Does Your eBay Shop Suck? I have an Invitation for YOU on Friday!
The eBay “Shop” is one of the most under-loved parts of eBay and I’m going to change that with your help.
This Friday I’m going to be making a very special invitation just for you, to come work with myself and several other business owners as a team to turn your eBay shop from drab to cool and deliver a strategy so that it becomes the “hub of your eBay business“.
I’ve not hammered out the exact details yet, however, to give you an insight around this, for many years the eBay shop has been one of the most under-loved and under-tapped resources on eBay. I’m currently writing a book that will be given away free on this site that will be “Ultimate Guide to eBay Shops” that is going to change this forever.
When I say the ultimate, I really mean the ultimate guide. It’s going to have my name attached to it and as such I am looking for it to become the defacto-standard for any business that uses an eBay Shop or eBay Store as they call them outside of the UK.
I might be setting the expectations high here, but why write something that is not going to be ultimate resource ever created? I’m 10, 000 words in already and I expect it to be over 30,000 by the time I finish, covering upwards of 80 pages of quality insights to help people just like you maximise their businesses on-line.
Where Could You Improve?
I’ll be posting the full details on Friday. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you on the areas where you feel you could improve your eBay shop.
Let me know in the comments box below.
(I reply personally each comment left on this site!)
My eBay shop sucks more than a dyson Matt so I will be tuning in! Improved navigation, template, shop pages….
Sounds good (as per usual Matt)! Yes, would be great to see what can be done to improve our eBay shop and eBay sales – we do not sell no where near as much on eBay these days as we used to. So anything which can be done (free and easy ideally!) would be a massive bonus. I am particularly interested in the ESP side of things as I feel (maybe coincidentally) that since using ESP our eBay sales have dwindled whereas other sales channels have improved tenfold.
Cross promotion, SEO, special offers and getting buyers to sign up to the mailing list are a few things which I feel would be good starting points.
Also, I love the idea re: local networking / motivation meetings – but I am in Essex – not near Bristol???!!!
Laters.
Hi Matt
Sounds like a plan!
Very much looking forward to this!
Hi,
Got Dzine Hub on board to revamp my shop and we are very close to finalise the redesign. So this might have just come at the right time. Really looking forward to this.
JM
I reckon I have the worst eBay shop there is… 6 years as a full time ecommerce business, 1000s of items shipped a month and… wait for it… http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Tone-Deaf-Music – not even a header or anything
I’m ashamed of it!
Just one of those things that keeps getting put on the back burner month after month, year after year.
ebay sales have plummeted over the last few months (mainly after ebay dropped all my auctions to the bottom of the search results) so anything to liven them up again would be very interesting
I know there’s some cool stuff you can do with eSellerPro with keywords and things – that would be useful, although I understand not everyone uses ESP
Also, code for dynamic categories in listings would be useful too.
Hi Dave. I have solved the dynamic category problem, I have passed this onto Matt in the past, who im sure can share this with you.
Hola Jason,
Yea I’m wondering if that would be a better solution for Dave as well.
In eSellerPro there are some pretty powerful keywords that can process data dynamically in the background (see below), but you can also condition them as well through IF and IFNOT structures.
Jason, I’ll send over the code I have for the buttons I’ve created, I have tested them on numerous listings and they appear to work OK, but I’d value your input with them too.
Matt
Thanks Jason and Matt.
I didn’t realise esp could handle dynamic cats. That’s really useful. I’ve use if and ifnot keywords for an image chooser and they work well.
Blimey, I’m almost excited about my eBay shop now. Haven’t felt like that for a while…
Howdy Dave,
Well I’m sure we can do something about that!
With regards to eSellerPro, there are two keywords that you can use in the listing template, the first is {{MenuCategoryList}} that brings through the categories dynamically and the other is {{MenuStorePages}} which brings through the custom pages, also as a list. But for these to work you need to add some extra parts to the accounts section in maintenance, which I can’t remember what they are right now.
There is also another set of keywords for the “similar items” button, although I have a better version of it which will work just as well and needs the eSellerPro keyword for the eBay Category ID dropping in to it.
Matt
Hi, perhaps the biggest thing is, what tools are already there to use? I know I should use my shop better, but partly through lack of knowledge and partially through inertia, it is perhaps an underused resource. Perhaps a basic, what you should already have, section as well as the cool stuff you’re likely to also mention?
Thanks
Jon
Howdy John,
I’m trying to focus on what can be done for free and with the tools built into the eBay Shop.
I really want to avoid the inclusion of 3rd party companies, although I cannot discount them for completeness and I’ve worked out a plan for them (more on Friday for that topic).
Matt
Sounds good….. Count me in please
Phil
Howdy Phil,
I’ll have more info on this on Friday.
Daft question, how come on your eBay shop it goes from a designed front page to losing the design as soon as you go into a category?
(if the reply is sensitive in nature, my email is matt [at] lastdropofink.co.uk)
Matt
I always thought that the shop itself was pretty unimportant compared to the listings. i rarely browse peoples shops when buying.
Howdy CJ,
Thanks for the insight.
You’re of course right, 90% of the interaction is going to be via the listings for new customers, its why consistent branding from the listing to the shop to the documents to the email to x, y, z is sooo important.
I’ve been working on a collection of tools & tips for an exit strategy for the listings too. I’ve now have a simplified version of them and they’re completely configurable or just copy/paste and require just 2 edits per eBay account.
Matt
The exit strategy list sounds cool, when can we look forward to reading it?
Hola CJ,
My personal dead line is two weeks for it to be at a stage to be proof read. Whether I make this target or not, I’m not sure, but this is part of making sure it happens.
There is nothing quite like declaring something and then being publicly responsible to do it ;-)
To give you an idea, there are 60 plus sub-chapters in it so far.
Matt
Hi Matt,
You must be psychic. Here I am on day 2 of re-jigging my eBay shop after I lost half my my listings due to an eBay VERO attack. (Shabby Chic IS trademarked, it’s just that no-one seems to know)
I’m considering the following:
A designed template – shopfront and listings
Filling in all the EAN info. (good idea or not?)
Lots of cross linking in listings
Improved photos
Re-visiting all the Store Categories.
All help received = good news.
Howdy Richard,
Ah sounds like perfect timing!
Look out for the post on Friday, as I just mentioned to Jason above, I’m working on the details this evening. I have an idea of the plan I need to follow, but it’ll all probably change with each eBay Shop as required :)
Matt
This sounds exciting Matt – looking forward to finding our more on Friday. Happy to chip in with our experience of getting our shop template designed and implemented too if you think it might be useful?
Gill
Howdy Gill,
Oh that would be truly superb.
The biggest impact of working with you, Jason and the others last year was that I had underestimated the power of the community aspect and just joining people together. Its something I’m personally keen to drive this year and I’ve got some hidden parts to this site that I’ll be using shortly.
I’ve also got plans for next week to start arranging a local (to Bristol, UK) multi-channel monthly meet up. See by now saying that, I have to do it :)
Matt
Good work Matt, i’m sure the book will be worth the read if past experience of working with you is anything to go by.
Howdy Jason,
Thank you :)
I’m really looking forward to this one too. I’m working on the agenda this evening, will be something like this:
1. A Group Meeting
Bring everyone together and find the common ground
2. Dig In
Identify specific issues and then address them
3. Delivery Strategy
With any issues addressed work out a strategy that works for each person/business so that they can become self sufficient.
4. Group Meeting
Come back as a group and evaluate the response
2 & 3 might be together, I also need to consider the limits of how far this should go as well, especially around design work and a couple of other topics too.
What do you think of the above?
Matt
Looks really good Matt, could have done with this 6 months ago. Although always something to pick up on that i’m not yet aware of. Pretty much got a lot of it cracked now, happy to throw a few ideas in though of course.
Hola Jason,
I wouldn’t say no to some assistance!
Matt
OK not a problem, you know where to get me if you want any help.