A heads up this week on something new that could be very advantageous to you if you sell on eBay!
Wherever you are selling, your reputation is extremely important, particularly if you are a newbie and are building your online reputation.
Positive comments about your products and service instill confidence and trust in buyers and potential buyers and this is true not just on eBay but anywhere you are selling your products, including your own website.
On eBay you get feedback and DSR’s (Detailed Seller Ratings).
On Amazon you get star ratings and comments.
On your website you should always display your positive customer testimonials.
But how much emphasis do you actually put on feedback and how important is it really?
Well, it’s extremely important! And even more so now because eBay have just launched a new feature that’s all about the feedback!
eBay have started displaying feedback on listings that relates to the ‘specific’ product listed – BUT it’s not appearing on all listings yet!
I’m informed that you’ll need to use a Good Till Cancelled (GTC) listing and then the link should appear automatically – however it’s appearing on some of my own listings and not on others – so I’m assuming that a certain amount must be sold and have received feedback before this ‘specific’ feedback link appears.
Just to explain, on a listing, just below the number sold you’ll see a new link that says ‘see feedback’ – just like this:
When you click on the ‘see feedback’ link you’ll get a pop-up showing positive, neutral and negative feedback received by the specific seller of the product and for that specific product – just like this:
And I think this is genius (and it’s not often I say that about changes eBay make!)
This is a brilliant idea from eBay and will give real confidence to a buyer (assuming that you have great feedback for the product!).
Positive, neutral and negative feedbacks are shown – there’s no option to pick and choose – so it’s in your interest to make sure you have a great product that is garnering great feedback – so you can see now why I say that positive feedback is extremely important!
Don’t annoy your customers!
But here’s the thing. Not all customers leave feedback, so how can you make sure that you get those all important positive feedbacks to help you make more sales?
And, how do you get your customers to leave positive feedback for you without coming across as pushy, annoying or obsessive?
There’s a fine line! I once read a post in a forum about a seller requesting feedback so many times from one buyer and being so pushy that eventually instead of the nice green positive they expected, they ended up with a big red dot simply because the buyer got so annoyed.
It’s important to remember that eBay automatically send an email to your buyers who haven’t left you any feedback after about a month to remind them to do so, so there really isn’t any need for you to email them as well.
Feedback is optional, not compulsory!
My advice is, let eBay handle the reminders for you automatically and if a buyer wants to leave feedback they will. You cannot force feedback!
However, the good news is that you can give things a little bit of a gentle nudge.
Each time you dispatch an order to a customer, include a simple note displaying the details of their item, the cost, your eBay ID, the name of your shop, how they can contact you if they need to and importantly a message thanking them for purchasing. This is what it could say:
“Thank you so much for purchasing. I hope you are delighted with your item. Please leave me feedback so that I know you are happy!”
It’s not pushy, it’s not demanding. It’s just a nice little note. It’s not even handwritten – you can type these up in advance and pop one in every parcel that you send and you’ll soon see more buyers start to leave you feedback.
Honestly, it’s so simple and you would be surprised at how many sellers don’t actually do this.
This will work for both eBay and Amazon. You can re-word your note slightly if you have your own website, to read:
“Thank you so much for ordering from ‘yourstorename’. We hope you are delighted with your purchase. We love receiving your feedback and comments so please feel free to contact us at ‘youremailaddress’. We look forward to hearing from you”
If you’re not already doing this, then my advice is to start now. It’s more important now than ever before to ensure you receive good feedback and that you monitor it regularly to check all is positive.