7 steps to drive traffic to your eBay store
Want to boost your eBay sales? We compiled seven key steps to follow to drive traffic to your listings. Learn how to increase your sales on eBay.
EBay has come a long way from its roots in online auctions. These days, the marketplace manages about 1.1 billion live listings—81 percent of which feature new items—from more than 20 million sellers around the world. Which makes standing out to the site’s 168 million active buyers more difficult than ever.
At the same time, the company has begun stepping up the user experience: merchandise is now grouped by product type and brand, while cleaner listings are compulsory for professional sellers—making the site easier to search and improving the visibility of listings on external search engines.
If you want to increase sales on eBay, you need to drive traffic to your store. Here are some tips to consider.
1. Customize your eBay store’s appearance
What do you want your potential customers to see? Set up a custom listing frame to tailor your eBay store to include things like your logo, a navigation bar with your product categories and a link to subscribe to your newsletter.
You can also upload a billboard image to highlight any limited-time promotions or special products and use the “featured items” feature to showcase certain listings.
2. Use keywords to attract views
Consumers generally search for very specific items on eBay. Ask yourself what words people are likely to type into a search engine when looking for what you’re selling, or do your research to see some common searches related to your products.
Once you have three to five keywords, it’s important to use them in your store description, custom categories, page titles, meta tags, image alt tags, etc. But avoid keyword spamming (using words or details that have nothing to do with your items); it violates eBay’s policy.
3. Take advantage of promotions
According to NRF data, 75 percent of buyers are looking for a bargain. With eBay’s Promotions Manager, you can create customized coupons and special offers to improve your listings’ visibility and encourage consumers to spend more in your store.
For example, offer free shipping when someone spends over a certain amount, set minimum order-size discounts like BOGO deals, or cut prices on certain categories to help move inventory.
4. Content is king
Spreading the word about your store can be as easy as just sharing your expertise. As eBay puts it, “You’re already a knowledge expert in your category—why not share it with others?”
Provide potential buyers with opinions and insight on topics you’re an authority on by writing guides. Not only will this increase your search-engine visibility, your guide could even be shared on social media, which helps to improve your brand awareness.
5. Use email marketing
EBay offers a suite of email marketing features that can help keep customers interested in your store and product offerings long after their first purchase.
Buyers can subscribe to receive updates by adding you to their Saved Sellers list or by signing up via the link on your store’s homepage. Using eBay’s email design tools, you can create regular newsletters that promote your latest listings. To attract more subscribers, you can add a sign-up box to your store.
6. Refresh your RSS feed
EBay’s internal search engine is called Cassini—and it loves fresh activity, like new product listings. This is where an RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication, or Rich Site Summary) comes in handy.
EBay instantly sends information about the site’s listings to Google using RSS, but a cheeky way to push your products higher in search results is to refresh your feed by turning it off and then on again.
7. Maintain great seller ratings
On eBay, the feedback you receive from customers helps influence future sales. And if it’s consistently positive, potential buyers know that you manage transactions well and care about your reputation.
There are two ways to ensure you get it: provide excellent customer service, or request feedback from satisfied shoppers.
Buyers often have questions before, during and after a sale—no matter how detailed your product listing or how clear your delivery and returns policies. Use an e-commerce help desk like eDesk, which consolidates support tickets and order data from all your sales channels into one place and puts the information you need to respond quickly at your fingertips.
Research has found that 42 percent of consumers are more likely to leave a review for a business if they are asked to do so. eDesk’s feedback software helps increase your seller scores by sending targeted requests to customers you’re confident received the best possible experience.
Buyers can leave sellers positive, neutral or negative Feedback and a rating from one to five stars on four aspects of their transaction: accuracy of item description, communication, shipping time, and shipping and handling charges. As such, you can tailor your feedback strategy to target orders by SKU, product type, on-time delivery, destination and more.
