They
say looks aren’t everything but they’re pretty close to everything as far as
selling on eBay is concerned. According
to high level research it takes potential buyers less than ten seconds to pick
an eBay product listing and, having opened that listing it takes another few
seconds to determine whether to buy or move on.
If a listing doesn’t look good, if it doesn’t meet viewers’
expectations, it won’t be opened at all.
Try this test. Search for a specific product on eBay, make
it one available from several sellers as opposed to rare antiques and
collectibles available from just a few dealers.
Scroll quickly through eBay’s search returns, without looking at price
and focussing only on images and titles.
Count quickly from one to ten as you scroll down and before ten becomes
eleven you click on the next listing you’d probably choose in a real-life
buying situation.
This split second choice
while you’re in full swing looking at product listings is the way many people
actually search on eBay. So as a seller
you are trying to create a favourable first impression that surpasses all competing
listings. Which in turn means you need
to know why people make their split second choices. Is it the image that does it for most
visitors, or words used in titles, is it a sub-title?
The answer is probably gallery
image first and titles next with sub-titles coming up a close third. But if you get your gallery image and title
right the sub-title – usually the most expensive part of the listing - shouldn’t
be needed.
Now let us look at
features of titles and descriptions that will get people to open your listings and
stay to learn more about your product.
Title
* Create credibility.
Two pals turning over $100,000 every month in designer clothing and
accessories tell how their sales jumped by almost forty percent with the
addition of just two words to their eBay listings. Those words were ‘100% Authentic’.
The same sellers made
feedback a prime feature of their eBay listings, using a sub-title like this:
You can stop
searching! This is the best GPS Deal on
eBay
Guaranteed by
1000s of customers’ feedback
When their listings got
opened a screenshot showing positive feedback comments for the product in
question appeared top of the screen.
(Source: http://www.blog.crazylister.com)
* Have a high profile discount sale.
This might be a short term idea, given that eBay is constantly making
changes and then soon afterwards reverting back to square one. But let’s look at it anyway.
On the outside of
listings eBay used to reveal a sale was taking place by striking through the
old price and replacing it with the new.
That was an incredible way to generate sales from people searching
hundreds of listings for those with discount
prices.
Then eBay stopped doing
that - and then they started doing it again.
And so it goes!
So right now any sale you
promote will show outside your listings.
But whether your sale is or is not highlighted in search returns it’s still
a good idea to mention it in your listing titles, like this, for instance:
WIDGET
This Size That Colour - 20% SALE NOW ON!
Or this:
WIDGET This Size That
Colour
20% SALE NOW ON!
In the second example a
sub-title makes the listing deeper and almost always catches the attention of
people scrolling quickly through search returns. But a sub-title is more effective in
competitive markets and for high profit items.
In low competition markets and for low profit products a sub-title might
cost more than benefits achieved.
An eBay seller I studied
today tells how the percentage discount and words ’SALE NOW ON’ in capital
letters in the title lifted his sales by twenty per cent over a similar sale
without the mention.
When you create your sale
with its high profile title you’ll have to choose listings manually and then
edit their titles and/or include a sub-title.
That could take much longer than letting eBay create the sale for you
but the reward should be worthwhile.
Remember to change your
listings when the sale ends.
* Use capital letters sparingly.
Same goes for lower case letters too.
Try this:
(i) Don’t use all lower case letters in your
titles. It looks unprofessional as well
as being difficult to read. The same
goes for all capital letters.
(ii) Optimise your titles
with one or two main search terms all capital and the rest with first letter
only in upper case.
(iii) Place your most important keywords at the
beginning of your title, preferably in the first four words. This helps gallery image and title work
together and catch most people scrolling through your listings, including a
good many who focus solely on image and two or three inches into the title and
rarely absorb the final few words. One
reason they do so is to save time spent moving the eyes horizontally across the
title and doubling or tripling time taken to scroll downwards.
Here’s an example of all
three tips used together:
TITANIC Postcard SIGNED BY SURVIVOR Real Photographic
Compare that title to
this one:
postcard real photographic titanic signed by survivor
and this:
POSTCARD REAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SIGNED BY SURVIVOR TITANIC
Description
Several features inside a
listing determine whether visitors stay to learn more about your product or
move away from your listing.
Clarity, brevity and a
professional layout are paramount among those internal features of the perfect
eBay listing.
Researchers tell how eBay
started life mainly as a place for everyday folk to sell their unwanted
household goods and personal possessions.
So imperfect images, even blurred and badly cropped, as well as
descriptions, including spelling mistakes and lots of different fonts, were
acceptable to most visitors and buyers.
That was then.
Since then major sellers
have arrived at the site and the old folky listings are now looking sloppy and
substandard and getting fewer clicks than big names like Tesco and Laura Ashley
and numerous other high street companies with their picture and word perfect
listings.
Ways to make your
descriptions top notch:
* Avoid using huge chunks of
unbroken text and use short paragraphs
instead with breaks every five or six lines.
Clear, concise text will get people hitting the order buttons; spelling
and grammatical errors will make them wonder if your products are as
substandard as your word skills.
People want to know all
the benefits of buying your product, without waffle and repetition, and they
want that information fast. Three
hundred words spread over six or seven paragraphs is the optimum size according
to several research companies I studied today.
* Make your description fit the
average computer screen
without visitors having to scroll far if at all to access it. Far too many people have slow computers and
inferior or zero broadband access and some days it can take five minutes or
more to scroll down a long eBay listing and for Internet access to break every
few minutes.
In the end people in
broadband notspots give up looking and go in search of shorter descriptions
that can be viewed without scrolling. Make
yours short and you will capture a small and potentially very responsive share
of the market.
* Finally.
Check and correct spelling and grammatical mistakes.
Insert bullet points to
highlight important parts of your description.
Use a font style and font
size that most people find easy to read.
Arial and Times are popular fonts and size 12 to 14 can be read by most
people. Try a larger font if your
product is for older people or others with poor eyesight.
Don’t use lots of different
fonts in the same listing. Choose one
font and stick to it in all your listings and make it a simple font without
squiggles and thick lines that make listings difficult to read.
As an example, there’s a
man I buy dog prints from on eBay. He
doesn’t have a template, he uses just plain text in his descriptions. But every description has sub-titles and
bullet points coloured purple and a little larger than the rest of the
text. The first word of every paragraph
is coloured purple and emboldened. His
paragraphs are never more than three lines and there is always a half inch gap
between paragraphs. His descriptions are
always a joy to read.
That said, a template
with attractive border and distinctive word and image layout helps you compete
with those major sellers mentioned earlier, as long as the design is simple and
uncluttered and doesn’t detract from images and text.
So should you or should
you not use a template? No one knows for
certain without testing. So try running
half your listings with a template and the other half without. See which works best for you.
If you do decide on using
a template try using one of the many free ones available before shelling out on
something that might be less attractive and not as useful as a paid for
version.
Key ‘Free eBay template’
into the search box at Google.com and then hit the ‘Images’ button. Study screenshots, most made using free
listing templates, along with some paid for templates based on keywords used at
the site. Find one you like, make sure
you won’t be charged, then use that for your next one hundred listings or
so. See what effect the template has on
sales and profits.
Now you know how to create
the perfect eBay listing it’s time to turn that knowledge into action.
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