Recently I was invited to attend a telephone conference and put a few questions to some of the heads of the eBay Best Match European Team and I asked a couple of awkward questions about eBay best match tips and eBay best match optimization. Some of the main points I will mention here.

How does the eBay best match work?

If you are ‘tech savvy’ you will know that search engines operate based on a mathematical formula namely an algorithm and eBay’s best match search is no different.

Key factors that influence eBay Best Match Optimization

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• Free shipping helps. Buyers like to see free shipping and eBay’s again rewards listings with free shipping. Yes if you include your shipping costs in your selling price you will pay a percentage to eBay in fees. eBay say “The amount of extra sales you generate by using free shipping will offset the small increase in the amount of fees you pay”

• It was confirmed that Feedback percentage is not as important as Dsr’s when it comes to determining search standing in eBay best match. High dsr ratings and seller status will affects search standing more than your feedback percentage.

• Keywords are important. Do not include any keywords in the title which are irrelevant to the product. If your listing obtains more search impressions and the buyer is not looking for that particular product this will have a negative effect on search standing.

• DO, include as many laser targeted relevant keywords in the title as possible. Basically anything that a buyer would type in to buy the exact product you are selling. For example people looking for Ipods are not looking for ipod skins so you would not include the word skins in your listing title and vise versa.

Some of the main points which came directly from the horses mouth (Tom Wagstaffe from eBay’s European best match team) are summarized here;

• Sales history is important, listings with more recent sales get more best match points

• The number of search impressions divided by the number of sales a listing receives is important. The eBay best match algorithm calculates a conversion rate for every buy it now listing. When a potential buyer types in a relevant keyword into the eBay search bar, every time a listing is displayed on the search page it gets an impression count. If the buyer clicks through and buys the product then that counts as a sale. Suppose your listing had 50 search impressions and generated 2 sales from those impressions, the conversion rate would be calculated like this;

(Number of Sales) ÷ (Search Impressions) x 100 = (conversion rate percentage)

2 Sales ÷ 50 Search Impressions x 100 = conversion rate of  4%

Listings with higher conversion percentages receive more eBay best match brownie points and the eBay Best Match Boost listing strategy shows you exactly how to make your buy it now listing conversion rates soar.

Anyone who grabs a copy of the eBay Best Match Boost listing strategy will also get to download the complete 50 minute conference call on MP3, where I get to ask a couple of questions confirming these key points with eBay’s top dogs. On this MP3, Tom Wagstaffe from eBay’s head office also reveals insider information on how to make sure you’re an eBay best match maverick!

eBay Best Match and related eBay articles:

• Ten tips to sell your unwanted presents on eBay (timesbusiness.typepad.com)
• eBay is a Style Barometer: Plaids, Rocker-Chic and Leather Jackets are Hot, Says Constance White (beet.tv)
• What eBay Can Teach the U.S. Treasury (blogs.wsj.com)

Are you taking advantage of free Google traffic to increase your eBay store sales?

eBay isn’t the only place you can get traffic to your eBay listings. If you take a look at some Powerseller’s ebay stores you will see that the categories on the left hand side navigation are keyword rich and designed to be search engine friendly.

You can easily implement a simple strategy for obtaining more free traffic to your eBay store by optimizing your eBay store categories in a certain way so that your eBay store pages are included in all the big search engines search results.

Here’s how eBay store pages look in Google’s search results.

In the above example I typed in ‘fishing tackle daiwa reel’ into Google and you can see how an eBay store with matching keywords has been included in the first page results.

Read a simillar article about ebay category SEO by Jenn Cangelosi here

To optimize your eBay store categories you need to make your categories and sub-categories keyword rich.  In the example above,  and if you were selling Daiwa fishing reels you would name your eBay store category Fishing Tackle and then name your sub category ‘Daiawa reels’. It only takes a few minutes to set up and can make a massive difference in the amount of traffic that is funneled to your eBay store and listings. More traffic means more sales, so take a few moments now and make your eBay store categories search engine friendly to increase your eBay store traffic.

Learn how to increase your eBay sales even more using the eBay Best Match Boost Listing Strategy

I want to ask you a question;  Do you use markdown manager in eBay stores to create promotional discounts and sell more items?

SALE! SALE! SALE!

Have you ever walked into a shop and seen something that you might be interested in buying thats on sale? Don’t kid yourself. Those words are not there because the vendor wants to do you a favour, they are there to make you think you are getting a bargain. I’m sure you will have seen this being used in the high street shops and in TV advertising. It’s a marketing tactic.. And it works!
Even if you are wise to this pricing trick (and most aren’t), the fact that the brain has already initiated a thought process about it, the potential buyer is still affected by the offer of a discount and the thought that they might be getting a real bargain. Ultimately it gives the vendor or seller the advantage to sell the product.

I did a test..

In one of my eBay accounts I used eBay’s markdown manager within eBay stores to create a 20% discount sale that lasted one week for selected products . The following week I created another sale with a 15% discount and another sale again the following week with a 10% discount.
Here are the results of how many sales were made on those discounted items and the overall profit made on the accumulated sales for each week..
(These items were priced between 10-20usd each and the market is competitive on price.  I also used 40% as an average to calculate the profit value)

Week 1 – 20% discount sale – Items sold 60 revenue  $827.30  Profit $330.92

Week 2 – 15% discount sale – Items sold 55 revenue $659.28   Profit $263.71

Week 3 – 10% discount sale – Items sold 30 revenue $540.63   Profit $216.25

Week 4 –         (No sale)          – Items sold 27 revenue  $512.29  Profit $204.91

As you can see, even though the items sold during the discount sales generated less revenue individually, overall many more sales were made during the discount sales. Now, this may work better in a highly competitive eBay category where many sellers are selling the exact same item and the difference in price attracts more buyers. If you are selleing products on eBay in a highly competitive market and can afford to reduce the price slightly for a short period of time, this marketing tactic is certainly worth trying.
Another benefit is higher search standing after the sale has ended. Because the eBay listing made more sales during the discount sale week, the sales history will be much higher for the following weeks best match search standing. Your listing will have been moved higher up the search results, even though the sale has ended and your listing has reverted back to a full price. To get you’re listing even higher up the eBay best match search rankings and without discounting your items (in fact you can charge even more) take a look at my eBay Best Match Boost Listing Strategy tutorials

Here’s how to create a mark down discount sale in 5 simple steps..

1. Goto Manage My Store in eBay and click the ‘Mark Down Manager’ link

2.In Mark Down Manager click ‘Create Sale’

3. Give the sale a title, chose the start and finish date and the type of sale you want to run, for example a 20% discount

4. Select the eBay listing you want to apply the sale to. At this point, you can also chose to email your ebay list subscribers to alert them to the sale. Then click ‘create your sale’.

5. And thats how to create your eBay sale with Mark Down Manager, easy!

This is how an eBay listing looks to the buyer. Notice the sale icon over the product photo showing the amount of discount and the original price has a strikethrough, with the new discounted price underneath.

Depending on the type of products you are selling, I would certainly experiment with this simple marketing strategy tool that has worked in all types of marketing for centuries, and it can work for your eBay listing too.

ebay markdown manager

What do you think?  Have you had similar experiences with Mark Down Manager?  Have you had the time to try?  Please let me know in your comments below, I’m really curious.

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