With Christmas fast approaching (no, I am not going to stop mentioning it!) It’s a good time to start thinking about simple ‘tweaks’ you can make to your eBay strategy in order to increase your online sales.
With that in mind here are 3 easy-to-implement quick-to-take-effect suggestions (although I can’t take the credit for the first!)
Increase your online sales with these 3 super-easy tips:
1. Boost Your Feedback Rating:
At the end of July when the summer was stretching out before you and you were probably looking forward to a little bit of time off I wrote an article about feedback – and how to get more of it.
You can read that article here
Well, I recently received an email from a newsletter reader who has come up with an ingenious strategy for taking feedback to new heights!
You’ll remember I suggested adding a typed note to every parcel you dispatch yourself? Good. Now, after that newsletter went out, I received an email from Ian who suggested making those notes handwritten…
” Hi Amanda
In answer to the handwritten notes subject. It can be used for high volume sales. I found the nicest handwriting – this turned out to be my daughter’s, put the script together and sent it into my printers (Small, Good & Cheap).
They professionally printed off a couple of thousand, which cost me under £100. All I have to do is add the Christian name into the ” Dear [Blank]” space and put it into the parcel. Quick!
I use the same black pen that the original was written in for their name and the customer then thinks that you have personally written it out especially for them. (Well you have, albeit automatically!) Works every time!
I’ve had marvellous feedback just on this subject. One would have to put something into the parcel anyway so why not a handwritten note?
Ian”
Thank you Ian, I think this is a great idea and it appears to be very cost effective.
So what price feedback? Is it worth spending one hundred quid doing this and gaining a better reputation or is a typed note enough? If anyone tries this method I’d be interested to hear about your results…
2. Use your title space wisely!
Don’t forget that you can now use up to 80 characters in your eBay listing title rather than the previous 55 characters. This is advantageous to you and means you now have no excuses for not maximizing your keywords and getting found by potential buyers in the searches!
I have to say that although this is a good move by eBay, the one fly in the ointment here is that although you can edit your active Buy It Now listings, you can only do so if you haven’t made any sales from that listing.
This means that if you have a Good Till Cancelled listing and have built up a huge sales history over time, you will have to end that listing and relist (therefore losing the sales history) in order to add your extra keywords.
This is a bit of a pain but isn’t a complete disaster. Having built up your sales history, when you relist, your search position should theoretically remain the same as eBay will associate your relisted item and keywords with your past listing history. Your previous sales won’t appear in your history for that listing though so please be aware of this!
3. Increase traffic with online directories:
I’ve mentioned online directories before as a great way to get extra traffic to your products and there are quite a few of these around. Usually with these kind of directories you simply register your business name, write a little bit about your products or business, add your contact details and all this appears online.
But I’ve discovered an online directory where you can advertise your business as a whole and actually include details and links of all the different parts of your business on one site.
This is great if you sell in multiple places, for example, eBay, Amazon and from your own website because you can add all of them at once.
What’s more it’s absolutely free!
If you’d like to take a look, go to Every Place I Sell and register (you’ll get approval within a few hours).
Once you have been approved, log in and simply start adding the information about your businesses to the site. It’s a very straightforward form with drop-down boxes so that you can select from a number of different venues depending on where you sell. You’ll be asked to add your business name, eBay shop name or Amazon ID along with the links to your stores. You can also add keywords, a short description, payment options and an image.
Once you’re done (and it will only take you about 5 minutes), your listing will be approved and then it will be searchable within the Every Place I Sell directory. Simple as that!
Now here’s the really good bit; your directory listing will also be picked up by search engines such as Google and Yahoo and that’s how you’re going to ensure that you get those extra visitors to your product listings. This is why it’s really important that you make use of the keyword option when you complete the listing form on Every Place I Sell.
Your listing will then appear on the site for 120 days before it expires. You will need to log in to the site approximately once a month and update or check your listing, but you’ll receive a reminder to do this so don’t worry!
If you do forget or miss a reminder and your listing expires completely you can simply log in, update your listing and once it is re-approved it will be visible on the site again.
Remember, it’s free, it only takes minutes to set up and will allow you to expand the reach of your online business, which is always a good thing!