How I achieved 500% Sales Increase in Ebay

I’ve always believed in a buyer-focused approach when it comes to E-commerce campaigns. This means that every optimization step that you take should lead to improve the buyer’s experience or push them towards conversion. This sounds simple enough, but my experience on fully managing an Ebay campaign for an E-commerce site taught me otherwise.

Being in a competitive market and my unfamiliarity with Ebay’s navigation made it very challenging in the beginning. But when I got to a point where sales have risen to an exponential rate, it felt hugely rewarding. I thought it’s probably worth sharing how I got there.

Below are some actionable items that has helped me become successful in my Ebay campaign and allowed me to maintain a healthy sales growth:

Optimize your listing titles

Optimizing your listing title is the simplest and easiest way for you to get more sales out of Ebay.  Writing titles that are simple but keyword rich, focused, descriptive, and promotional (if applicable), will give your listing a chance to serve well in Ebay’s search results and in Google Product Listing Ads.

The way I do it is I put the keywords to the left, to account for user searches. Ebay considers search keywords in the title as more relevant depending on how far to the left they are:

[Product Keyword] [Product Specifications] [Promotions (Optional)] = Round Takeaway Containers 500ml, 500 Pieces 15% OFF!

For gadgets or apparel products, I usually add the brand first:

[Brand] [Keyword] [Gender] [Product Specifications] [Promotions (Optional)] = Monster High Skelita Calaveras Girls Costume, Child Ages 5-10, Halloween SALE

Avoid adjectives and superlatives to your titles such as “High-quality”, “Gorgeous”, “Cheapest in the country”, etc. This should be saved for the description part, but to be honest, I don’t even use those even in the description. I think it is also a general rule to avoid keyword stuffing. You should optimize for buyers and put yourself in their shoes. Consider the things that might annoy you as a buyer when searching for products on Ebay.
 

Optimize Product Descriptions

Just like the listing titles, product descriptions should be specific and keyword rich. Again you can state special promotions such as 15% OFF, Buy in bulk, Combined postage, Buy 1 take a Teddy Bear For Free, Money Back Guarantee, etc. I also specify all my shipping policies in the description.

Descriptions varies based on the type of product that you are listing, but you’ll still want to format them based on what users are searching for. A description that has a promotional tone is OK,  but the item specifics and features is more valuable for you to answer lingering questions about your product. Fewer questions means an increased chance to press the “Buy it Now” button.

You should also consider creating a custom template that is consistent with your product listings. Here’s an example:

Optimize your Images

Your product photos should stand out from the crowd. Incorporate the highest quality product images you can find and include at least two of them in your listing.

If you’re looking to boost your CTR and drive clicks away from your competitor listings, consider adding own product images and move away from the stock manufacturer images. Capture different angles of the product or use a different human model for apparel products.

This may be very hard to do or even next to impossible for those who sell thousands of products in their store, but this may be feasible for your products with the highest sales and ROI.
 

Be specific with Shipping

The efficiency and accuracy at which you ship out your goods to your buyers can make or break your Ebay campaign. In my Ebay listings, I specify every shipping policy in the description. Buyer locations can vary, so you have to properly set their expectations when it comes to the delivery of their goods. This will account for a positive buying experience.

Most people would prefer faster deliveries, but I set up my shipping to a realistic time frame wherein speed is not compromised. One day shipping can bite you back if you fail to deliver quickly. I suggest veering away from express shipping options if you are unable to fulfill one-day shipping consistently. If you insist on it, you can limit express shipping on locations that are closest to you.

Being specific with shipping and being able to fulfill them consistently will lead to more positive reviews as a seller. More positive reviews on shipping time builds trust among your existing and potential customers. The more trustworthy you are means more sales in the long term.

Create a sense of Urgency

Assuming that you have a large selling limit on Ebay and hundreds of stock in hand, you shouldn’t list your entire stock quantity on individual listings. This would create a sense of urgency from the buyer that they need to get them now before it’s gone and would create an appearance that the goods are low in stock even if you have hundreds at hand. This would take a great deal of product management but it can be worth it if it leads to sales.

Just remember to revise your listing quantities if it reaches critical levels:

Do a price competition research

Most people are out for a bargain, so you need to make sure that your listings don’t lose out to similar product listings that offer a cheaper price. To be competitive, I use a tool called Terapeak to gain pricing information about the products that I plan to list on Ebay.

With this information, you can increase or decrease your prices to account for the product competition on Ebay. Take note that you should always consider your profit margin before competitively lowering your prices. If the competitor prices are too low, it might be better to not list your product at all.

If you don’t have access to Terapeak, you can search out your competitors manually by searching out your own products in the Ebay search box and compare prices.

Install an Ebay App to your phone

The Ebay App enables you to to keep track of the activities that happen on your online store through your mobile phone. It allows for constant and prompt communication between you and your buyers and also provides important alerts. It gives you a chance to respond to buyer inquiries at the time when it matters most. This is the time when they have already shown an interest in your products and all you have to do is give one little push, or give a small pitch, for them to continue with a transaction.

Communication is also one of Ebay’s factors to calculate a seller’s overall rating and buyers can easily comment on a seller’s communication or lack thereof. By responding in a timely manner, you can decrease your chance of being flagged by buyers and paint a good picture as far as performance as a seller is concerned.

Again, improving the buyer experience should be a primary objective and great customer support is part of the overall optimization process. You can also make it easy on yourself by setting up auto-emails on certain actions in your Ebay store.
 

Forget about trying to rank in Google

Sure, being able to rank your listing in organic Google results using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can possibly give you ridiculous amounts of traffic. But you have to understand that a large percentage of Google user search queries that will trigger your listing in search results pages doesn’t really have buying intent.

In theory, the usual/popular tactics that “SEO’s” use to rank a page in Google’s pages (“Content marketing”/”Content Promotion”/”Social Media Outreach”) can eventually push you up the search results. But is it worth it?

In any campaign, I always think about the client’s Return on Investment (ROI). Ask yourself:

• Will I be able to measure my ROI effectively?
• How much would it cost to launch a full scale search engine off-page link building compared to your profit margin?
• Can I honestly say that I can manipulate the search results to funnel traffic with buying intent? Can I put this into numbers?
• How much time will I spend promoting my products in other channels?
• How long will I be able to see results?
• Again, is it worth it??

If we do the math:

Profit = Listed Price – Actual Supplier Price – Ebay charges – Shipping and Handling Charges – Goods and Services Tax – SEO/Content Marketing/Shady Link Building Spend

Based on the formula above, you can always bump up your selling price to compensate for the “SEO” spend, but you have to consider that you are not the only seller in Ebay, unless you sell custom goods. Considering the average price of “SEO” prices these days, your prices will not be competitive enough. The problem is, it is hard to measure the return of investment if you use these SEO/Content Marketing/Link Building “tactics”.

I say forget about organic rankings and just focus on your presence on Ebay. Ebay already optimizes their listings for Adwords and Google Product listings ads, so why bother with populating the internet with more non-sense promotional content and articles meant to “increase” Google organic ranking?

Ebay has enough traffic and most visitors are already in a buying mood the moment they hit the site. In my other paid campaigns, placements in Amazon and Ebay convert well because of this observation.
 

Be open to negotiations

As I have mentioned, everybody seems to be out for a bargain these days. You should be able to communicate effectively with buyers to deals that can be mutually beneficial. This will somehow build trust and possibly increase your chance in a repeat buy. This will probably be useful once I gather enough data to calculate the lifetime value of Ebay customers for my store.

Every campaign is different and you should consider understanding your target market first to know exactly where to invest your time and money in. If you are looking to increase the sales of your E-commerce site, talk to us and we might be able to help you out to a degree or shed some light on what has been working for our E-commerce campaigns.