect, to their disadvantage. Get Best Match savvy, and you’ll reap the rewards.

• Pick your ‘carrots’:  Top-Rated Seller is partly calculated by number of transactions, so consider adding cheaper cost-neutral lines that will sell in volume and could help pad out your feedback, and help absorb any low scores. It will also help generate extra footfall into your shop. Don’t forget to use Good-til-Cancelled multi-quantity listings to save you re-listing the item and jeopardising your sales-score.
• Manage buyer expectations: setting and exceeding expectations is all-important. In my experience, a buyer won’t mind waiting a week if they know in advance. If you’re shipping an item that will be pre-booked by the couriers using a 2-man delivery, ensure your buyer doesn’t expect it yesterday. It’s best to lower expectations and exceed, than promise a turnaround time you can’t realistically fulfil.

• Anticipate problems: LLook at your Detailed Seller Rating and feedback history and see where low scores and non-positive comments have been left, and look for trends. Perhaps particular lines in your shop catergory are more problematic than others? If so, take time to give those buyers extra-special customer service.
• Offer free P&P: this is part of the Best Match algorithm – eBay have announced that they give a boost to listings offering free P&P. Of course, there’s rarely such a thing as free carriage, but it pays to build it into your unit cost, or subsidise it as best you can. It simplifies the buyer experience and means less risk of buyers leaving low feedback for perceived high carriage cost. And anything that can help raise your sales can’t be a bad thing.
• Beat thy competition: Frooition customer’s already have an advantage over most sellers who don’t have a professional setup. But it still pays to know your competition and to be creative. Get into the habit of scouring eBay’s Completed Items searches and other research products like Terapeak, to see what your competitors are fairing. Look carefully to see what value other sellers are offering and see how you can add more value and stand out from the crowd. Be creative. Consider embellishing your gallery thumbnails and consider adding a subtitle if you haven’t already. Even stating the RRP and amount saved might mean the difference between a winning a loyal buyer or giving your competitors the upper hand. And we don’t want that.

Here’s wishing you every success!

www.NetSeek.co.uk

Mark Buckingham

eBay business consultant

eBay have recently released a great set of guides to helps sellers get on top of their game and become lean mean selling machines!

Clearly a lot of effort has been spent on these guides and there is a wealth of great information to help sellers streamline operations and spend more time making money.

Topics Include:

• Ecommerce Essentials
• Streamlined Listings
• Inventory Management
• Shipping Strategies
• Customer Relationship Management
• Business Optimization

“Give yourself the time and resources you need to grow your business. By implementing the right processes, you’ll be able to streamline operations, keep your business running at a great pace, and free up time to plan for the future.”

Excerpt from Powerup Efficiency Insert.pdf

Read more great articles and get tips on streamlining your business

eBay Have launched their Green Team Challenge which encourages shoppers to purchase 2nd hand or recycled products rather than buy new in an effort to save energy and lower our carbon foot prints.

“Did you realize that buying a previously-worn pair of leather shoes on eBay versus new in a store saves more energy than an average household uses in a day!”

If you take the challenge on Earth day (April 22nd) then eBay will protect 1 acre of rain forest. (As well as giving you the chance to win $10,000!)

We think this is a great idea and encourage you all to sign up

Best Match is the process by which eBay sort search results, and the higher your listings appear in Best Match the more likely it is that a buyer will make a purchase from you.

It’s important to realise that auctions and fixed price listings are sorted differently. In general auctions are still sorted by time ending soonest, but are then combined with fixed price listings to produce the final sort order (often alternately auction, fixed price, auction, fixed price, but if there are more of one type of listing than the other the frequency may vary).

eBay’s initial sort order for fixed price items is according to “Best Value” or “Popularity”. eBay consider the measure of Best Value to be based upon how often a buyer purchases an item in comparison to how often it appears in search results. If an item title contains irrelevant keywords it may initially appear high in search results, but as it gains search impressions (as buyers view the item title in search results) if it doesn’t attract purchases it’ll quickly drop down the search results sort order.

An interesting by product of listing popularity is that some sellers have reported ending a listing with no sales and re-launching a brand new listing for an identical product often gives it higher placement in search results. This is because a listing with 100 views in search and no sales is viewed by eBay as less popular and thus less likely to sell than a listing with no, or few, search impressions and no sales. If the previously unsold item appears higher in search results it naturally stands more chance of being purchased, and the more purchases a listing attracts the higher in search results that it appears leading to ever more sales.

“eBay perceive items offering free postage to be attractive to buyers and listings that don’t charge additional postage costs get a small boost in search results.”

Once search results are ordered according to popularity there are two other main factors which can bump a listing even higher on the search results page. The first is if the seller is a Top Rated Seller. Top Rated Seller status is based on customer service, as measured by the four Detailed Seller Ratings for Item Description, Communication, Dispatch Time and Postage & Packing Charges. To qualify sellers need to ensure they don’t receive more than the maximum allowable low (one or two star) scores for any particular Detailed Seller Rating.

The second boost in search results is smaller, but is for offering free postage. eBay perceive items offering free postage to be attractive to buyers and listings that don’t charge additional postage costs get a small boost in search results.

There is one other important criteria which can affect your placement in Best Match search results and that is if your Seller Performance drops below standard as measured by Detailed Seller Ratings. Sellers who receive too many one or two star ratings will have their listings lowered right to the bottom of search results. This includes both fixed price, and auction listings. Even if you have an auction which is about to end it will appear on the last page of search results below a newly listed auction which still has ten days left to run if you’re listings are being demoted in search.

Although Top Rated Seller status is desirable to get a boost in search position, in comparison the demotion in search from being a below standard seller is devastating. In effect your items will be hidden from buyers and it’s likely your items will only be found if they’re particularly rare and there aren’t many alternatives on the site, or by savvy buyers specifically looking for a bargain.

Ultimately doing a good job as an eBay seller will get your listings to the top of Best Match. Avoid underhand tactics such as keyword spamming in product titles and keep customer service standards high to avoid demotion in search. You’ll still need to source products which buyers want to buy and offer them at a competitive price, but a good listing title and clear pictures and great descriptions to make sure buyers purchase when then view you listing will go a long way to ensure your items are placed well in search.

Finally many sellers are concerned that they’ve not qualified as Top Rated Sellers. If you’re not a Top Rated Seller don’t worry as although their listings are boosted in search recent sales and eBay’s measure of popularity are more important. So long as you’re not a below standard seller whose listings are being demoted it doesn’t matter if a competitor is a Top Rated Seller and you’re not – if you’re offering a great product at a good price and attracting more sales than your competitors then it will be your listing that is appearing at the top of Best Match search results.

With 2010 already proving to be a hugely busy and successful year to date in the evolution of Frooition, we are buoyed by yet another piece of significant news that the eBay Certified Provider Program has announced Frooition as a new Certified Provider helping eBay sellers increase sales with design, marketing and consulting tools and services, once again confirming and consolidating the business’s position as the world’s major recognised eBay design firm:

New eBay Certified Provider – Frooition; Brings Design, Consulting and Marketing Services to eBay Sellers

New eBay Certified Provider, Frooition

The eBay Certified Provider Program is pleased to announce Frooition as a new Certified Provider helping eBay sellers increase sales with design, marketing and consulting tools and services.

Frooition is an experienced eBay Store and listing designer. Frooition specializes in providing design services for eBay, other online channels and website design. In addition to design services, Frooition also provides software for eBay sellers to help easily manage their eBay Store, listings and cross-promotions.

U.S. and international sellers will find Frooition can help grow their eBay business. Frooition can help an eBay seller assure buyers they deliver quality merchandise and customer service with professionally designed eBay Stores or listing templates. eBay sellers can also have Frooition custom design their eBay Store, listing templates or websites specific to their brand.

• Design services customized to your specifications
• Create a professional appearance for your eBay business and stand out from the crowd
• Create recognition and bring in repeat customers and purchases with memorable design

eBay sellers can improve their sales performance with Frooition’s advanced search functionality built into their eBay template or eBay Store.

• Professionally designed and easy to navigate eBay Stores and templates help keep buyers within a sellers listing/Store
• Dynamically display and cross-promote additional products and categories within your Store
• For example: Top 5 cross promotions change dynamically as a seller’s products sell out – no need to constantly reset cross promotions

eBay Seller Testimonials

“They have helped us to grow our business by providing us with a well designed, professional storefront and ad template that our customers love.”

“Frooition possesses a very strong understanding of the eBay shopper and what they are looking for in terms of usability and design.”

Frooition is a leading provider of eBay store and listing designs. Frooition provide design services for most other online sales channels as well as website design. Frooition has been working with the eBay platform more than 4 years and has clients in the USA, Canada and Europe.

The UK is officially out of recession, with GDP growing a tenth of one percent in the period October to December 2009. That’s a disappointment to economists as the forecast was for four tenths, but for the country as a whole it’s still a positive indicator that the economy is starting to recover.

One worry is that the economy is still fragile and there’s the possibility of a “Double Dip” recession if the recovery stalls and GDP shrinks in the first quarter of 2010. Over the last year the economy has contracted by around six to seven percent, and without a recession growth should have been around four percent so the country has seen a loss of around ten percent of GDP over the course of the last year.

Exiting recession may be less significant for much of the general population. Companies who have seen their balance sheet shrink won’t be offering pay rises any time soon. Personal finances are still precarious for much of the country and it’s likely that interest rate rises or increased personal taxation as governments try to balance the books will continue to put pressure on consumers and businesses alike.

There is some encouragement for online retailers. Unsurprisingly with the government scrappage scheme, motor traders have contributed to the increase in GDP, but retail was an equally large sector which assisted in the country exiting the recession.

The next quarter will be a valuable indicator as to just how well the economy is recovering. It’s not surprising that retail sales are strong in the run up to Christmas, now it’s essential that consumers carry on spending in the first quarter of the New Year, which once the sales are over, is the time of year credit card bills from the holiday spending have to be paid.

“According to research undertaken by PayPal over one in six adults claim to now save up for things they want to buy rather than use a credit card which is what they would have done before the downturn.

Equally important over half of shoppers have become more price conscious and are much more likely to bargain hunt than make impulse purchases.”

At the same time as careful purchasing the British Bankers Association reports that households’ unsecured borrowing contracted throughout the year, particularly on personal loans. Consumers are looking to cut debt and purchase wisely, especially the 17% of men who are more likely to negotiate with retailers since the recession started.

For online retailers the picture is better than for their offline counterparts. Firstly their cost base is generally considerably lower and secondly their potential audience is considerably larger. Exports from the UK are particularly attractive at the moment due to the low value of Sterling (which dropped to €1.14 and $1.61 on the news of lower than expected GDP growth). Currently products from the UK are particularly attractive to mainland Europe and all online retailers should be marketing to overseas customers and ensuring that simple steps such as making sure shipping costs are displayed to European consumers.

In addition to overseas sales online sellers should be considering holding a sale. This applies both to websites and to eBay where Markdown Manager can be used. A sale used in conjunction with your email marketing to drive traffic is an effective way of encouraging buyers to revisit your products. With people looking to negotiate on price any discount offered is an encouragement to purchase.

One sector that online merchants should address is the Amazon marketplace. Having just reported their fourth quarter earnings their growth rate is 42%. That’s an amazing growth rate and with Comscore reporting at year on year ecommerce growth at around 3%, Amazon is by far outperforming the market. (To put it into perspective eBay reported growth of around 4%).

Amazon, at least in the UK, has hardly got started; currently they’re still well known for media – books, CDs, DVDs. With a raft of categories ranging from Home and Garden, Toys, Sports and Leisure and DIY there’s every indication that Amazon will continue to grow. Online merchant should be benefitting from Amazon growth by becoming a third party seller on the site if they’re not already.

The economic outlook is improving for the UK, but the turnaround is lagging behind to Germany, France and much of Europe. Online merchants should look to Europe and Amazon for growth, and continue to market to the UK with value propositions and where appropriate use discounting.

eBay have announced the end of mandatory free postage in many categories and instead introduced postage caps. There are a number of arguments for and against sellers offering their customers free postage, the most compelling of which is that “buyers like it”, but do they?

Partly the argument for buyers liking free postage is that it makes the purchase decision simple. The price you see is the price you pay, and there’s no need to do any simple addition to get the total price. However buyers aren’t stupid and they know that there is no such thing as “free”. “Free postage” should be more correctly named “Postage included”.

One of the overriding reasons for eBay to back track on their mandatory free post is that it simply doesn’t work for sellers. Too many have complained that being forced to offer free postage impacts on their margins to such an extent that they simply stopped listings certain product lines on the site.

Sellers who previously operated on a 99p no reserve auction format simply would take the risk that their item might sell for just 99p, but then cost them many times that in shipping fees. Free post has pretty much killed off the low start auction, which is without a doubt the best way to achieve the highest sale price. An auction starting at £8.99, because it’s a heavy item and will cost £8.00 to post, simply doesn’t appear as attractive as the same product priced at 99p plus £8.00 postage.

Others complained that mandatory free post was forced upon them too widely and that whilst in principle they agreed it could be desirable to buyers, in many cases it was to the buyer’s detriment. Take the example of a DVD seller:

Previously offering DVDs with say £2.00 postage for the first item and no extra for additional item purchased at the same time, with mandatory free post that £2.00 had to be added into the cost. An £8.99 DVD would now cost £10.99 which you may say is exactly that same cost as before. What happens if a buyer wants to buy two or three DVDs though? With free postage they’ll effectively be paying £2.00 delivery for each item, and there’s now no incentive to make multiple purchases from a single seller. At a stroke free postage wipes out every incentive for buyers to increase their average order value, and as any seller worth their salt knows average order value is the single greatest key to profitability.

“eBay’s original supposition for imposing mandatory free post was that it as well as being attractive to buyers it would also remove unreasonably high postage charges from the site. Replacing free postage with postage caps will achieve the same aim.”

Heavier items are even more troublesome; products which due to their weight incur a courier charge naturally cost more to ship than a DVD. If the shipping cost is built into the purchase price not only is there a disincentive for buyers to make multiple purchases but there’s no way for the seller to offer discounts for multiple purchases. A buyer wishing to purchase five items weight 5kg each will pay five courier fees whilst the seller can ship them for one fee in a single parcel. This might be attractive to sellers as they’re making great margins, but the reality is that the buyer is more likely simply to purchase elsewhere.

eBay’s original supposition for imposing mandatory free post was that it as well as being attractive to buyers it would also at a stroke remove unreasonably high postage charges from the site. Replacing free postage with postage caps will achieve the same aim, but will give sellers the freedom to use postage discounts as incentives to encourage multiple purchases again. The return of maximum shipping charges, discounted postage for second or subsequent items, and even optional free postage for sellers that wish to continue offering it give sellers the ability to differentiate themselves from the competition.

One other side effect of free postage has been to lower the quality of service on eBay. When sellers are forced to offer free postage, as the first shipping option displayed to buyers, they naturally choose the cheapest service. This will be the slowest worst postage option that they offer and yet it’s the one recommended by default to buyers.

Sellers should be offering a premium postage option to their customers. Encourage buyers to choose next day, tracked, signed for services – the quicker the product gets to the customer and the more secure the delivery method the better feedback is likely to be, and importantly sellers Detailed Seller Ratings should improve. If buyers downgrade to a cheaper (or free) postage option they’ll know they’ve selected a slower service and it automatically sets their expectations that it’ll be a couple of days before their item arrives.

The end of mandatory free postage once again gives sellers the ability to offer reasonable shipping costs, discounts for multiple purchases and the ability to guide buyers towards premium delivery options. That’s good news for buyers, for sellers and for eBay themselves.

Server Maintenance, Advance Notice

On the following date, Monday 18th January 2010, Frooition will be implementing upgrades to its server infrastructure. During the times of 6am to 9am (GMT) the Frooition software will not be accessible.

Please note that this maintenance will only affect the use of the Frooition software, eBay Shops and Listings should remain unaffected during this period.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Kind Regards,
Frooition

We’ve been snowed under with new clients, eBay store designs, eBay listing template installations, and generally throwing out loads of new designs onto the eBay marketplace!

Our Latest client to be installed is JLK Comics.

Ben, one of our designers recently completed this design, and we all love the high impact, action packed imagery! Joseph, the owner of this eBay Shop, loves the design and we’re really happy with how it turned out too!

CLIENT OVERVIEW

Package Purchases: eBay Store & Listing Template Design (UK – eBay Shop Design | US – eBay Store Design)
Designer: Ben Abolins

Frooition’s Base platform for eBay Design (FrooitionBase) has been featured in an article on techradar.com!

FrooitionBase eBay Store and Listing Design Tool
The most successful sellers on eBay know the value of a eye-catching, user-friendly listing and shop frontage. Frooition’s new entry-level eBay store and listing design solution is just the ticket if you’re on a tight budget. Like their professional eBay design service, it deals with all aspects of your brand on eBay and simplifies the process of getting listings looking professional and working effectively without flailing around with HTML. You can sign up for a free 30 day trial and it’s £15 per month thereafter.

Mark Buckingham covers a host of essential eBay tools (eBay pulse, terapeak, just ship it….) with a little overview on each. The article is a great read, and comes highly recommended for anyone looking to improve their eBay business in both automation & turnover.

You can read the full article here: http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/web/10-killer-apps-for-ebay-buyers-and-sellers-528505?