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Analyze trends : See what your competitors are selling and what the average prices in your category are. Read more
Review inventory : You don’t want to have the orders canceled because items are suddenly out of stock, right?
Keep processing time and shipping settings up-to date : See beforehand how much time you need to pack up the item, hand it off to the carrier before it is sent, and what shipping type is going to be used. Read more
Take festive photos : Feel the holiday vibes and make your listings even more attractive! Read more
Include details : Customers want to know all the specifics about the size, material, and condition of your items. Read more
Adapt for smartphones : More than 50% of holiday purchases will be made from mobile devices, so when formatting your listings keep the small screens in mind. Read more
Create a festive Store : Customize your Store to bring out the festive vibes, stand out among other sellers and drive the traffic to the items that you need to sell the most. Read more
eBay’s tool Terapeak can help you see what your competitors are selling and what the average prices in your market are. It uses recent eBay supply, demand, and pricing data to help you determine what to sell, when to sell it, and at what price. Research market trends based on real data from millions of eBay transactions to effectively strategize your sales.
While Terapeak Sourcing Insights is free for eBay Store subscribers from Basic and upper, Terapeak Product Research available for free to all sellers.
For buyers, knowing when they can expect an item to arrive is an important factor when making a purchase. That’s why eBay always shows an expected delivery date on listings.
Sellers should pay attention to their estimated delivery dates – this is especially important for buyers during sales season to get their items right on time or receive it by a certain date!
The estimated delivery date shown to buyers on your listings is based on various factors, including:
Time it takes you to pack and send items (your dispatch or handling time)
Delivery or courier services you offer
Your past delivery performance (on the aspects of delivery that you can control)
Other criteria (such as carrier performance, the location of your item and your buyer’s delivery address)
Think how much time you need to prepare the item, fully pack it up, and hand it off to the carrier before it is sent. If you have items ready to dispatch quickly, let buyers know by setting a shorter handling time!
Don’t hesitate to suggest several shipping options and provide shoppers with a possibility to choose the expedited shipping. It is paid by a buyer – so no extra cost for you! – and won’t increase your final value fee if you have cheaper options set up as default.
Get new photos of your products to feel the holiday spirit Festive item photos will make your listing even more attractive.
According to eBay’s research, listings with better photo quality are up to 5% more likely to sell*. Every buyer wants to look at the details before buying, even if they order online. Give them this opportunity: make your pictures worth more than 1000 words and the buyer will come back to you over and over again.
Backdrop : Use a plain, uncluttered backdrop to make your item stand out.
Lightning : Turn off the flash and use soft, diffused lighting to prevent shadows.
Sharpness : Photos should not be fuzzy — use a tripod.
Resolution : Take high-resolution photos so your item will look attractive on screens both big and small.
Composition : Don’t leave lots of open space around the item in the photo. The item should take up 80-90% of the frame.
Details : Take lots of detailed, close- up pictures from different angles: capture images of the top, bottom, and sides of your item.
Scale : Let the buyer understand the actual size of the item: place another item (for example, coin or ruler) next to the item to indicate its size — and take another picture.
No props : It can obscure, shade or otherwise change the image of the item. Props may confuse buyers about exactly what’s included in your listing.
* Likelihood to sell based on an eBay study that reviewed 6.8 million listings that resulted in an increase in 4.5% more sales over this period; “better photo quality” defined as photos that measure 500 or greater pixels on the longest side, do not have added text or graphics, and are uploaded to eBay picture service. Individual results may vary, and results assume that sellers do not increase the item price while making these changes.
An effective and detailed listing is a key! It helps you get your items in front of the right buyers. To understand how it should be, put yourself in the buyer’s shoes. Which listing will attract you and help you choose an item? Follow our tips step by step — and turn ordinary listings into fast-selling ones!
An effective Item Title should be clear, but concise and informative. Include keywords in the title that customers are likely to use in their search queries and describe the item in a clear and concise manner, even if this information is the same as the product’s category name.
On eBay, you can use 80 characters for your Title
Listings that have titles with more than 60 characters have a 1.5 greater chance of selling
If you are listing the item with variations, you do not need to give details of all variations in the title: they are indexed automatically
Avoid writing entire words in capital letters or with asterisks and other markers between words
Don’t add emojis to the Title – they will only waste the characters limit and won’t be considered in search results
eBay’s search engine uses so-called structured data. These include Item Category, Item Description, Item Specifics and Item Identifiers. That’s why detailed and accurate item information helps buyers find the item and increases the ranking of your listing in search results.
Want to learn even more? Check our article about the basics of SEO on eBay!
With more than half of all transactions on eBay viewed on a mobile device prior to purchase, it’s important to make sure your listings look great on mobile!
Here are some tips to make your listings more mobile-friendly:
Review your font. We recommend using a base font size of 16 pixels and sticking to one or two font sizes, so that shoppers don’t need to constantly change zoom to read the content
Keep the formatting simple. Use a white background and black font so it’s easy to read. Use the bullet points to highlight the most important info and make the text easy to scan
Use the viewport meta tag. The viewport meta tag communicates to mobile browsers how to adjust the dimensions and scaling of the item description in order to render properly on a mobile device
Avoid horizontal scrolling. Do not set absolute values in CSS declarations and make sure inline images scale well across screen sizes
Don’t add images to the Item description. Upload your photos to a dedicated section while creating a listing
Don’t add too much info to the Item description. If you see some special fields while creating a listing, add your information there instead of description. It will appear for the customer when they watch your listing, and you will keep the listing neat and clear
If you have an eBay Store subscription, it’s a great opportunity to get even more benefits from eBay by customizing your Store, standing out among competitors, and driving buyers to those items you want to sell the most. Here’s how:
Make a seasonal cover and logo
Looking as a top banner of your site, seasonal cover will draw even more attention and will make them learn not only about your brand, but also about seasonal updates and offers that you have. If applicable, you might also update a logo picture for consistency.
Update Store description
Keywords given there affect how your Store appears in search results. Take the opportunity to improve your search optimization during seasonal sales by adding the most relevant ones!
Create seasonal Featured categories
Your customers will get a great shopping experience with your items well sorted. Create categories dedicated to special events and sales holidays so your customers are sure that they may find exactly what they are looking for there!
Update Featured items
This section shows particular items right below your Store description, but before showing your main inventory to buyers. Use an opportunity to highlight the items that you want to sell the most during sales and add them there to drive most of your buyers’ attention to them. People tend to make spontaneous purchases, so give them an option to do so!
Make a marketing banner
If you are going to launch some promotion during seasonal sales, creating a marketing banner will greatly support you with driving traffic to it. Work on a clickable banner to make your shoppers go to the specific item, category, or promo page you need them to go to.
