All eBay dropshippers should familiarize themselves with the latest and greatest (supposedly) search engine to be rolled out on the ever shifting sands of the site: Cassini.
Cassini is markedly different than previous search engines on eBay. Whether it is actually better or not depends on who you are talking to. The eBay execs, whose brainchild it is, extol the virtues of Cassini. eBay sellers, including dropshippers, don’t have much of anything good to say about it.
But here is the thing: If you want to remain one of the eBay dropshippers who make money and are successful on the site, you will have to adapt---or die.
Like it or not, Cassini rules the day on eBay and you’ll just have to go with the flow or pick up your dropshipping marbles and go elsewhere.
Here are some tips to help you adapt to the Cassini search engine and optimize your dropship listings to accommodate it. These were gleaned from a presentation given by Todd Alexander, Director of Onsite Search at eBay.com.au at the PeSA 2013 Internet Conference to help make eBay search placement more transparent for sellers. Todd’s explanations were quite helpful.
The key to understanding the eBay Cassini search engine is to realize that the search engine now is all about utilizing all of the data to give shoppers on eBay immediate results that are specifically targeted to their searches. This is to happen quickly and hopefully, painlessly. Cassini is supposed to eliminate a lot of the totally irrelevant search results shoppers frequently got with the old search engine. Does it do this? Not really. But, in fairness, it does seem to be marginally better than it was. So, understand that Cassini uses a lot of data to rank your dropshipping items in search results.
Cassini is supposed to focus on four main factors:
Relevance
Trust
Value
Convenience
The whole idea is to streamline the entire shopping process and give shoppers search results that offer a good value from trustworthy sellers, are relevant to their search terms and with a fast, easy transaction from start to finish. This is a good thing and if it really works, will be good for eBay drop shippers as well as other sellers.
Best practices to keep in mind when it comings to ranking high in the Cassini search results center around using good keywords, lots of item details, write titles and descriptions that get shoppers to click through and buy. Your keywords are crucial. Todd Alexander suggested looking at the keywords or keywords phrases that come up under the search box when you type in a specific keyword or phrase and using them in your titles. For example, if you type the keywords “digital camera” into the eBay search box, here is what you will see:
Instead of loading up a big batch of listings at once, stagger them out and schedule to start gradually. In the past, a lot of dropship sellers and others would list a slew of items to try and dominate the category. This is not advisable with the new Cassini search. You should list as many as you actually expect to sell.
These are a few tips to help eBay drop shippers understand and cater to the new Cassini search---put them to good use and increase your sales!
Start your own online dropship business today!