What Makes a Good eBay Listing

The first part to understanding what makes a good eBay listing is to understand the “impression to sale ratio” and how it works.

When a potential buyer searches for an item i.e. “solar panel”, the first things a buyer sees is the gallery images for the listings displayed in the search results.

Each one of the listings shown in the search results has now recorded one impression.

Our job as eBay sellers to create listings which get low impressions but high sales.

The listings which are continually showing at the top of the search results are very often the ones which are getting the least amount of impressions to the most sales.

Our job as ebay sellers to create listings which get low impressions but high sales.

The first step to get your listing shown in the search results (an impression) is good keyword research and making sure the best relevant keywords are used in the title and the ad copy. As well making sure the item specifics is filled out correctly and your listing is in the correct category.

Make sure the “search keywords” have been set correctly in your eBay store category if you have an eBay store. eBay automatically adds these “search keywords” to the meta tags of each listing.

The next step is to get people to click on your listing from the search results. You have less than three seconds to grab their attention and one of the best ways of getting their attention is with the Gallery image. Sellers are using all different strategies to make their Gallery images stand out from the crowd. However what our tests have shown is to use the top three benefits of the item and/or the seller i.e. the flag of your country so buyers know you are local. By adding the top three benefits to your Gallery image you can radically increase the click through rate of your listing.

The thing to note is if eBay shows your listing in the search results this is classed as an impression even if your listing is way down the page and the buyer cannot see it.

Sellers are penalised if they get more impressions and less sales than their competitors. If a listing gets high impressions and low sales, Cassini (ebay’s search engine) will push the listing further down the search results. Ebay wants to display the items which have the highest chance of selling and this is based on past sales.

This is the same as any smart business, if you have a hot seller, you want to bring it to the front of the shop and not hide it out the back.

Once you’ve got a buyer to click on your listing, this is called a click through or “click through rate”, the next step is to win over the customer with your description.

This is done first by quickly creating a sense of “trust” in your description.

The “feeling” of trust is literally that, “a feeling”. To create the feeling of trust on an ebay listing you first need to have a professional looking listing template which also displays trust symbols. Trust symbols can be a PayPal logo, UPS logo, DHL, FedEx, brand names et cetera. We also like to convert the top benefits of an item i.e. “100% cotton” to an image. Also convert the benefits of buying from you i.e. 12 months warranties which is created to images as well.

Scientists say we can read an image 1000 times faster than words. This figure seems extremely high however one thing is for sure, we see and remember pictures much better than words.

The old saying “A picture speaks 1000 words”, we must take this on board.

For this reason, we always do our best to convert benefits into images. Many of these images are available for free by searching Google images. Of course check the copyrights.

As an example, if you offer 30 day returns, add an image which says 30 day returns. If you are a US Seller, add a USA flag. If your item is authentic, add an image which says authentic. If you are selling a brand name, add the brand name to your ad copy. All this generates more trust.

It is critical to get somebody else to read your listings to see if they give off the feeling of trust. Your ad copy should contain not just positive statements but also point out anything which could bite you on the backside in regards to feedback and defects however it should not include words like “you must pay in 24 hours” no returns”,”et cetera.

Everything in your ad copy should give the warm feeling of trust.

With outsourcing, it is not expensive these days to get a professional looking ebay listing template created.

The next step is to answer every question the customer has in your ad copy so the customer has no need to keep browsing your competitor’s listings to find the information they need.

Price of course is very important and your price should be competitive. It does not have to be the cheapest, however, it needs to be around the “average” selling price.

There are other factors which need to be taken into account of course. However a Gallery image which stands out above the crowd, a competitive price, good keyword research and a template which creates trust fast… They are 5 of the most important aspects of what makes a good ebay listing.

To your success

Neil Waterhouse