What You Need to Know to Take Advantage of eBay's Best Match

Best Match on eBay is a complicated search algorithm that helps buyers shop from the best sellers on eBay first. It has been eBay's default search for more than a year now.

The main criteria that affect your ranking for any type of listing in any category via Best Match are:

• Seller track record
• Competitive pricing and shipping costs
• Relevance of the listing to what the buyer is looking for

eBay says there is no "silver bullet" that will get you ranked on page one, but I guarantee there are some definite areas that you need to look at and fix if you want a fighting chance at beating the competition. These variables are not consistent across all categories and eBay constantly updates them as it learns more about how the buyers search and what they are looking to purchase.

Auction-style listings are treated a bit differently than fixed-priced listings in Best Match search. The main ranking factor for auctions would be time ending soonest. This means that doing research using a tool like Terapeak on "best ending times" is still in effect for this type of listing.

For fixed-priced listings, the main factor is sales-to-impressions ratio, also called "Listing Performance Score." An impression is when a buyer sees a page that includes your listing. Newly listed fixed-priced items get a temporary bump in search to help level the playing field. Also, time recently listed is an important factor for fixed-price listings in the following categories: Art, Antiques, Coins & Paper Money, Collectibles, Dolls & Bears, Pottery & Glass, Toys & Hobbies, Stamps, Sports Memorabilia, Cards & Fan Shop and Entertainment Memorabilia. Hey, I didn't say this was going to be easy.

Grouping identical items into one listing not only helps you save on fees, but it may also increase your sales-to-impressions ratio.

Best Match love
Here are some factors that will help your items get some Best Match love and a possible bump in search:

• Price competitively: You can utilize the completed listings on eBay to find out what successful listings similar to yours are selling for on eBay.
• Shipping cost: This doesn't always mean free shipping, although that helps in many categories. This also has to do with keeping your shipping costs within an acceptible range.
• Impressions versus sales: Grouping identical items into multi-quantity/multi-variation fixed-priced listings not only helps you save money on fees, but it may also increase your sales-to-impressions ratio for your listing.
• Relevancy: This refers to keywords in your title and attributes. My last article talked quite a bit about locating the right keywords to have in your title. You can pick up a refresher course here. Also make sure you fill out as many item attributes as possible using Item Specifics.
• Your seller rating: Seller ratings include Top-rated, Above Standard and Standard. Being a Top-rated seller will give you an increase in search. Now, that doesn't mean that someone who isn't a Top-rated seller won't be ahead of you due to relevancy, pricing, or other factors, but it does give you a competitive advantage.

Even with all of this there is no guarantee, but these are the factors we know are included in how you rank in eBay's Best Match. Your best option right now is to utilize your built-in Store and eBay Reports and completed listings to consistently check on these factors and test them on your inventory. Of course there is another way…

Use the eBay Search Visibility Analysis tool in My eBay to find out how a specific item of yours is being ranked on the first page of search for:

• Price range
• Shipping cost range
• Free shipping (or whether you need to offer this for a page-one bump)
• Format (should you offer auction-style or fixed-priced?)
• Seller rating (for this item, in this category, will being a Top-rated Seller provide you small advantage or a big advantage for showing up on the first page?)
• Catalog product details (is this an item that utilizes features from eBay's catalog?)

Search visibility analysis provides information on factors that affect where your listing ranks in search results.

Condensed blog post from Auctiva Education.

Auctiva is an eBay Certified Solutions Provider offering listing management solutions and features for beginner -to mid-to high-volume eBay sellers.

Use Research to Understand Your Competition and Improve eBay Sales by Vendio

Article from Vendio's Vendable Blog

Understand, then Challenge your eBay Competition

Recent eBay changes are now including eBay Store inventory in the main or core search. With this change, it is much more important to understand your competition on eBay. Remaining (or becoming) competitive is truly the only way to achieve success when selling commodity items.

For one-of-a-kind items, auctions still remain the best bet, but for commodity items, you’ll need to stand out from the crowd.

To understand your competition, it's all about research..research and research.

Vendio Research provides competitive data on a seller or product level and it’s a great place to start when developing your competitive strategy.

On a product level (researching by product), you’ll be able to view at a glance all the pricing data and recommendations for listing successfully. In addition, you can view keywords that should be used to drive a products success (what terms are buyers using to FIND the product) and on a competitive level, you’ll be able to see the top sellers by product and view the details on what makes them successful. This will give you great insight. Find out when and how they are listing their items and at what price. Do they charge shipping or offer free shipping? Use the information to create a listing strategy that really works for your product.



In addition to product research, you can type in your competitor’s eBay user ID to get the same great information on a seller level (vs. a product level). You can view their overall strategy and see what’s really driving their success.

I can’t show all the graphs that are available (or this blog post would be loaded with Images). However, you can see from the image that you can view the graphs and trends for many different areas (average selling price, keywords, time of day, categories, etc.).

While Research gives you the “numbers and data”, it does not account for the other reasons a seller may or may not be successful, such as customer service, attractiveness of the listing and policies.

Use Research to actually look at the successful listings and determine how you can improve on what you see.

Can you make your policies friendlier? Can you make your ads more readable? Can you make your ads more attractive. Go into your competitors ads with a “red pencil” and then do the same for you own ads.

There is always room for improvement and better methods to convert browsers to bidders and buyers; it just takes a bit more work than it used to.

And one final recommendation, if you go through the process of researching and understanding your competition – don’t stop there. Make it a part of your normal weekly, bi-weekly or monthly process. Doing it once is great, doing it regularly ensures you can always stay ahead of the “next” curve.

Happy Selling!!

An eBay Certified Solutions Provider since 2004, Vendio provides an ecommerce solution for eBay sellers of all sizes. Vendio offers a series of applications which can be installed on a standalone basis or used to extend the functionality of the Vendio's eBay listing and inventory management solution.

7 Tips on How to Raise Your eBay Seller Ratings from Frooition

Article from Frooition's Blog

Securing and maintaining eBay’s Top-Rated Seller status should be high on any seller’s to do list. eBay education specialist Mark Buckingham offers a few top tips to help you bolster the fortunes of your eBay Empire.

Introduced in October, the Top-rated Seller program distinguishes the cream of eBay sellers…and it is achievable for the majority:

1. Strive for 5 stars: Avoiding low 1 and 2 stars is key to the Top-Rated program, so communicate to your buyers the importance of Detailed Seller Ratings and feedback. Use your custom emails in Selling Manager Pro to keep your customers apprised, add compliment slips to remind your buyers where they bought the item from and highlight other special offers, and don’t hesitate to pick up the phone if a buyer isn’t happy.
2. Understand Best Match: From meeting eBay’s basic seller standards, to understanding recent sales score and impressions it’s well worth doing a little homework to get to grips with exactly how Best Match sorts matching listings. Get Best Match savvy, and you’ll reap the rewards.
3. Pick your ‘carrots’: Top-Rated Seller is partly calculated by number of transactions, so consider adding cheaper cost-neutral lines that will sell in volume and could help pad out your feedback, and help absorb any low scores. It will also help generate extra footfall into your shop. Don’t forget to use Good-til-Cancelled multi-quantity listings to save you re-listing the item and jeopardizing your sales-score.
4. Manage buyer expectations: setting and exceeding expectations is all-important. In my experience, a buyer won’t mind waiting a week if they know in advance. Don’t promise a turnaround shipping and delivery time you can’t realistically fulfill.
5. Anticipate problems: Look at your Detailed Seller Rating and feedback history and see where low scores and non-positive comments have been left, and look for trends. Perhaps particular lines in your eBay Store are more problematic than others? If so, take time to give those buyers extra-special customer service.
6. Offer free shipping: This is part of the Best Match algorithm – eBay announced they give a boost to listings offering free shipping. Of course, there’s rarely such a thing as free shipping, but it pays to build it into your unit cost, or subsidize it as best you can.
7. Beat your competition: Frooition customers already have an advantage over most sellers who don’t have a professional setup. But it still pays to know your competition and to be creative. Get into the habit of scouring eBay’s Completed Items searches and other research products like Terapeak, to see how your competitors are fairing. Look carefully to see what value other sellers are offering and how you can add more value and stand out from the crowd. Be creative. Consider embellishing your gallery thumbnails and consider adding a subtitle if you haven’t already. Even stating how much money the buyer is saving might mean the difference between winning a loyal buyer or giving your competitors the upper hand.

This article has been condensed. To read the full article, click here.

Frooition is a leading provider of eBay store and listing designs. Frooition provide design services for most other online sales channels as well as website design. Frooition has been working with the eBay platform more than 4 years and has clients in the USA, Canada and Europe.

eBay Workshop Feb 10th - "5 Strategies to Increase the Visibility of Your eBay Listings"

Workshop: 5 Strategies to Increase the Visibility of Your eBay Listings

Host: Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was
Date: Feb 10th, Wednesday
Time: 11AM - Noon PST

Location: eBay Workshop Board

Description: In this workshop, Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was, will outline what you can do to maximize the visibility of your eBay listings. Learn more about Best Match and how you can create more effective listing strategies to save on fees and show up higher in search results.

Founded in 1995, As Was is a full-service consulting firm specializing in branding, design, sales and marketing strategies, operations management, and training. As Was is an eBay Certified Service Provider and has been working with eBay sellers since 2001.

Visit http://certifiedprovider.ebay.com/ to learn more about eBay Certified Providers and the services and solutions they offer to help eBay sellers.

Are Your eBay Listings Holiday-Ready? by Auctiva

Article from Auctiva Education (Education for eBay Sellers)

As the holidays near, buyers will be bombarded with special offers, sales and a bevy of items to choose from. Yes, every seller will be vying for their attention—and that means you have a lot of competition. So now is the time to ensure your listings are in tip-top shape to attract buyers.

Not sure where to begin? Just glance through the following aspects of your listings to make sure your listings pop, entice and give you a very merry selling season.


Try on a new template for size
If you've been to your local mall, or even the mom-and-pop shop down the street, odds are you've seen wreaths, candy canes, twinkle lights or other holiday decorations hanging in the windows as you go by. There's a reason for this: The wintery decor is inviting and it attracts buyers.

The same holds true for eBay listing templates. Templates organize eBay listings into digestible segments, including descriptions, shipping details and payment information, so buyers don't have to read through one massive block of text to find the information they need. It's there at a glance.

Auctiva recently added a number of new themes to its gallery of more than 1,700 eBay listing templates. You could go with a holiday theme, or opt for a template that complements the color of your items.

Try Bing for cha-ching
The Bing Cashback program allows buyers to purchase qualifying items and get a percentage of the item's price as a cash rebate. eBay buyers and sellers have been taking advantage of this program since it began a year ago.

So why not give it a shot? Get full details about Bing Cashback. To qualify for the program, items must be listed with a Buy It Now price, whether you're using the fixed-price or auction format. Be sure to mention the rebate program in your subtitle and description to entice buyers. The cash-back incentive will be very appealing.

Get the Best Match
As we mentioned in an earlier EDU article, relevance is the name of the game with eBay's new Best Match search algorithm. Remember, Best Match tries to show buyers the listings that most closely match what they're looking for, so use focused and appropriate keywords in your titles and descriptions.

"Titles are more important than ever," eBay notes. "Relevant titles will be more important than ever in getting the best position for Fixed-Price listings."

Titles that are too general might get more impressions, or click throughs, but they won't get more sales—and they'll wind up with lower performance scores. Lower scores mean a lower standing in search results.

Also be sure to describe your items accurately; that includes mentioning any minor defects an item may have. The holiday season is no time to surprise your buyers. They should know exactly what they're getting.

Offer free shipping
Budget-conscious shoppers are looking for the best deals this season. Offering free shipping will not only save them money and make them happy, it will give your items a boost in search results.

If you just can't do free shipping, offer the lowest-possible shipping cost. According to eBay, auction-style and fixed-priced listings with excessive shipping will be "demoted" in search results.

Do your research
Yes, prices will definitely matter this holiday season, so take a look at other listings to find out what similar items are going for. Buyers will certainly be doing this, even as the economy starts to improve. In fact, comparison shopping is expected to be the norm in the coming weeks, as shoppers look to buy items for all the people on their holiday lists.

Make use of that camera
Good photos and lots of them can promote trust with buyers. Remember that Auctiva lets you add more than 24 images to your listings.

Make sure photos are clear and detailed. A white background is always a good idea, as is taking photos in direct light to get good images. A picture really is worth a thousand words when it comes to selling online.

Find the right format

Lastly, your selling format will matter, too. It may seem difficult to decide if you should list your items in the fixed-priced or auction style, but there are some guidelines.

Auctions typically work well for one-of-a-kind products such as collectibles and antiques. It's also a good option if you don't know the value of an item. This could prevent you from over-pricing a product, since buyers will determine its worth. And you don't want to over-price your items. Buyers will be looking for deals, and so will Best Match.

However, if you have several of the same or similar items, and you can compare your item to others to determine its value, opt for fixed-priced. While several factors go into determining your standing in Best Match search results, Best Match will follow these guidelines.

So take one more good look at your listings to make sure they'll grab buyers' attention, and let the selling begin. Hope you have your packing supplies ready. You'll need them soon enough. Enjoy the sales.

This article has been condensed. Read the full article here.

Proof - How eBay Research Improves Sales and Success by Terapeak

Article by Terapeak

Terapeak Case Study: The proof is in the product!

Over the past several months, Terapeak has been conducting studies that analyze the impact of market research on eBay sellers’ sales and success rate. We’re very grateful to all those who participated, and with the results from our first group of sellers now compiled, we’re excited to present the outcomes!

A little background first: the group of sellers was selected randomly, and features sellers specializing in collectibles, home safety products, antiques and more. Eight performance indicators were tracked for three months for each seller. Statistics related to each indicator were compared on a pre- and post-Terapeak basis, and were then used to determine a percentage of growth or decline.

Some sellers showed improvement in nearly every business facet, while the improvement of others focused on specific statistics. And when averaged across the entire group, every indicator showed at least some improvement.

Here’s a breakdown of the group averages and best results:

As you can see, those are some pretty impressive numbers!

Read the full Terapeak article here.

Terapeak is an eBay Certified Provider and a member of the eBay Market Data Program. Terapeak 5.0 is a web-based solution providing real-time market research and data analytics on eBay. Terapeak 5.0 provides eBay sellers and buyers with two years worth of trending data.

eBay Certified Providers Can Help Sellers with Recent eBay Announced Changes

eBay recently announced new features and policies designed to help sellers be more efficient and reward them for providing great service to eBay buyers. We want to make sure eBay sellers are aware of how Certified Providers can help them incorporate the new eBay changes and thereby increase their sales while saving time handling their eBay business.

Helping Sellers Avoid Low DSRs

• Tools to make giving great service quick and easy
• Simple bulk shipping management for multiple carriers
• Post shipping tracking #s automatically in My eBay
  

Opportunities for Increased Visibility in Enhanced Search

• Optimizing sales for the new Sales Per Impression
• Tools supporting Product Details

Tools for Efficiency and Profitable Selling on eBay

• Easy listing revisions – Edit live listings to comply with new policies
• Selling Manager Applications from Certified Providers

The eBay Certified Provider Program recognizes third party companies excelling at providing the tools or services an eBay seller needs to grow their business and increase efficiency.

Effective eBay Listing Strategies to Increase Exposure and Save $

Workshop: Keeping Up With the Latest eBay Strategies

Host: As Was
Date: Thursday, March 5th
Time: 11:00 AM PST

Description: In this workshop, Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was, an eBay Certified Service Provider, will discuss recent eBay changes, and how sellers should adjust listing strategies to save on fees and show up higher in search results. The workshop will also include tips on how to stay on top of eBay's announcements and deadlines.

Founded in 1995, As Was is a full-service consulting firm specializing in branding, design, sales and marketing strategies, operations management, and training. As Was has been working with eBay sellers since 2001.

As Was Consulting and Design Help eBay PowerSeller Profit

eBay PowerSeller, SuperGoodDeals, has reached new levels of sales on eBay and attributes part of their success to great design and branding by As Was. Read the full story here.

As Was, an eBay Certified Services Provider, is a full-service consulting firm specializing in branding, design, sales and marketing strategies, operations management, and training for eBay sellers.

Strategies for eBay Sellers from As Was

Listen on eBay Radio to learn eBay success strategies recommended by As Was CEO, Debbie Levitt. Debbie discusses how to increase your items visibility through a "Strategy Spotlight" which includes

• Detailed Seller Ratings
• Fixed Price 30 Day Format
• Recent Sales

As Was is a full-service consulting firm specializing in branding, design, sales and marketing strategies, operations management, and training for eBay sellers.

CP Workshop: Increase Best Match Ranking 4/15

How to Increase Your Best Match Advantage through Niche Selling
This workshop will be held on Tuesday, April 15th from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Pacific time.

Host: WhatDoISell.com

Selling in a niche has always been the best way to secure a profitable place in the eBay Marketplace. And with the introduction of Best Match, niche selling has become even more important! In this workshop, Lisa Suttora, Founder/CEO of eBay Certified Provider WhatDoISell.com, will discuss how specializing in a niche can give your listings the Best Match advantage. You'll also learn some new strategies that will get you on the path to finding your own profitable niche to sell in.