Whoever said perfection is unattainable obviously just didn’t try hard enough. At RepricerExpress, we’ve uncovered the top tips for perfect eBay listings to help you reach the highest level and leave your eBay competition behind.
1. Understand eBay’s Algorithm
One of the best things you can do to boost your listings’ ratings is super simple: copy and paste your title right above your product listing. Not only does it provide a seamless segue into what your product is all about, but it’s an easy way to keep yourself imprinted in buyers’ minds.
2. Be Vocal About What Your Brand Is
Want to know how many people in the world will ask you, and ask you often, about your brand? One — your mother. Everyone else will need to be told straight from the source, so don’t be shy about doing so.
But instead of just waving a sign around and saying, ‘Look what I can do!’, think about the strategy you’ll employ. Prepare an elevator pitch, pick a unique name and logo, and be consistent in how and where you display this (hint: just about everywhere).
3. Don’t Overthink Things Too Much
Selling on eBay requires a lot of hard work and effort, but there’s a fine balance between trying too hard and not trying enough. Take your listings, for example. All you need is to describe the main points and how it can fit into a buyer’s life. There’s no need to get all Dostoyevsky on it when a paragraph will do.
4. Simplify, Simplify, Simplify
Closely tied to the above point is not complicating matters. Writing too much or too little is one thing, and layout is another. Be consistent with everything you do and don’t try and blow your buyers’ minds with every product they browse. If you have product details in one section, keep it that way and don’t include images or terms there. People like familiarity when it comes to shopping online, not having to puzzle things out with a map each time they visit.
5. Jump Onboard the Photo Gallery Bandwagon
It’s pretty rare to see a product that doesn’t have any accompanying or original photos, but taking it one step further and employing a gallery has more gaps. Unless you’re selling something like sheets of paper, you’ll want to show different physical aspects of the product and a gallery is perfect for that. Plus, it gives buyers a chance to verify the image’s details with the written details later on down the page.
6. Speaking of Images…
Make them of high quality. With the increasing inexpensiveness of DSLR/mirrorless cameras and abundance of photography tutorials today, there’s no excuse to learn the basics of shooting a good image.
But if, for some reason, the tutorials don’t make sense, remember these seven tips:
- Use as much light as possible, but go with midday sun instead of flash.
- Set up the image in front of a neutrally-coloured background (white is best) so the product has a chance to star on its own without any other competition.
- Photograph the product from the front, back and sides.
- Document flaws (if there are any) so shoppers have a chance to see exactly what it looks like.
- Shoot in RAW mode so you have as much to work with as possible in editing.
- Rest the camera against something like a chair or table so there are no shakes.
- Avoid filters at all cost — this is your business page, not Instagram.
7. Display Your Versatility
You sell products online, okay, but what else can/do you do? Everyone on eBay sells products, so you’ve got to find a way to differentiate yourself from the competition.
The layout of eBay is somewhat limited in its scope and versatility, but you can still show off your skill in alternative products, like cross-selling and upselling to related accessories.
Plus, this is one of the best ways of boosting sales and eBay profits, so be assertive in showing off the full breadth of your inventory.
How to Write the Perfect eBay Listing
1. Understand How You Write Best
Think back to every essay you’ve ever written and analysed your writing style. Are you more the type of person who starts with an outline and adds details as you go, or do you just sit in front of your computer and start writing? If you’re the former, then focusing on crafting a good title is a good place to start if you’re looking for inspiration for the rest of the listing and there are a few points to keep in mind when writing it:
- Start with the colour of the product, followed by the manufacturer’s name (plus gender, if necessary) and then the name of the product itself, and the size if it applies (e.g. Adidas Street Graphic Crew Neck Sweatshirt). Adding in the condition at the end is also a good idea.
- Because title real estate is at a premium with 80 characters, don’t waste any on filler words like ‘wow’ or ‘amazing’, or even punctuation marks. While you want to make sure everything’s spelt correctly, you don’t have to worry about grammatical correctness. Or even using up all the 80 characters.
- I know you’ll come across plenty of listings with titles written in all caps, but please, don’t do this. I get that you want to make your ad STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD, but using camel case just makes it easier to read and understand.
Now, maybe you were the kind of writer who just started writing and writing before making an outline. If that’s the case, then craft a good listing first, and the title will naturally follow as a sort-of summary to everything you’ve typed.
2. Make Conversion Rates One of Your Top Priorities
The formula for calculating your conversion rate (i.e. how many people buy something who’ve clicked on your page, and you can sign up for free for the Listing Analytics) is simple: number of views divided by number of items sold. Most eBay pages’ conversion rates hover around the 2% mark, although this will vary depending on what category you’re selling in and if you’re selling domestically v. internationally.
But set yourself a goal of trying to consistently get into the double digits with at least some products, and do that by placing yourself in the mindset of your buyer. There are a few main things nearly every buyer thinks about when shopping online and they include:
- The honesty and professionalism of the seller. Do this by increasing the number of reviews you have, and provide links to your social media accounts to show there’s a real person behind the curtain.
- How quickly (and at what cost) the item will arrive. Free shipping is ideal, and fight like mad to figure out a way to make it happen.
- And if the product is what they’re looking for and/or has the features they’re interested in. The product listing is the time to do this, but avoid huge walls of text that’ll only overwhelm the buyer.
You can see why spending time on the listing-writing part is pretty important! But let’s say you’ve filled everything in perfectly and there’s a customer who still has questions about the product. Make yourself available by responding to their queries really fast (even if you think the information is already in the listing).
Another way of crafting the perfect eBay listing is to take a look at what your competitors are doing and one-up them. If they’re only offering a one-year warranty on the same product you’re selling, double the sweetness by putting in a two-year warranty. Or if you can’t do that, consider adding in an extra little something, like a pair of little earbuds to an iPad. You get the picture — in your listing, prove to buyers that yours is the only one to even consider.
3. Create a Visually Appealing Listing
Lastly, the perfect eBay listing focuses on just being plain awesome to look at. What we mean by this are not just great pictures, whether it’s the item shown from different angles or even just photos of you/your staff in various settings, but also the design layout. Play around with colour psychology schemes that reflect the nature of your inventory, and then stick to just two colours in the listing (i.e. the main colour, and its contrasting colour).
Final Thoughts
Becoming a superstar seller doesn’t happen overnight, and almost never by yourself. That’s why when you get started with your free trial of RepricerExpress, you’ll be just that much closer to the ecommerce equivalent of being a rockstar.
