How to make your listings stand out on eBay
How to make your listings stand out on eBay
Before we begin, there is an important thing to remember. When trying to make your listings stand out in front of your competition on eBay, it is extremely important to not over-do it – don’t exaggerate. Try not to add a lot of coloured text, flashy elements or other annoying design elements.
Be the buyer!
Try to put yourself in the buyer’s shoes. Think about the last time you bought something on eBay, how did it go? What process did you go through?
In my experience, when buying on eBay, these are the 3 steps that people usually tend to follow:
- Search for an item that you want
- Refine your search
- Buy
The “Search” phase
The default search setting on eBay is “Best Match”. Most buyers don’t change that so let’s talk about how to make your item “Best Match”-worthy. As a buyer, think about the terms you would use to search the item you’re going to be selling. Start there, with your title. You only have 80 characters, so make good use of them!
Also, make sure you choose the right category for your item and be sure to use relevant keywords. eBay also considers a number of factors when ranking for “Best Match” and the relevance to the user’s search is one of them. A couple other factors include listing completeness, popularity of the item, seller’s reputation, etc.
It is also important to make your listing look professional. You can do this by either having a simple and elegant design applied to it and refraining from using words such as “amazing”, “cool”, “best deal”, etc.
Here’s another quick tip – before listing your own product, simply do a search for that product and see how your competitor’s listings look like, and try to improve upon them.
Refine
This is your time to shine. Some of the things potential buyers consider are the credibility of your listing, the quality of your images, the description, etc. As such, be sure to take great photos with adequate lighting and clutter-free background. Also try to include free and premium shipping options if possible.
Include ALL the details in the description. We mean everything – don’t just have a 10-word description that states the same thing as the title. I never, and I mean never purchase from sellers that literally copy and paste the title of the listing into the description box and call it a day. That’s a big deal-breaker for me personally.
The “Buy” phase
During the buy phase, the buyer is taking all of the things we just talked about into consideration, but the most important is the total price. Now, the buyer is asking themselves questions like, “If I buy from this seller, when will my item arrive? Will my item arrive? When it arrives, will it be as advertised?”
The buyer may be looking at “Buy it now” vs. auctions. Auctions are great because the buyer may be able to secure a lower price but there is some effort involved. You have to watch your item and have a bid strategy. If a buyer wants the item right away or doesn’t want to put in the effort, they may be willing to spend a few more pounds and just “Buy it now”. You can read more about auctions and how they work here.
A few more tips
Having a minimalist, yet elegant and modern-looking design is very important. When seeing a nice design applied to your listing, the buyer will always think “oh, this seller has invested some money into his business and image, so he must be trustworthy” (or at least that’s what I think personally).
As previously mentioned, it is also important to have a very comprehensive description. Be sure to include all the details about your product. (even the bad ones!)
Make sure your images are descriptive and high-quality, you can read more about that here. Use the proper and correct keywords and make sure the product is in the correct eBay category.
To sum up
In a nutshell, I would say that it is important to make it seem like you’ve invested time into creating the listing. If the listing (the photos, description, images, etc.) look rushed and/or are lacking, it looks unprofessional and untrustworthy and most definitely won’t stand out from the crowd.
Nonetheless, if you follow the tips shown above and if your products are high-quality and offered at great prices, we are sure that your listings will stand out from your competition.
