Hey guys, this Neil Waterhouse. Today I want to talk about how the eBay search engine works.
eBay search engine which is called Cassini, which is the current eBay search engine.
I received an email from Ryan Cushing, "Neil how do I make my listings appear
higher in the eBay search results? " And to answer this question, I'm gonna talk
about how eBay search engine works. 'Coz, if you understand how the eBay search engine
works, it makes it much easier to configure your listings to rank higher.
First of all, the 4 areas that the eBay team continually work on. So if you
think about all the changes appeared over the years, it all come down to these
4 areas: Relevancy, Trust, Convenience and Price.
Now we're going to drill into what each of these 4 areas are.
First of all, relevancy.
The "impression to sale ratio" is a huge part
determining where your listing appears in the search results.
Now, the impression to sell ratio is all about how well your
item sell compared to other items. So, an impression is when somebody does a
search on eBay, someone type something in to do a search and out comes
the listings in the search results. They've all had impression ratio now of 1.
Just like with Google, you search something for Google, up comes a website, that
websites now got the impression of 1.
Now with eBay, because, it's a business,
it's got shareholders, it wants to show
which listings are likely to get the most sales.
Just like you go to a supermarket,
they put on the front of the shelving units
the hottest items, the items that are gonna sell the best.
They're not gonna put things
at the very very front that is very viable real state the don't sell.
So as you're checking out, you know, you see bottles of coke et cetera, and the favorite
chocolate bars, because they know there's been proven fact that these items sell well.
We're gonna talk about what you
can do to make it get your items to have
a very good "impression to sale ratio".
In other words, low impressions to high sales.
We'll talk about that in a second. Then the other thing is "Item specifics".
Let's dig into "impression to sales ratio".
So, first of all, Category. Do you have
your items listed in the correct category?
Because category makes a huge difference. You know, a lot of people trying to trick
the system because they put in the items in the wrong category where they get a
lot of impressions but they get very low sales. And what happens there is you
eventually your listing just falls to the floor because it's getting all these
impressions but it's not getting the sales.
Use a tool like Terapeak or look in eBay
for past sales to see which other similar listings.
What category are they in?
Where are the top listings?
What category they are using?
Keywords
First thing with anything with SEO, anything the first you gotta do is choose
what keywords you wanna rank with. And we wanna look at what we call the 'money keywords'.
So, these are keywords that have proven to generate the most sales and not just keywords that you get you traffic.
'Coz they are irrelevant and everyone in different buying cycles.
Like for instance, if you gonna go and buy a camera, like a digital camera, it cite digital camera view into
Google. Well, they're not good keywords to be buying. Where some like, Canon IX whatever,
that kind of a person knows what they want, they're ready to buy.
Again, we want to look at past history about which keywords are proven to get
the sales. So we don't guess them, we don't ask our friends. We have to look at
what proven results are, of which ones are getting the the sales.
The next big thing is "Trust".
When people are looking at your listings they've got to get a feeling of trust
and trust is all about the feeling.
So sorry guys we have to get in touch with our feminine side.
So, when we gonna go and look at feeling, we'll look at, first of all,
listing template is absolutely crucial because a listing template gives you trust.
Listing template is when you scroll down someone else's eBay listing and you look
and it's where the description is. So when you start in eBay, you just bought a few bits of
blank black text and explain the item. But,
a professional eBay listing will have a very fancy listing template with a logo,
their branding, photos, et cetera.
Now, these sort of things cost,
you're getting done with this for a hundred bucks.
So, it's not a big excuse of why not to do it.
It's just another one of the baby steps we have to do
which dramatically increases our sales.
'Coz trust is a huge thing.
When we buy things, we wanna get the feeling
we're buying a quality item and we wanna get it.
Now we gotta feeling of getting it a right price,
and we're gonna talk about that in a second.
And we're all also wanna know it's gonna be yesterday.
So, with a listing template, do we all have those mental triggers out there.
Branding
Do you have a logo made?
You can get logos made at a place like 5 for $5.
And it's very important that logo's professional.
If it's not, send the logo back to them
get them to redo it.
It has to be professional
because that gives you the feeling that
where you buying this product from
is supplying a quality product
and you'll spend more money if
it's a quality. You get that feeling.
Terms and Conditions
Do the "Terms and Conditions" on your eBay listing template,
do they make people run away or does attract people?
You know, ask your friends to evaluate it.
Is it harsh? Is it arrogant?
If it is where people stop at wherever barely
Why we have to look at these customers anyway?
So you might as well tell people what you gonna do
and take anything that's nasty out.
It's amazing how quickly can kill trust with "terms and conditions".
Photos
Do your photos give the feeling of quality?
Do you have 12 photos listed up?
Pasting relevat feedback into your eBay listing template
is a great way of getting testimonials.
So, we once a month, from the 23rd of each month
one of our staff goes through all the feedback
and plucks out anything
that's relevant for the product that we sold.
Basically she just copy and paste it into the eBay listing template.
Of course, copying and pasting isn't work as graphics's as, it's easy. But in a nutshell
that's what we do. We copy and paste the feedback into the listing. And people
read it and they see it's real. It works really well.
Does your listing template give buyers
the feeling of you're a quality seller? Or cheap seller? Like going to bricks and
mortar. If you're selling Chinese food you can demand a high price if you give the feeling
of quality like on this picture below, of the flash-looking Chinese restaurant.
They can demand more money and people are happy to pay.
Whereas, you can't charge the same amount of money
for a Chinese dish as you can with the one above.
It's simply just, people know it's not right.
It's the same with an eBay seller,
with your listing, if you're giving the feeling of quality
people are more likely to buy from you for that price
What's your warranty?
A warranty again gives another feeling.
Does it give you the feeling, if you've got like 7 days warranty?
You would say, "Oh my God, what's wrong with the seller,
she doesn't like this product?"
Whereas , if you give 12 months warranty,
you can feel people shoulders let go, and they get more trust.
Long warranties work very well.
And they really don't make a huge difference amount of returns.
Returns?
What's return period, is it 7 days or is much longer?
Again this all increases your sales
which in the end of the day
improves your impression to sell ratio.
OK. Let's go to Gallery Image.
A gallery image is the first photo. eBay allows you to
upload 12 photos. The first photo is called the gallery image.
And the gallery image is what determines you click-through rate.
In other words, people see that gallery image
then if they like it, they then click through to your eBay description.
And the gallery image can make a massive difference.
We use what we call a three by three (3 x 3),
we want the 3 top benefits of ours as a seller and 3 top benefits of
the product we're selling.
And then back to why the top 3 reasons why people buy from eBay.
They want to get the feeling of quality,
in other words they don't wanna buy crap
And they wanna get feeling they're it getting a good price,
and they want it yesterday.
So, we address those issues in the gallery image.
In other words you scratch their itches
and then we also have the top three benefits
of the product in there as well.
Perceived Value
How much is something worth?
We can increase the perceived value of an item by several ways
A short story
A short story is like the elevator pitch from the time it takes in an elevator to go
from the ground floor to the 10th floor, we do a short story explaining everything.
So many times I see eBay listings and you gotta scratch your head
to work out what this thing is.
There's always more to the story for every item.
And if you're listing, it's very easy to work out a story about it
just by adding a little bit of research
from the supplier, from other sellers, you might know what
this thing is but write a short story that engages people, they get more attracted
to it and increases the perceived value.
Bullet points
You should always have at least 20 bullet points.
Our goal is 20 bullet points for all items.
Now obviously it's much harder have a bullet point on a wine glass
all 20 bullet points on a wine glass, but then
you try to do 20 and then convert your bullet points to benefits.
In other words convert features to benefits.
An RRP
If you're an importer, you can set an RRP,
a "Recommended Retail Price".
People on eBay that went on a bargain,
they want to get that feeling, they're getting it at a good price.
If you put down an RRP which is believable
Don't go over the top
They can say, "Oh, I'm getting a discount. Great, I'm happy."
Photos
You know, the more photos, the more things you spell out
the joyeiras of certain things
and features and functions this thing does,
the more the perceived value.
Think back to buying a car, by going to a motor to buy a motor vehicle,
get a brochure. The brochure is a chock-a-block full of bullet points -
features and benefits. And the more you read the more your mentally perceived
value picture of how much this vehicle is worth goes up.
Same with eBay , same with any other platform.
More bullet points creates more perceived value.
More photos again more perceived value.
And the photos
Now, some take macro photos
Get up close and
photograph individual parts and features and benefits of what you're selling
Converting features to benefits
I've already discussed that
Mark down manager is a tool
you can use in eBay where you can market prices down. So if you want to get $100
for an item, you could list it up for, say $130,
put on sale so it's now got, you know
40% off and it's near that $100.
And people see that as a perceived value.
OK, SEO
SEO is brilliant
not just for eBay but for making eBay listings being to be able found by Google
You can list an item, if you do it correctly with SEO
you can get a lot of traffic come with your eBay listing from Google
which is good for eBay in general, but it's great for your listings.
A short description which is the first 150 characters of your description needs to
have the keywords in it. Your title, of course, which is where you put your ID characters
needs to have the most relevant keywords.
Don't put in things like, you know, RRP
dollar signs
bargain, all those things that no one ever searches for. More relevant keywords,
and more relevant keywords the more money you're gonna get.
The more traffic you're gonna get
which in turn is gonna give you more money.
Image names, need to
renamed to your keywords. Now these are not the images that you upload to eBay
these are the images you have in your eBay listing template
ALT Tags, I'm gonna dig right into what ALT tags are
Essentially, they were designed for blind people there but it helps the search
engines just know what your photos are because to a search engine your photos a
lot of zeros (0) and ones (1). The ALT Tags tell the search engines what your photo is.
The keyword should be peppered in the description 3 to 6 times for SEO.
Store Categories - If you have an eBay store which you should have, you should have
the right to items in the right category, not just everything in the other category.
Have the right categories with the right keywords. You also need to set
up a store search keywords. Store search keywords are the keywords
that eBay users for that particular listing. You have to create a Meta tag for them
I'm gonna dig what meta tags are, basically just fill that out.
Because your default store search keyword is
actually the keyword that is your eBay user ID which is useless, in almost all
circumstances. So you need to remove that and put in all the correct ones.
So just go to Sell and Manage My Store and you can see it in there.
Title Tags need to be changed again to keywords.
Scarcity - When your listing something on eBay and it says 20 sold
it's got 10 available
it doesn't have a great reason for people to buy. Scarcity sells, so instead
of that, reduce the amount that you have available
so people can say, "Oh, it's got 20 sold and
it got 1 remaining, or 2 remaining, then Oh my God, I better buy it."
I get sucked into that all the time when I'm booking hotels.
I'll see it's got three rooms available on this date and sure enough, I'll click the button and buy.
Airlines have been doing this for over 20 years where you book a seat, they've got 6 remaining.
You book yours and miraculously since you hang up more seats appear, you know.
I'm gullible for it too, but reality is, these cases of mental trigger that works very well.
Social Proof - Social Proof works brilliant for eBay but also works for social
proof for buyers. So when people see 10 sold, 20 sold,
fantastic.
It's great proof for eBay and it's proof for the buyers. Just like we're going out for
dinner and you walk past a restaurant Saturday night, 8 o'clock at night. One restaurant got 1 person or none.
The one next to it got 40, which one do you go to?
You know, instead of getting food poison
you normally take the one with 40.
So sales history is a big big thing
Nothing to click
Rules of internet marketing is
when people come to your sales letter
they either buy it or they leave.
Don't give a way out. Don't give them a mean that they can click on.
Because if you do, they will just go in there and click on it.
Mobile responsive?
These days so so critical to have an eBay listing that is mobile responsive.
Don't even remotely bother with anything
This has dramatically affects your sales, your impression to sale ratio.
We're seeing some of the products over 60% of sales coming from mobile
Over 60%. So if you don't have a smart mobile responsive template, you're gonna
miss out all that sales. It's gonna dramatically hurt your impression to sale ratio.
Ok, Item specifics
Make sure you populate the item specifics.
You put in your product identifiers,
your colours if you have colours, size everything to do with your items, just fill it out.
As an example, if you selling clothing.
Let's say you're selling, say, a red dress
And you don't put in there
in the items specifics that's it's red
Someone does a search for dresses
and they check, click on the check box
or the radio button
the red,
your listing will no longer appear,
simply won't appear.
So more than ever
product identifiers
item specifics
is so crucial to fill out.
OK, Trust
The other big thing for
for eBay of course is trust.
And this has come from many factors.
How old is your account?
What status is your account?
What's your feedback rating?
What's your defect rating?
All these part thing are taken into account
for the trust.
Number of transactions
Do you offer returns?
If you do, how long?
Convenience
Do you offer free shipping?
Where are you located?
If you're in, obviously in the USA
they're not gonna want to show listings in Italy
as high as yours if everything else is equal.
Because people gonna, it's gonna take much longer to get them.
So distance is, is taken into consideration.
Do you offer express?
What's your handling time?
Is it 1 day? 2 days?
Again, convenience, it's all taken.
If everything else is equal,
all these things make a difference.
eBay like everything it's all about baby steps just adding these tiny little
change, little change, little change,
Many people out there are trying to find
the killer thing, but it's not about that.
It's about doing these little tiny
baby changes, baby changes, baby changes,
just baby steps at a time and then the
whole thing comes together.
Price
Now, price is not the be all and end all.
The impression to sale ratio,
it's got huge weight on eBay.
Prices oversee take into account,
but it's not as much as everyone always
often thinks it is.
You can sell the same product, we do it over and over,
sell the same product on eBay for more money,
if you did get everything else right
Shipping is also taken into account.
Cost of course, price of the item plus shipping
So if you offer free, of course, it takes into account.
Offer overseas is gonna be more expensive
So, shipping is added to the two together.
OK. This is a bit of a long one this week.
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Until next week, list more, sell more
this is Neil Waterhouse