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Why use eBay Product Catalogue

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

Why you should use eBay catalogue.

Listing and shop design has always been high on the list of priorities for eBay sellers, which is why so many opt for a Frooition custom design template. Professional sellers wish to portray a branded image on eBay and a simple text or boiler plate design just doesn’t cut the mustard.

However when listing using eBay catalogue the seller’s design is often pushed down the listing template and buyers may not scroll far enough to see anything more than the page header and catalogue information before making a buying decision.


If buyers don’t see your template they miss out on your branding and more importantly your cross promotions to other items, and yet there are many compelling reasons for using eBay catalogue.


The most important reason in recent times has been the launch of the eBay Value Box and Product Page. Reminiscent of Amazon’s single product page eBay are rolling up listings from all sellers for the same product into a single product in search results. Buyers can also win the Value Box if they are Top Rated Seller, Offer the item on Buy it Now and of course list using eBay’s catalogue.


Another compelling reason to list using eBay catalogue are the listing promotions that eBay run from time to time. Currently on eBay UK if you list MP3 players and GPS systems using eBay catalogue insertion fees are waived and this promotion runs right through to 9th January 2011.


The time savings from listing with eBay catalogue are obvious, rather than having to list the tracks on a CD, or write up a description for a DVD you can simply pull the relevant details in from eBay’s catalogue. This convenience doesn’t stop in media categories, product details are available in many categories ranging from computers to mobile cell phones. If you’re selling in a category that catalogue is available then don’t wait for eBay to mandate use of catalogue or to introduce product pages and the Value Box – get ahead of the game and start listing with eBay catalogue today.

“Frooition have the ability to pull the catalogue data and incorporate it into your listing template design.”

That brings us back to the issue of listing design – eBay’s catalogue information is displayed by default at the top of the listing just beneath the item specifics box. However for Frooition uses there is an elegant solution to brand catalog information. Frooition have the ability to pull the catalogue data and incorporate it into your listing template design. Rather than have it right at the top of the page you can keep key sections of your design highlighted including your header, shop categories to the left, cross promotions to your key items to the right and of course your star product promotion and shop search box to the top left of your Frooition listing template.

Click here to compare a standard eBay product catalogue listing with a Frooition Product catalogue listing

Another key advantage of using eBay catalogue in a Frooition professional listing template is that you can insert your own product images in the normal top center position. This isn’t key for new items as stock images are available from eBay’s catalogue. However if you’re selling used items you can highlight any product defects and include multiple images just as you would for non-catalogue listings.


In summary if eBay catalogue is available for your products it can save time listing, will result in better visibility for both auction style and fixed price listings, can save money when listing promotions are running, for Top Rated Sellers opens up the possibility of winning the value box, and for all sellers will result in greater visibility in Best Match search results as eBay will highlight catalogue based listings at the top of eBay search result product pages.


Even if you don’t use a professional Frooition listing template design you should opt to use eBay catalogue, but with your Frooition design your design investment continues to work for you by incorporating the catalogue information within your main listing template.

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How to improve Communication Detailed Seller Ratings

Friday, July 30th, 2010

Patrick Munden from the eBay UK and Ireland seller team presents a great 6 minute video with some great tips to help sellers increase communication DSR’s.

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eBay Seller Release 10.3

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Seller Release: 10.3
Announced: 13th July
Actioned: Q4 September

Today eBay have officially announced Seller Release 10.3. This release will be the last Seller release of the year. Most of the features below do not come into effect until September 2010. There are a lot of features that benefit both sellers and buyers, however they will cause more work for most sellers.

We have highlighted the major changes and useful information below:

PayPal Required for .it and .es.
eBay.it and eBay.es will have PayPal as a mandatory required payment method, bringing it inline with .co.uk and .com.

Item Condition for Vehicles

Listings in vehicle categories will now support the new Item Condition values & functionality (Read Our Blog Post about item Condition). Whilst this will not be mandatory until Q1 2011 it is good practice to apply this to your listings A.S.A.P as it will not only improve your search ranking but you may actually be penalised in search for not including the new item condition functionality.

If the thought of revising each one of your listings one by one is too much trouble why not try Froo! Bulk Revision and alter thousands of listings in bulk and take away the pain!

6 Categories to become an entirely Product Based Experiences

The product based experience (PBE) allows sellers to pull in standard information and stock photos.

You search for a product or type an EAN number/barcode and eBay returns useful information such as description and technical specifications.

Example:
 

The PBE will be fully adopted for the following Categories:

  • Cell Phone,
  • GPS,
  • MP3 Players,
  • Video Games Systems,
  • CDs
  • DVDs

The PBE catalogue information will not be mandatory however your listings will be penalised in search for not using this functionality. The PBE makes the listing process much faster, provides lots of correct information and reduces buyer questions. Frooition will be including this in future releases of the design management tool.

eBay to offer more payment methods

eBay are opening up the accepted payment methods to include Click and Buy as well as integrating merchant credit cards such as NoChex in the eBay checkout.

Changes to shipping to domestic regions

eBay have added more detailed to regional shipping. Sellers can now exclude specific regions from bidding or buying, change prices on a state/region level and alter shipping times. For example you charge a premium to ship to Hawaii or Northern Ireland through the eBay checkout.

Standardisation of Shipping

All shipping services will include a shipping time e.g. (Royal Mail 1st Class 2-3 days). This also applies to Selller’s Standard Rate, eBay are bringing in new levels to replace standard rate which will be:
Economy (6-9 days), Standard (3-5 days) and Overnight (24 hours).

This will affect anyone using GTC or automatic relisting rules/software.

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How to word terms & conditions and avoid eBay/PayPal Disputes

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

Terms and Conditions are one of the hardest parts of online selling to get right. Ignorance of the law is no defense and there are two main pieces of legislation which all sellers need to abide by – the Electronic Commerce Regulations and Distance Selling Regulations and the Sale of Goods Act.

In general these pieces of legislation are intended to protect consumers, so unsurprisingly they appear weighted against merchants, however by following their guidelines it’s possible to limit your liabilities so it’s worth spending the time to become familiar with them.

There are four main things a buyer is concerned about when considering a purchase:

What does it cost?

What will the shipping cost?

Can I return the item if it’s not what I wanted?

Is there a warranty, what happens if something goes wrong?

The first two are easily solved – the price of the product is either the BUY IT NOW price or the winning bid on an auction. Shipping costs should be clearly entered for each country that you ship to and for each delivery service that you offer at the time of listing so that the buyer knows exactly what they’ll be paying.

Returns are something that no retailer likes, but online consumers don’t have the opportunity to examine the goods prior to purchase. The Distance Selling Regulations set out their right to examine the goods in their own home and return them for any (or no) reason. As the merchant you are obliged to offer a full refund including postage costs, but you can if you wish specify that the buyer pays the return carriage costs. You can also limit the period of returns to 7 working days from receipt of the goods but only if this is specified in your Terms and Conditions.

Warranties and the goods being fit for purpose are covered by the Sale of Goods Act, and in this case buyers have up to 6 months to request repair/replacement or refund. They are also covered up to 6 years but in that case it’s the buyers obligation to prove that the goods weren’t fit for purpose, for the first 6 months it’s the sellers responsibility to prove that they were of merchandisable quality, although of course manufacturers warranties cover many items for a year or more in any case.

There is nothing more off putting to consumers than rafts of small print, so it’s worth keeping your Terms and Conditions of sale out of your main listing template. On eBay this has been made easy as eBay provide separate sections for Returns Policy, Sellers Payment Instructions, Pricing and VAT, Shipping Costs and Terms and Conditions of Sale. If you use Froo templates they provide tabbed content boxes where you can add additional information for buyers if they wish to view it.

“There is nothing more off putting to consumers than rafts of small print, so it’s worth keeping your Terms and Conditions of sale out of your main listing template.”

Although from a legal standpoint it’s important to publish your terms and conditions in general buyers are more interested in knowing that if something goes wrong you are there to help them. Make sure that your full contact details are available including your name (or business name), your address, your email address and of course your phone number. Nothing is more effective in avoiding PayPal or eBay dispute than simply giving your buyer the opportunity to communicate.

This doesn’t just stop on your eBay listings or website, whenever you ship an item include an invoice with your contact details and/or a business card. If there is a problem and your buyer has your number to hand they are much more likely to telephone and give you the opportunity to assist than to log onto eBay to open a dispute.

In general the shorter your terms and conditions the more buyer friendly they are so as well as publishing your full terms and conditions it’s worth summarising them with a link to your Terms and Conditions on a separate page.

Ultimately your terms and conditions are there to protect you legally, and to ensure that buyers are provided with the information proscribed by law. In reality there are very few buyers who will invoke their legal rights – most simply want to receive their goods or if there is an issue to have the problem resolved. This means that your Terms and Conditions are there to protect you as the seller but like insurance hopefully they are something you will never have to use.

If you think like a buyer and act towards them as you would like a company to treat you, and especially if you give your customers the ability to contact you, almost all problem can be amicably resolved resulting in a happy customer without recourse to eBay or PayPal disputes.

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Making the Most of your eBay About Me Page

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

Lots of eBay sellers don’t even know about their About Me page. Even fewer actually take advantage of it and make sure it is working hard for them. Building a successful eBay profile is about using all the tools eBay makes available. If you’re not using your About me page, you’re missing a trick.

What IS an About me page?

It’s exactly what it says it says in the tin! A page for you to tell other eBayers about yourself, your business and the things you sell. You can make and edit your About Me page via My eBay. You don’t need any special skills but if you have some coding or design experience, so much the better.
Unusually for eBay, you can have a link on your About Me page that links to your personal website or blog but be careful. You are not allowed to link to commercial websites, promote off-eBay sales or link to items that are prohibited on eBay. You’re also not allowed to link to a search engine or site that aggregates the eBay sales of multiple sellers.  eBay have a full list of what’s allowed and what’s not allowed on the About Me policy page.

About Me Page Benefits

“There are two significant benefits to building an About Me Page. The first is SEO. The second is branding.”

There are two significant benefits to building an About Me Page. The first is SEO (search engine optimization). The vast majority of your buyers will come to you via eBay’s search but some will find you via search engines such as Google. It’s well worth remembering that anything you can do to attract more buyers from search engines is good news for the bottom line. You can also link to your About Me Page from other sites as you like, to improve the ranking of your About Me page in Google.
The second benefit is with branding. Ensuring that everything you do looks good and alike and is clearly identifiable as your business is vital when it comes to attracting repeat buyers, inspiring trust and providing a first class buying experience. Don’t forget that Frooition can help you with design and implementation of your About Me page and make sure it looks great!

Five things to include in your About Me page:

The good news for sellers is an About Me page is very flexible and can easily be personalized using HTML. eBay can help you build a basic About Me page but to get the full impact, pull out all the stops and make it a fully integrated part of your eBay brand. Here is an example of a great About Me Page.  

  1. Auto-generated components: eBay allows you to display your current sales, recent Feedback and even recent bids. So use the auto-generated elements to populate your About Me page easily.
  2. Pictures: You can include images and photos in your About Me page to bring it to life. You can host these images yourself, or eBay will do it for you.
  3. Words: To get the full SEO benefit of your About Me page make sure you have some text talking about your sales. Cram the text full of relevant keywords that will aid your findability on Google.
  4. Video: You can easily embed a video (hosted on Youtube, for instance) using HTML and that is certain to attract attention. It could be a showcase of your stock, a tour around your business or just you talking to camera about your business. It’s surprisingly easy to make a video, even with your digital camera.
  5. Your philosophy: In your item listings and also other eBay pages, you’ll talk about what you’re selling and how people pay and get a refund. An About Me Page offers the chance to be a bit less formal and more personal. Talk about why you got into eBay selling, spin a yarn about why you do it and how you like to trade.

How long will an About Me Page take?

Not long. And if you’re clever and reuse content like pictures and text that you already have elsewhere you could be up and running in a matter of minutes. If you want something more professional, it will take longer.
And the good news about your About Me page is that it’s a one-off job. There’s no need to constantly tweak and tinker: once it’s up and running you can just leave it be. Of course, if you change your brand or want to make changes, you can.

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