Matthew is an eBay Expert & consultant with over 10 years of experience on eBay. Has worked for two eBay auction management companies and has helped hundreds of eBay based businesses sell on eBay, including his own for 3 years.

Having run his own business on eBay UK for 3 years, been featured on BBC News 24, BBC Radio 4 “In Business” with Peter Day and also featured in the Sunday Times.

eBay Top Rated SellerHosting the very first eBay PowerSellers meeting of its kind in the UK, attended by eBay, which then lead to the eBay university program. Then working for the USA auction management company MarketWorks.com (now owned by ChannelAdvisor) here in the UK and then later on eSellerPro.com another eBay listing software company, Matthew has probably seen more eBay based businesses outside the confines of eBay than anyone else in the UK.

Matthew takes a different approach to eBay and it really shows in the articles he writes. eBay is just a sales channel, admittedly a rather large one at that, but this should never be forgotten and he knows that its all to easy to become caught up in a whirl-wind of noise that is generated by selling on eBay and does his best to help keep your feet on the ground and focus at the job at hand, making more profit.

Its unlikely you’re going to ask Matthew something he does not already know about eBay, you can contact him on his dedicated Contact Matthew page.

How to Save eBay Searches and Have the Results Emailed to You

A heavily under-used feature for both buyers and merchants on eBay is the ability to make a search, save it and then to me notified of the results on a daily basis via email.

This is very handy if you’re a buyer and are looking for a rare item, a seller who is conducting Market Research or an intellectual property rights owner (someone who owns a brand name for example) who has a desire to monitor eBay for their products and keep track of merchants that are using the marketplaces to distribute their goods or services upon.

In this article, I’ll take you through how to save a search, how to manage them and how to set up email notifications for them.

So What is a Saved Search?

Each time you make a search on eBay,  there is an option to save the search so that you don’t have to keep looking for the same search terms over and over. You can then manage these searches in your My eBay section of eBay and also set up email notifications for daily updates.

There are several instances where this functionality would be very useful, these are:

  1. You’re looking for a rare item
  2. You want to save the search you’ve made and reuse it at a later date
  3. You want to be notified of the latest listings that match the search criteria

Note: I won’t be covering advanced search techniques in this article, this will be coming soon in the form of an eBook that goes way beyond what I could sensibly fit into a single article.

How to Save an eBay Search

For this example I am going to use a real search that I have saved in my buying account, its for a device called a “Neuros OSD”, it’s a network device that allows me to play media files over a network on a normal TV. They’re very useful, but they’re around £100 new and I’ve picked up 2 so far from eBay sellers for under £20.

#1 Make The Search

First of all you make the search as normal on eBay. The search in this example isn’t particularly advanced, but it is looking in the item title and the items descriptions.

eBay Saved Search 1

 

#2 Press ‘Save Search’

Below the search box there is a “Save search” option, click it and a new window appears as shown in the two screen shot below:

eBay Save this search

#3 Rename & Set Email Options

In the pop-up panel that appears you are now able to save the search. But before doing so, give the search a name that you’ll easily recognise, it makes life so much easier later, especially if you can image that you have 5 or even 50 of these in your account.

Once set, press “Save”.

YAY. Easy-peasy!

eBay Saved Search - Name the Search

Managing Saved Searches

My eBay: Saved searches

You are able to manage your saved searches within My eBay, a direct link to this section of you account is here or you can follow this path:

Got to eBay > Along the top press “My eBay”> On the left click on “Saved Searches”

Obviously you can delete any saved searches you no longer need, this is a simple case of selecting them on the left and then pressing delete at the bottom.

You can manage the options for each of the searches from this page also and crucially redefine or copy searches too. A really handy feature is that you can add notes. A good use for this is if you were drilling down a selection of seller accounts for a specific search or needed to add extra information which is perhaps too long for the search title.

Redefining a Saved eBay Search

Once you have one or more searches saved, you are able to redefine them. On the right-hand side of each saved search, there is the option to “Edit Search”, if you click this you’re taken to the search results page.

I show this in the screen shot below, take note that there is an extra option in the search results that allows you to save this search as either the same search name or if you’d prefer as a new saved search.

Saving as a new search could allow you to easily separate the different condition of items, such new and used items. If we think back to the example if an intellectual rights owner, they could easily be altered to both new products and also monitor how the second-hand market for their products is shaping up.

Editing a Saved eBay Search

Saved eBay Searches Summary

Saving searches can literally “save” a lot of time, especially if you’re going to be using the same or similar searches over a period of time.

Having them emailed to you is a handy feature, but for power users that are using this functionality to research eBay it’ll prove to be too much information and as eBay only allow a daily email, a summary email for the weeks listings sadly isn’t an option.

My biggest tip for you is to name the well and add notes to the searches. While eBay shows the search criteria, when you’re working with more than 20 searches, adding a note that explains what the search is supposed to return, will speed up your activities.

Have you used the eBay saved searches before? How did you find them? Leave a comment in the comments box below.

Barcodes, GTIN’s,UPC’s, EAN’s, ISBN’s, JAN’s & ASIN’s Explained

Barcodes, these can cause confusion, especially if we account for all the different names they can be referenced as and even the term barcode isn’t technically correct, GTIN is. As such this article aims to dis-spell the myths & confusion around them and give you the 101 on the different variations, what they are and how they’re used.

For the purpose of this article, I’m going to broadly call all GTIN (Global Trade Item Numbers) as ‘barcodes’, this is what you’ll likely to recognise them as from day-to-day items and will help keep things in plain English (which I know you like).

What is a Barcode?

A ‘barcode’ is the visual representation of a set of numbers. In the video below, I show several products and on the back of each of them are images and some numbers, like in the image below:

What is a barcode?The ‘barcode’ is the vertical lines and these are the visual form of the numbers below, ie 012345678900. However for ease, very few people know what GTINs are and the term “barcode” will make more sense to more people as we’ve all seen them on products, like soup. So I’m calling them ‘barcodes’.

A barcode by its correct name is a GTIN or its full name ‘Global Trade Item Number’. These come in various forms and are globally universal indentifies to find product information across databases and differing platforms.

Think of them as an international “postcode” that identifies a single address, but for products.

Video Explaining Barcodes with Examples

This video covers the contents of this article, including examples and where you can obtain your own barcode range for selling on eBay & Amazon.

Note: Before you watch the video, I’m going to quickly add that this was recorded last year, since then I’ve solved the lighting and sound quality issues, plus my office has been re-decorated with the artwork from the children.

Why are Barcodes Important?

When you’re shopping (say in Tesco’s) you’ll see the clerk scan the items through the till, the till is scanning the barcode on the product and then this is being looked up in a database to obtain its price and do some other stuff too.

Barcodes are ‘keys’, this is a term for used in databases and the idea is just like your front door key, the key should only fit one lock, thus that key belongs to that door and ‘ideally’ none others (see the note on this later).

This is why when your items are being scanned in the supermarket, the price is returned and you gain an accurate bill. Also in the background, this key is also used for many other purposes, such as stock control and reporting functions.

In short, one barcode = one product

Barcodes on Amazon

Just like in the supermarket when shopping, Amazon also uses these ‘barcodes’ as unique identifiers for products.

There are some exceptions which are for seeds & plants, furniture and home decoration categories and in such instances approval must be gained from Amazon to do this. However as a general rule you will need a barcode to create a new product on Amazon.

Note: While barcodes used for Amazon should be unique, it’s possible to find products on Amazon that have more than one GTIN used to identify a product. This is caused by two reasons:

  • Expiry
    As I cover in the video above, barcodes are leased, not owned. It’s quite possible for the barcodes to be re-used and thus two different products have the same barcode identifier for them.
  • Duplication bySellers
    It’s quite common for two different businesses to have their own barcode ranges, as such with unbranded goods its quite possible for the same product (say a pair of boots) to be listed more than once on Amazon under different identifiers.

GTIN Variations

There are five main types of GTIN’s that are in use (with regards to Amazon), these are:

  • ISBN
  • UPC
  • EAN
  • JAN
  • GTN-14

ISBN’s

ISBN ExampleThese you’ll find on books, this is because ISBN is short for ‘International Standard Book Number’ and can come in both 13 and 10 digit numbers.

I’ve included a photo of the back of one of the books I’m reading at the moment and you’ll see in the bottom right-hand corner an ISBN both as a number and the visual representation of that number for barcode readers.

UPC’s

These are “Universal Product Code’s” and generally you’ll find them on most USA (American) based items.

The use of these in the UK for products is somewhat limited and you’ll see EAN’s far more more often and you’ll see why in the next section.

EAN’s

EAN is short for ‘European Article Number’, hence this why you’ll see these more frequently in the UK.

EAN’s are everywhere, some examples are below on some random items I found in my home, if you look around your’s, you’ll find they’re everywhere!

Examples of EAN's from Household Items

JAN’s

These are ‘Japanese Article Number’s and, to be honest, you’re unlikely to come across them in the UK for products listings to Amazon or just about anywhere.

GTIN’s

Global Trade Item Number or GTIN’s have a few names, the first is GTIN-14, UCC14 or ITF-14, ultimately they are 14 digits.

ASIN’s

Amazon LogoAn ASIN is an acronym for ‘Amazon Standard Identification Number’. Once an inventory record has been created on Amazon, Amazon assigns their own version of a barcode, called the ‘ASIN’ and it’s a key that is unique to the Amazon marketplace.

The crucial note here is that ASIN’s are Amazon’s own product identification system and is unique to Amazon.

Note: I am working on a more in-depth description of what ASIN’s are, it’ll be published in the next week or so, if I forget to update this article (quite likely) search for ASIN at the top of this site.

Obtaining a Barcodes

Barcodes are not technically owned by a business owner, instead they are leased for a period of time. You can lease these from numerous companies, however, the source of these is a company called GS1, you can find more information about them here http://www.gs1.org/barcodes or http://www.gs1uk.org/ for the United Kingdom.

Allocation is based upon the companies requirement, for example if you are a small manufacturing firm with only a few products, then you may only be allocated 1000, however if you require hundreds of thousands, then you’ll be allocated many, many more.

The fees for the subscription are based upon company turnover, using the current figures (July 2011) from the UK GS1 site, the joining fee is £107 and the annual company annual subscription fee is £117.

You can contact GS1 at http://www.gs1uk.org/about-us/Pages/Contact-Us.aspx if you have any specific questions regarding pricing and subscriptions.

Summary

Barcodes or should I now say GTIN’s are everywhere and they are a way for businesses to assigned unique product identifiers to their products.

They appear in several common formats and we should also note that while a ASIN is not a true GTIN, its so commonly used in eCommerce for Amazon, it might as well be.

So do you feel more comfortable with ‘barcodes’ now, how and where they’re used? Let me know in the comments box below & if you have any feedback, I’d also love to hear from you.

5 Questions for Dzine-Hub – A Professional eBay & Web Design Company

 

Following on from the two-part series “Why buy a professionally designed eBay listing template?” for which you can read part 1 here and part 2 here, I thought it would be a brilliant idea to interview a company that specialises in such designs and share with you first hand the experiences and feedback from such a provider.

Introduction

I’ve got 5 brilliant questions for Abbas from DZine-Hub.com lined up, but first let me introduce Abbas to you.

I first met Abbas when we were given an exceptionally large quote for a revamp of one of my clients eBay shops and listing templates, to the point we had to find an alternative.

It turned out to be somewhat ironic, the company that we chose had been busy creating templates for other businesses in the same category as this client and it was almost full-circle for Abbas to end up re-designing the original eBay shop that had inspired so many other merchants to up-their-game with a professionally designed template.

I’ve also had the pleasure of meeting Abbas face-to-face, Abbas came over to the UK from India where DZine-Hub is based in March 2001 for the Internet Retailing Conference. After the conference had finished, Abbas stayed in Bristol for the following week or so and we met up and took Abbas to my 3rd place, a cafe on the edge of Bristol docks.

Since then I’ve worked with Abbas & his team on numerous projects and its normally the first recommended design resource for all eBay related projects.

I’ve lined up five questions and over to Abbas!

Before we start, Abbas, can you tell us a little more about what your company does?

I originally started as a drop-ship business selling on eBay, building a team we cleared over 20,000 items in a 6 month period, but it was the designing that was my passion and we now use this understanding of how eBay works from a sellers perspective to help our clients set up businesses on eBay, through websites & the social platforms more efficiently.

My team now focus purely on eCommerce design projects, which includes eBay shop designs, eBay listing templates, eCommerce website design, Facebook fan pages and also customising clients Twitter pages.

When we first started Dzine-Hub, there were very few successful design companies, their turn around times were slow and the prices for services were highly impractical. We optimised our processes, focusing on quality and always aiming to remain small & nimble to keep the entire process as personal as possible, after all these are peoples businesses we are representing with the designs and impacts them greatly.

Why do you feel that people use services such as yours for eBay listing templates and eBay shops?

There are many many people selling on eBay and many using eBay shops. One of the best ways to get ahead of the rest of the sellers on eBay is to use a professional design for your eBay store and listings.

An eBay store design and listing template design is vital for three important reasons –

Branding

A strong brand is invaluable as the battle for customers on the eBay market increases by day. Time taken to create a brand, and then market that effectively is time well spent. Branding increases your credibility with the customer & concretes user loyalty. A unique high-quality design helps in effective branding.

Interface

A bad design interface can discourage a potential customer from making a purchase owing to the fact that the navigation is not too simple. A good interface can put the customer at ease, with navigation made easy between store pages and other information. Our store designs are not just good looking, we create a good navigation interface to make your eBay store more customer-centric.

[Matt’s comment: The basic eBay shop is fine to a degree, but after that they all look the same and 3rd party design companies can really add some flair to the eBay shops and add a superior user interface which ultimately helps buyers find items faster & more efficiently in both the eBay shop and the listings themselves ]

Cross-promotion

Another way of increasing sales / conversions is cross-promotion – let the customer know what you feel might be of interest to them apart from the primary area of focus. Creative banners and well-designed promotion category boxes can communicate with the customer more effectively.

Abbas, DZine-Hub is not based in the UK, while I personally have no issues with outsourcing activities such as design work that I am not specialised in, what 5 tips would give UK business owners when outsourcing their design work?

We have positioned ourselves as an Internet-based business, just like our clients, where the core competencies of our company are measured by the kind of services we offer and how we deliver them.

Beyond a point the location only matters little, it is about how we do what we do, to the best our abilities.

Here are 5 tips for UK business owners looking to outsource their design work:

  1. Look for experience
    Have a look at the portfolio, that would give you an idea on what they are capable of. Live links to eBay stores which showcase the work done.
  2. Genuine reviews
    Look at what people have spoken about their work (preferably on a third-party website).
  3. Service
    See the terms of service, after sales support and how easily contactable they are. Give them a call and/or an email and see what response you get back from them.
  4. Nature of their clientele
    See how big their clients are, their eBay feedback. If they’re attracting high volume, high value businesses, then they’re worth contacting.
  5. Expertise
    Many businesses use software tools to run their businesses on eBay. Its crucial that they have knowledge of the software system the company is working with.

[Matt’s comment: Just to add to the points above, never be afraid of picking up the phone and speaking to them. Look for a UK number or a Skype contact and call them. It’ll take no more than a few minutes and you’ll know first hand what the level of communication is going to be like. Maybe just like what your buyers do to your business ;-) ]

When we last spoke, you had exceeded the 600 designs mark, could you tell us how the journey has been this far?

The journey this far has been an exciting one to say the least. In the last couple of years of us being fully functional, we have learnt an amazing lot and grown from strength to strength.

We have launched 600 eBay stores and it’s not so much the volume that matters – but the fact that we have personally dealt with and successfully helped launch that many businesses on eBay. We’ve also designed a fashion outlet store in the UK along with the many others and have launched 50 eCommerce websites (and counting) based on the Magento platform.

Myself & my team are looking to an even more exciting time ahead – our next year should feature us venturing into Amazon web-stores, and launching more designs for other eCommerce websites that function on different shopping carts other than Magento, like OpenCart, Volusion, BigCommerce, Prestashop to name a few.

First impressions are huge, how do you work with your clients to ensure theirs are first-rate?

My1stWish Design ExampleHaving been in the business of eBay selling for quite a while, we’ve identified how critical it is for the designed templates to have the right balance of design and cross-promotion, suited to each individual business model.

We have been designing templates for varied set of clients, selling products & services across a very wide range of categories. A lot of our time is spent on deciding with our clients, what to do and how for each small / medium / large business, which we plan to have an impact on.

We understand how important it is for our clients to instill trust and confidence in their prospective buyers minds and all this is achieved with well designed professional templates.

First impressions count everywhere – we do our best to ensure that our clients make a very good first impression on their customers.

Some examples of our work are below:

Thank You

Abbas, thank you for taking the time answer those questions for us.

You can find out more about DZine-Hub.com here, the link goes straight to the gallery page of over 100 eBay design examples.

Why Buy a Professionally Designed eBay Listing Template? Part 2

This is the second part of a two-part series and if you’ve missed the first part you can read it here ‘Why buy a professionally designed eBay listing template?‘.

In this second part, I’ll be covering the following topics:

  1. Standardisation of common components
  2. The ability to try new layouts easily
  3. Professionally designed eBay template examples
  4. The conclusion

Standardisation of Common Components

Yes, you can achieve this without a paid-for design and I’m really looking forward to creating some basic layout templates that you can use as part of forthcoming articles (try searching for eBay template in the search box on this site as I may have added them by now).

However, with a professional designed eBay listing template, you’ll find that the elements are typically styled a lot better than what a novice can do with limited to no HTML & design skills.

To clarify what I mean by ‘Standardise data input’, these are the typical sections that you might have included in your listing template layout:

  1. Title
  2. Image(s)
  3. A short description of the product
  4. Any technical details
  5. Your standard postage option
  6. Your returns policy
  7. Your payment methods

So taking point 7, you can have your accepted payment methods prewritten and if they design company is a really good one, they’ll help you out formatting such sections, so each time you list, you don’t have to repetitively input this information or even in worst case scenario leave it out!

Note: With some software providers you can also provide logic testing alter what is and what is not shown in eBay listings. I’ll not be covering these in this article but is noted for a future one.

The Ability to Try New Layouts Easily

If you have a designed or even a basic template layout, then you’re able to then “play with” altering the placement of the sections in the template.

For example, you may include the images to the left in one layout and in another the images to the right. My point here is, that as soon as you have broken the product/service details & common elements away from the design itself, then you can alter the design and layout as you wish.

Note: Again noting that this is much easier when using most of the 3rd party software for eBay listings. The eBay listing template is normally broken away from the actual product data, then keywords are left behind in the template, as placeholders for the product data and that in itself allows the easy manipulation of the template layout. However even just altering the template for any new listings you may have is also applicable to this example.

Professionally Designed eBay Template Examples

Here are some examples I’ve picked at random from eBay, I’ve included a screenshot for each, a link so you can find the sellers items and view their eBay listing templates.

Note: I’ve linked directly to the eBay shops as listings is not a good idea as they may expire):

eBay-template-UniQ Clothing

UniQ Clothing

eBay-template-WeShipDeals
eBay-template-Funky Clubwear eBay-template-EFX Digital
eBay-template-vinyl_zoso eBay-template-ocean tree trading

Example Breakdown

If you take a look through each of the eBay shops above and delve into the listings, you’ll find a variety of different designs and layouts. It’s important to note they’re all doing the same thing, presenting product information to you as a potential buyer. Some do it better than others and it’s for you to take what works well for your products and then make it better.

Picking on Uniq Clothing, the actual product data they have in their listings is actually very, very low. In fact it’s so light on data, I will be dissecting one of their eBay listings in a future article to show you how light they are on the data as I reverse engineer the listing data.

If you pick any one of their eBay listings, you’ll note that if you visually exclude the outer contents of the template, what’s documented for the product, is minimal. A listing title, barely any eBay item specifics, great images and a six line description consisting of no more than 20 words and guess what? It looks fab! A testament to what a decent template structure & design can do to make really, really poor data.

Conclusion

Any listing template is a good idea (I think I’ve said that 4 times now), as they allow you to include the common sections in each time, such as postage details and product attributes to gain uniformity across your eBay listings.

Then by ‘branding’ yourself, you are able to portray yourself as a more professional seller and also allow the porting of customers from one platform to another more easily.

If your eBay activities look like your website and the customer has previously converted, then moving them to another trading place is far easier as they “recognise your business” (the point I was making with Tesco in part 1).

Question:
Do you use an eBay listing template for your eBay listings? What improvements did you find?

Use the comment box below to let me know!

Why Buy a Professionally Designed eBay Listing Template? Part 1

If you’re not aware, in the past few years professionally designed eBay listing templates have really taken off in almost all of the eBay categories by most business sellers.

This is part 1 of a 2 part series and the second part will be live tomorrow here.

Before, it was generally kept to technology-based categories, I suspect that this was probably due to the merchants in these categories having a better grasp of HTML and being able to create basic and advanced templates by themselves, although the artist and print categories have always pretty strong, due to the creative ability of such sellers.

There are several companies that offer such services and I’m not going to mention them here (I’m saving this for a later article), however pulling from a wide spectrum of examples across numerous providers, so you can see from example what is possible from such companies and discuss the benefits and possible drawbacks to buying and using a professionally designed eBay listing template.

So Why Buy a Designed eBay Template?

So to get to the core question, “Why buy a designed eBay template?“, as far as I see it,  there are several key reasons on why to buy a professionally designed template, these are below and I’ll expand on each further:

  1. Any listing template is a great idea
  2. Branding & building a presence
  3. Standardise data input
  4. Standardisation of common components
  5. The ability to try new layouts easily

So to cover these in more detail, I’ve broken them down below:

Any Listing Template is a Great Idea

I covered this in another article called “Do I need a professionally designed listing template to sell on eBay?”, here is an extract:

That’s quite a broad statement, but I’ll happily explain. By using a template to format your product details, will allow you to focus on what you need to add and not on what you think you should be including each time you list, then ending up with some listings well formatted and complete and some others half way (or less) complete.

Even if it’s a copy/paste from a text document, it means you can cover the basic questions in each listing without causing excessive buyer questions and putting buyers off by not including valuable information.

I am making the point that any eBay listing template is a great idea regardless of complexity it allows you to break the repetitive information that you include in every listing, the product details and any design layer that is included.

Branding & Building a Presence

This would have been set at the #1 spot, however I feel that even using a basic template is a such a brilliant business practice for eBay, not only for merchants to input their product or service data in a structured manner, but also for buyers, as they will thank you (buy buying) for allowing them to locate the information that they are specifically looking for.

Building your presence on eBay by using branding is again an excellent idea, as I said in the opening paragraph to this article, a few years back, professional designs were limited to the few, now they’re commonplace and there is a very good reason for this, by branding your eBay listings (and probably your eBay shop), you are able to distinguish yourself from the rest of the crowd.

Lets flip to a real-word example, lets think of “Tesco’s”.

Are you thinking, blue, white and some red text if I was to include a picture right now, you’d immediately now it was them?

(I was going to include their logo, however, there is no need, you know who they are and what the look like.)

Now… this ports straight back to your business, if you’ve just got a bland, white background and just black text with a few bullet points, then to be honest, you look like the rest. However, if you have a brand, as in a logo and a themed listing, then suddenly you’re a ‘brand’. Take this website, for example, if you saw the LastDropofInk logo somewhere else, say on my YouTube channel, then you’d know it’s us right? (hopefully you say yes here, that’s the point I’m making).

Continuing with the Tesco branding, lets look at a few examples (yes I know they’re a monster to pick on, however I’m just trying to amplify the point, I’ll get to real-life eBay sellers shortly, honest!).

Tesco Main Website
This is a screenshot of the main Tesco website (click for larger image)
Tesco Direct Website
Even without the blue, you stil instantly recognise that its Tesco (click for larger image)

And lets take a look what they did when they launched onto eBay UK:

Tesco eBay Shop
This is the tesco eBay Shop. You can view it here
Tesco Outlet eBay Listing Template
Tesco Outlet eBay Listing Template

This works in reverse

This is a pivotal notion, especially for eBay sellers who have no brand presence as of yet outside of eBay, by having a strong design on your eBay listings & eBay shop, then porting this to your other channels (such as websites, blogs, Facebook, Twitter & so on…), enables customers to feel more comfortable and again, just like the Tesco example, you can recognise them without thinking (also called brand recognition).

Standardise Data Input

If we make the assumption that each of your eBay listings has these common product/service sections:

  1. A Title
  2. Image(s)
  3. Bullet points
  4. A description

Then by leaving placeholders in your listing template, you can populate these core sections, quickly and easily. This not only helps data input, but also makes the core sections about the product easily readable by the buyer.

If you’re using 3rd party tools, then many of these support keywords and these placeholders can be left in the templates and are dynamically populated by the software when the listing is sent to eBay.

Summary

Before I wrap up this first part, it’s worth noting that you don’t normally just receive an eBay listing template from a 3rd party company, most bundle this in with an eBay shop design.

I hope I’ve put across the key point of this article that any template is a good idea, it doesn’t have to be professionally designed (although if it is then it’s likely to be far superior than you or I would be able to create).

The addition of a listing template brings many benefits, not only looking more professional, but to allow you to structure your data more evenly and then allow you to test different formats too.

In part 2 which I release tomorrow (see here when it’s live) I cover the standardisation of common components and what they are,  the ability to try new layouts easily, several professionally designed eBay template examples and reach the final conclusion on professionally designed eBay listing templates.

Solid Advice from 250,000 Feedback eBay Seller Bamford Trading

Bamford TradingIt’s fantastic to see John & Gill from Bamford Trading being featured on eBay’s SellerSphere this month. Both John & Gill have covered several key elements that should be considered when running a successful eBay business.

The original article is eBay focused however we should take note of the breadth of Bamford trading sales channels, as eBay is only one part of the multi-channel approach:

  • eBay
    As focused in the article, their eBay shop is here Bamford Trading
  • Amazon
    Amazon is also part of their sales channels, here.
  • Website
    Their website is at BamfordTrading.com
  • Twitter
    While not “massive”, the Twitter account is up and running and branded towards the company here.
  • Facebook
    John & Gills dedicated Facebook page is here.

Below are the 3 video’s from the eBay article, there is some fantastic advice in them and I strongly suggest you take the 5 minutes each to watch them.

How to Sell Successfully on eBay

Tips for Successful eBay Selling

Bamford Trading eBay Case Study

Summary

Both Gill and John have included some solid advice in these video’s. What you’ll be seeing from me in the forthcoming weeks, is the expansion of this advice into focused articles that delve into these much, much deeper.

Also an interesting observation, out of the 5 featured sellers featured in eBay’s SellerSphere, I’ve either helped or worked with 4 out of the 5 so far.

Question: Do you believe that you’ll reach 250,000 feedback on eBay? Comment below!

How to Customise Your eBay Search Results (For Buyers & Power Users)

Basic eBay search results are fine for normal users to a point, however even for normal users customising the search & browse results on eBay pages will allow you to make a more informed decisions on the item before clicking through.

If you are using the search & browse results to conduct Market Research, then you’re definitely going to need some extra information so that you have a truer picture of what the results mean and will save clicking into lots & lots of items, just to get at the core details.

How to Customise Your eBay Search Results Video

I have put a video together to show you how you can customise your eBay search results and the differences it makes to the way the eBay listings are shown to you.

In the latter part of this article, I go through each setting individually and also provide configuration suggestions for both power users and settings for users on low bandwidth/slow internet connections.

Customised eBay Search Options

eBay allow you to change most aspects of the search results on eBay, after making a search for a keyword, in the top right there will be a link called “Customise View” after clicking this option, you are given a pop-up layer/panel in which you can configure different options for the eBay search results.

Its also worth noting that these options also apply to when you’re browsing categories too, not just search results.

Tip: If at any time you wish to reset the search options you have made back to the defaults, then at the bottom of the “Customise You Search” panel, there is a “Restore Defaults” option, I’ve included a screenshot of this below just in case.

How to restore the eBay search options back to the defaults

Formatting

The formatting options allow you change several key data points that are returned in the search results, the biggest one to take note here of is the option to show the listing title on its own line. This is really handy when you’re including lots of extra data in the search/browse results.

Result Columns

While the eBay title must always be shown, you can configure other values to be shown, these include the items picture (if it has one), the number of bids (if an auction), the price, the time left and whether the seller accepts PayPal. You can also change the order in which these are shown using the up and down arrows.

Results Layout

You can change the way the items are displayed back to you, from the traditional list view where every item is in a single column, to a picture gallery view (which is really nice when searching as a buyer for fashion items) to a two column layout where you can see items side by side.

Reset eBay Customised eBay SearchTip: If you do choose to use the “Side-by-side view” or “Picture Gallery” the “customise view” link at the top right disappears. Don’t panic, if you press the button highlighted in the image to the right, it’ll take you back to the original layout and the customise view re-appears.

I’ve included screen shots of what the each these options outputs once set below:

Standard List View eBay Search Results

Standard List View of eBay Search Results

Picture Gallery eBay Search Results

Picture Gallery eBay Search Results

Side By Side eBay Search Results

side by side eBay search results

Time/Date Format

You’re able to change the time/date format of the time left on the listings from either 1d 6h 10m or to Nov-10 14:02

Item Title on its Own Row

This is a really helpful option to customise the search. By default, the listing title is “squashed up” and by setting the option allows the item title to have its own row. To best explain it I have taken a screen shot of the same item, but one has its own row and the other is the default.

Item Title on its Own Row

Show Postage Cost

Showing the postage cost is enabled by default. To make an informed decision on which items are valid results or not, I’d suggest you leave this option set.

Items Per Page

This is a very useful option, if you’re using the eBay search results to conduct Market Research, then just seeing 50 listings at a time means you have to scroll through lots of pages, however, set this to 200 and it cuts the page views by a quarter.

If you are on a very low bandwidth and you know your searches are always going to return a low number of results or don’t mind scrolling through lots of pages, you can set this to 25 per page and this will make the eBay results return a lot faster for you (as there 75% less listings to return for each page).

Tip: At the bottom of the search results, you are able to quickly change the number of search results being shown. A screen shot of these options are highlighted below:

Number of Results Per Page

Picture Size

Normal users of eBay (buyers) will be quite happy with the large option and also most power users will be too. You can change the image size of the gallery image of the listings in the customise search options, I only see this helpful if you are on a slow internet connection.

Item Information

The item information settings allow both power users and normal users include four extra handy data points to show with each eBay listing, these are:

Item Number

For normal users, this won’t be of much use, however for power users conducting Market Research on eBay, being able to quickly note the item number will be very helpful.

Watch This Item Link

This option adds a “Watch This Item” link to each listing, this can be handy for all users, as you’ll be able to quickly add the listing to your watch list for observation.

Location: Distance

If you’re logged in, then eBay knows your postcode and for listings that have either a postcode entered or a city that eBay recognises set by the seller, then a distance to you is shown.

This is really handy when looking for products (or services) that are local to you, for example if you are looking for a car and would like to view it before buying, not only sorting by distance, but also showing how far away the item is can be very useful.

Location: Distance

Location: Country/Region

Again for both power users and normal buyers alike, knowing of the listing is in the UK or not can be very helpful. If the item is coming from the other side of the world, you can either allow for extra time for the item to arrive or choose a different item which is closer to you or from a local based seller.

Seller Information

The seller information is again very useful to both power users and normal buyers. If trust is an issue for you, then in these options you can show the sellers feedback count, which may influence your buying decision or whether you click into the listing for further information or not.

Shop Name & Seller User ID

I’ve combined these together as its only really power users that would want to know whom the seller is. Having these options set can allow you to quickly identify the same seller over multiple search results.

Seller Feedback

For buyers, this option can help you influence which items you look into further. For power users this can help you identify larger sellers that have large amounts of feedback and may be worth further investigation.

Advanced Options

I’m going to combine the options in this section into one section to cover them all in one go. You’re able to change the way the sorting options work for both searches and when browsing categories in this panel.

You can also set to automatically convert the prices to GBP (UK “£” pound sterling), as this option is set by default and also because the original price (for example in dollars (USD or $) is shown, leaving this set is normally advised.

Configuration for Power Users

For power users, I have included screen shots of the settings that I suggest you work from for each panel in the “customise your search” options. I have highlighted the set options, so that you can identify them quickly.

Formatting

power-users-formatting-2

Item Information

power-users-item-information

Seller Information

power-users-seller-information

Advanced Options

power-users-advanced-options

 

Configuration Low Bandwidth/Slow Connection Speed Users

If you are on a slow internet connection, then removing the details you don’t need and limiting what is show can really speed up your browsing activities. While these are suggestions, as I mentioned earlier in this article, you may find different result layouts better for different categories of products.

These settings are focused on showing you the extra information you need to limit the requirement to click through to the listing to find out more information, while limiting what we can in the results themselves.

Also if you always shop for items on eBay from local sellers, then you can set the defaults in the advanced options to save you filtering the sorting options manually each time.

Formatting

buyers-Formatting-1

buyers-Formatting-2

Item Information

buyers-item-information

Seller Information

Customise Your Search Summary

eBay has allowed users to configure their search and browse results to their own requirements. As a buyer this can help save time by allowing them to scan through lots of listings very quickly and show the extra information they need to know to make informed decisions on which ones to look into further (and hopefully buy!).

For power users that are using the search & browse results to conduct Market Research, the extra options give you a wealth of extra information, cutting down research time and allowing you an more informed overview of what is happening for the search or browse results you’re being shown.

Did you know that this option existed? Even if you did, has the article & video above allowed you to browse eBay much faster? Let me know in the comments box below.

How To: Change a Private eBay Account to a Business eBay Account

I previously covered the difference Between a Private & a Business eBay Account in an earlier article here, however if you’ve already got an eBay account with decent (ie 100%) feedback already on the account then changing the account type and using this resource to help “bump” you up in reputation can be a shrewd move and only takes a few moments.

Also similarly, if you wish to turn account back to a private account, you can do so too on this page.

 

Steps to Change your eBay Account Type

  1. Go to http://cgi4.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ChangeRegistrationAccountType
  2. Sign-in if  required to do so
  3. Select ‘Private Account’ or “Business Account” as applicable
  4. Press confirm

There may be other steps you may need to take, such as entering your business details, including a telephone number, linking your PayPal account and/or setting up direct debit information for paying fees.

Once you’ve gone through step 4 in this list, you’ll be taken through the steps you’ll need to complete the extra information in.

It’s really that easy.

Congratulations eBay Feedback Stars!

eBay feedback StarsWhen you reach the eBay feedback milestones, you’ll get an automated email with a congratulations award. But why wait? You can have them all now!

I still remember getting my first 10 eBay feedbacks, I also remember getting 100 feedback and then the 10,000 mark too.  I stopped at around 14,000, but numerous businesses I work with have cleared the 100,000 mark and you don’t just get PDF’s when you hit this level ;-)

10 to 5,000 Feedback

If these numbers are soo far away, why wait you can have them right now:

10,000+ Feedback

I couldn’t find the UK versions of the larger star awards, however here are the USA versions:

So do you ever think you’ll reach a shooting star? Maybe you already have, with the next star so far away, have you even considered the next one?

Do I need an eBay shop to list items on eBay?

Surprisingly a common question for new businesses starting out on eBay and the short answer is no, you don’t need to have an eBay shop to list items on eBay.

However there are a few scenarios that we should consider to answer this question fully and in this article I cover them.

The Private eBay Seller

If you are only selling the odd couple of personal items per month, then an eBay shop for you would be almost pointless and an expense you can easily avoid. While you are now allowed to open an eBay shop as a ‘private seller’, insertion fees for the 30 day listing format is 20p would probably mean you are verging on the ‘Semi-Professional seller’ covered in a few moments.

So for a few items per month, opening an eBay shop is not really required, unless you wish to upgrade your account and use the additional features of the eBay shop and the 30 days listing format.

The Semi-Professional Seller

If you are selling items continuously on eBay, then it may be prudent to open an eBay shop. There are many reasons for doing so and these reasons are covered in articles on this site, however a brief outline is below of the key features

  • Its your own, brand-able slice of eBay
  • Potentially cheaper to list on eBay
  • You can categorise your listings in a matter that makes sense to you and your customers
  • You can add a minimum of 5 custom pages to your eBay shop
  • Increase exposure on eBay
  • Put your listings on hold, if you are away
  • A “listing frame” for your listings
  • A single point of reference for all your live items
  • You can add & control cross-promotions
  • Newsletter list & email marketing tool

These are just a short list of the benefits of opening an eBay shop, the main benefit other than having your own slice of eBay is that you are able to use the Good Till Cancelled (known as GTC) listing format, which allows you to list items for much less than it would in 10 day listings.

3 Questions To Ask Yourself

The best questions to ask yourself if you are considering opening an eBay shop are these:

  1. Do I have lots and lots of items to list on to eBay (eg more than say 40 per month)?
  2. Do I have lots of stock of one or more items?
  3. Do I want the extra features included with the eBay shop?

The Professional Seller

If you are listing multiple items onto eBay every day, or every few days and possibly have multiples of stock, then opening an eBay shop would be a great choice and probably quite a cost effective one also.

The listing fees would be much less than listing items through auctions / fixed price listings for 10 days. For example the current ‘Basic’ eBay shop fee is £14.99 per month and owning your shop would allow you to list items for 30 days for 10p.

There are a three subscription levels to the eBay shop, briefly we’ve covered the basic eBay shop level above, however there is also a feature eBay shop for £49.99 per month, with listing fees for GTC listings at 5p each and the level above that called ‘Anchor’ is £349.99, however the listing fees are free for GTC listings.

Quick Note on eBay Fees

While in May 2011 eBay made steps towards simplifying the eBay fees structure, they can still be a little confusing and that’s why I’m covering the basics here.

We’ve mentioned some fees for the eBay shop and the fees for the GTC eBay listing format, however we have no covered the final value fees and there are incentives to upgrade your account to a business seller on eBay IF it meets your business requirements.

For one the “Final Value Fee” or known as FVF for business sellers are almost always less than it would be as private seller, along with some discounts for reaching certain criteria as a seller. These are too complex to cover here in this article, however you should be aware these are to be noted and investigated thoroughly.

Summary

There are advantages to both account types, personal and business. However to sell on eBay doesn’t require that you create an eBay shop, although there are advantages such as lower fees and owning your own slice of eBay to market customers too. It really depends if you are a professional seller or a part-time seller.

A question is, which eBay shop description level do you have? Comment below!

What is an eBay Listing Template?

In this article I’ll be covering what an eBay listing template is, examples of such listing templates in action and finally why you need one, even if its a really simple one.

What is an eBay Listing Template?

So what really is a eBay listing template then? In its shortest form, all it is is a template (think of a set of of guides or like drawing some pencil lines on a page) to help you layout your product or service information out in a consistent, informative manner for both yourself and your customers.

eBay listing templates can be exceptionally complex especially when you mix in logic testing keywords and multiple sets of  data. Some of the templates I’ve helped design have far surpassed anything that you’ll ever come across, (going on a slight tangent here, bear with me) I remember one template that I worked on that involved nested keywords in eSellerPro (an auction management tool) that had about 300 lines deep of logic tests and  that excluded the sub paragraphs that were being pulled in with even more keywords in them.

Quick & Simple Example

However on the flip side, they can be exceptionally basic, just a few place holders for the description, images and maybe a few common lines of text for shipping and postage.

I’ve made a really simple one below, even this would assist in easy listing creation:

Item Title Here



  • Major point 1 – Maybe condition?
  • Major point 2
  • Major point 3
  • Major point 4
  • Major point 5 – If you’re stuck for a 5th, why not mention you’re fast delivery or fantastic feedback?

Main description here





Postage Information
Enter text here about postage. You could include the odd paragraph here as well and just leave place holders for postage prices for example:
UK Shipping is £UKShippingHere and Europe is £EUShippingHere

Payment Information
Enter text here about payment, I’ve also included the paypal logo below as well to give you a hand.
We Accept PayPal

Returns Information
Include standard information here, but please don’t scare people away with 10 pages of T&C’s. Write it in plain english

My point is that eBay listing templates can with third party tools go to extremes, but they all do the same job no matter how simple or how complex, which is:

  1. Format information clearly buyers
  2. Format information easily for merchants/sellers to populate
  3. To speed up the listing process
  4. To (hopefully) allow making changes at a later date much easier

Note: We’ll be including complex examples soon and also we have it noted to include some more basic examples and maybe even a short HTML to help you with the basics.

Examples of eBay Listing Templates in Use

For these examples, I’m going to include examples of professionally designed eBay templates, mainly because these show the use of such templates to their best effect, but as noted above, eBay listing templates don’t need to be ultra complex or professionally designed to be a great benefit to you and your customers, its all about displaying information in a clean, well structured format.

Example 1

uniq-clothing-ebay-template

uniq-clothing Template (click the image for super sized image)

In this example, we’ve got a whole host of template things going on. I’ll break these down for you.Firstly the entire outer shell is one big template, for example the logo, the top navigation, the sides and the content areas. If we focus on the sections that change, such as the images, the seller has loaded these images into a back end tool and then the gallery is auto created by the template, placing the first image as a large one and the extra images as smaller images down the side.The listing title “UNIQ P2-J Long Womens MAXI/ Boho/Hippie Summer DRESS” is also included as a keyword (see our other articles for what this means) to bring it through automatically when the item is listed.

Moving down to the item description, this is probably included from one of two places in the backend system, but the output is the same, they’ve entered the description in a description box (of some form) and its being spilled out into the listing where its being told to in the template. A similar process is happening for the lower tabs for sizing, brands, payment, delivery and returns, but instead of them being entered manually each time, they’re most likely hard coded (sorry this is a term I use, it means “written by hand”) into the template, so that they don’t need to keep writing it over and over. Just like the basic example I included above.

They’ve also got a related items box in this listing too, I know how you can do this and I’ll be including the steps to do this in a later article (try searching for “related items” in the search box on the right.

While I’ve picked a pretty complex template to begin with, this only amplifies that the seller would never have been able to achieve such a quality of presentation without the use of an eBay template.

Example 2

funkydivaltd-ebay-template

funkydivaltd eBay Template (Click for super-sized version)

While I personally dislike white text on a black background and excessive use of CAPSLOCK (and flash for that matter), they’ve done themselves a huge favour by using a template.They’re able to include the product information in very easily and are saving themselves a huge amount of time and even with my personal gripes with the template, it gives a uniform layout across all their listings and have a few bonuses to boot, such as the lack of requirement to include the repetitive information for shipping, about us, size guides and returns information, plus including some useful links to their other aspects and a basic cross selling module to the right for categories or products they also stock.

Example 3

cliphair-ltd-ebay-template

cliphair.ltd eBay Template (Click for super-sized version)

While not as visually appealing as the previous two examples, if you look closely at the contents, they’re using a layout to format their information much more clearly than just a few lines of text.For example the opening two paragraphs are common across their listings and adds brand awareness to the listing. I actually quite like the “We Promise” section and reassures the buyer viewing the listing. If you look further down the listing you’ll see a couple of tables included, these are fantastic for showing product specifics and even further down the shipping table, while not ‘visually pretty’, does a good job at formatting the shipping information.

Conclusion

eBay listing templates don’t need to be ultra complex, even though I’ve hinted that some (if not all) of the largest sellers on eBay use complex versions, even if you’re selling just a few items, a simple template like the one I’ve included, will enable you to list faster, not miss out on key information for your listings, provide the information in a clear format for your buyers and crucially make your life a lot simpler, if you need to update the listings at a later date.