Howdy, we have something a little different for you in this blog post.
We’re going to draw your attention to a Twitter account that you should be following if you’re not already. This account is @eBay_Academy and this is the Twitter account of Tim Davies who is the Manager for Seller Education & Engagement at eBay Australia.
Tim however brings an extra special insight to his role at eBay. Not only is he an employee at eBay, but he also runs his own eCommerce business so he knows all of the nuances and typical pain points that your are likely to face as a seller on the platform.
This is one of the reasons why following Tim on Twitter is highly recommended as he shares with us his best tips and things to consider when selling on the platform.
We’ve put together Ten of Tim’s Top Tweets (Matt says: try saying that after 4 pints of cider) which we are going to expand on here as we don’t have the confines of 140 characters like we do on Twitter.
Tim’s Top Ten Tweets
Tim’s Tweet
#eBay Inc expects double-digit annual revenue and earnings growth over next 3 years. http://tinyurl.com/4kzepfo
Tim Davies @eBay_Academy
Dave’s Comment
These are some incredibly huge numbers that Tim is referencing here.
The article mentioned is from a press release from eBay HQ in San Jose. eBay CEO John Donahoe explained how eBay Inc revenues were expected to reach at least $13 billion in 2013 compared to approximately $9 billion in 2010.
eBay Inc incorporates not just the eBay marketplace but also Magento and PayPal to name just a few of the big names. John went on to say
“Online and offline commerce are changing and converging, and technology is dramatically influencing how consumers connect, shop and pay. We are at the forefront of shopping innovation. We believe we have core businesses, platforms and assets that strongly position us to compete, win and lead on a global scale. We are confident that we will lead the next generation of commerce.”
This tells us eBay have some impressive growth plans over the next few years and now is as good a time as any to get on the eBay marketplace as more markets open up, and more customers come online, your potential reach to more customers is increasing.
Dave Furness @understandinge
Tim’s Tweet
More than 35% of #iPad owners have downloaded the #eBay iPad app
Tim Davies @eBay_Academy
Matt’s Comment
That doesn’t surprise me at all. The wife has even installed the eBay app on the TV and it’s cost me a fortune.
However on a serious note, this is where your customers are.
When you’re on the train or out & about, look at the people around you, they’re all looking down at their mobile phones. eBay helps you be in front of these people with their dedicated apps. You want to be where the eyeballs are and these days that means being on as many screens as you can be.
Matt Ogborne @understandinge
Tim’s Tweet
#eBay gallery images now default to 140×140 pixels. Optimise your gallery image for the best results
Tim Davies @eBay_Academy
Dave’s Comment
So… we now know that the gallery images on eBay will now default to 140 x 140 pixels.
You might think that is a trivial matter and you will be fine as obviously your images will be larger than that. However what you may not have considered is that 140 x 140 makes a perfect square.
This is eBay telling us that they are suggesting that optimised images will be a square shape and the length and width sizes will be the same.
If they’re not, you’re loosing prime real estate on the product gallery & search result pages on eBay. Every pixel really does count.
Dave Furness @understandinge
Tim’s Tweet
Using Magento to power your ecommerce? M2E Pro plugin for eBay is now free. http://m2epro.com
Tim Davies @eBay_Academy
Matt’s Comment
Dave I’m jumping on this one :)
If you’ve not heard of M2EPro before, M2E stands for “Magento to eBay”. It’s an extension for Magento that extends the standard eCommerce features of Magento to enable business owners like yourself sell onto eBay & the other marketplaces.
It’s currently on it’s sixth revision right now and has received over 50 major updates. eBay have been subsidising M2EPro use since 2011 so you can use it for free to sell onto eBay with and this is set to continue for the next 3 years (from autumn 2013).
You can list products on to eBay from Magento, keep stock & prices levels true over your sales channels and also collect orders from eBay into Magento and process them just like a website order.
Oh and it’s important to note that you don’t necessarily need to be using a Magento website to use M2EPro, that part is optional and you can learn how to setup Magento & install M2EPro using the tutorials here http://understandinge.com/magento-tutorials/.
Matt Ogborne @understandinge
Tim’s Tweet
If you don’t use Item Specifics in your eBay Listings, you are being seen 13% less than your competitors http://bit.ly/ZklQgW
Tim Davies @eBay_Academy
Dave’s Comment
Item Specifics are crucial to successful selling on eBay. Item Specifics are a double edged sword, you want to make sure that your listing has as many relevant Item Specifics selected as possible.
If you don’t select all of the Item Specifics that are available for your product then you run the risk of being missed out in the eBay Search. As Tim has shared above, this is making up about a 13% difference than your competitors who are using the Item Specifics fully.
Let’s use a quick example. If you are selling a blue shirt on eBay, and you have blue shirt in the title, description and a great image of your blue shirt, but you don’t select the item specific for colour and set the value to Blue.
For any customer that now searches for a shirt on eBay and uses the item specifics on the left hand side to narrow down the results to just ‘Blue’ shirts. Your product will not show, as you have not told eBay that your product has the value for Blue in that Item Specific.
This means that for every potential customer that uses these menu options to narrow down their search will NEVER see your product and therefore, they will never have the opportunity to buy from you.
Dave Furness @understandinge
Tim’s Tweet
What does your returns policy say about your business? Be reassuring not defensive.
Tim Davies @eBay_Academy
Matt’s Comment
As a customer no-one likes scary text and especially scary terms and conditions.
In our “One Simple Rule to Sell More online” eBook (which is free) we cover not only the returns policy but the use of any scary or negative terms that may be in your listings.
A brief summary is:
Think like your customer
You customers don’t want to see lengthy T&C’s full of jargon
Can you trim your returns policy down to one or at worst, two sentences?
Matt Ogborne @understandinge
Tim’s Tweet
Avoid annoying watermarks on your #eBay listing images
Tim Davies @eBay_Academy
Dave’s Comment
Here Tim mentions not to use watermarks on your images, and in an ideal world this would be perfect sense.
Watermarks distract from the product itself and sometimes can be misleading. I remember a few years ago a business I knew who sold beanbags on eBay were inundated with questions from potential customers asking if they had any “Plain bean bags without the company name on them”.
As you may have guessed the beanbags were plain but were watermarked which was confusing and misleading the customers.
Some of you may feel the need to have watermarks on your images for copyright reasons, if they are unavoidable in your eyes make sure they are as unobtrusive and transparent as possible.
Tip: You can use the watermarking feature in M2E Pro for the eBay gallery pictures to do this automatically for your product images in Magento.
See the settings in Sell on eBay > Configuration > Policies > Pick a Description policy > Images & Watermark and change “Use Watermark” to “Yes” and set the your desired settings.
Dave Furness @understandinge
Tim’s Tweet
Are your #eBay buyers claiming they aren’t receiving your emails? Ask them to check their spam filter for http://ebay.com.au
Tim Davies @eBay_Academy
Matt’s Comment
Spam bots, sometimes they make mistakes, silly bots…
This is why using the eBay messaging system rather than direct emails is always best.
Your customers are notified of any communications you send them via eBay and even if they do get caught in a spam filter, it’s always dead easy to demonstrate that you did reply to your customer in a timely manner (and that you really do care), as you can just say, check “My Messages” in eBay.
From a practical point of view, it’s more likely that a direct email from yourself is going to be marked as spam, than it is an email from eBay.
Matt Ogborne @understandinge
Tim’s Tweet
More than 14000 vehicles are sold every week through eBay globally #ebay
Tim Davies @eBay_Academy
Dave’s Comment
This is Tim highlighting the audience that eBay now has by breaking it down into physical products everyone can understand. 14000 vehicles are sold a week on eBay. Previously here in the UK AutoTrader was the go to place to sell you car or motorbike online.
Ever since eBay has been pushing it’s Motors category, it’s seen a meteoric rise in traffic and clearly sales.
Buying a vehicle is not a rash decision that most people rush into. This is showing that more and more buyers are now trusting high end purchases on the eBay platform and if you are in the motor trade it is certainly not a market to ignore.
Even celebrities like Sylvester Stallone have had their cars sold on eBay!
Dave Furness @understandinge
Tim’s Tweet
#eBay listing and selling fees explained http://bit.ly/AenTag
Tim Davies @eBay_Academy
Matt’s Comment
Knowing how much you’re going to be charged is key to knowing whether you’re going to be making any money at the end of the day. As much as receiving feedback is nice, profit is key.
There are plenty of fee calculators out there, our favourite is this one http://ecal.altervista.org/en/fee_calculator/ which covers the larger eBay sites, however you should always check your billing reports from eBay and you can do this by following these steps:
Go to My eBay
Hover on the Account tab
Click on “Seller Account”
Then click on the link called “All account activity”
And review your recent transactions and compare them to what you expected to be paying. It only takes a few minutes to check, if only for peace of mind.
Matt Ogborne @understandinge
In Summary
Bringing value in just 140 characters is a skill in itself which anyone who uses Twitter will be able to vouch for. To put this into some form of perspective this post has just under 2000 words…that’s words not characters! However as you can see this is something that Tim manages to do with the vast majority of his tweets.
Which is why we collected Ten of Tim’s Twitter Tips (we also like alliteration) and thought they were worthy of compiling and expanding on slightly in this post.
If you haven’t already then we recommend you give Tim a follow on Twitter @eBay_Academy
Happy tweeting
Matt & Dave
The post Tim’s Top Ten Twitter Tips for selling on eBay appeared first on UnderstandingE.