How to Optimize Your eBay Listings

You can have the absolute best products to offer in your business, but those products and your face as a brand are only as good as your actual listings. Getting the most out of your eBay product listings is crucial to your success as an eBay seller, because if you can’t draw people in in the first place, there is zero chance you’re going to sell anything. When you optimize your eBay listings to the fullest, you can truly start a great momentum for sales right off the bat, and you can keep that momentum going for the long haul.

Proofread, proofread, proofread.

And then proofread again. This is a 101 basic for any listing, and there is no better place to start in optimizing than at the foundation. There also has never been a more important time to achieve perfection down to the tiniest detail. Don’t give the grammar fiends ammo to come after you, and don’t let something as simple as a typo cause you a loss of selling traffic. Take an extra two seconds to use spellcheck. It makes the difference between a thriving business, and a disastrous one that never had a chance. There are also some great review tools you can use that offer an extra eye on spelling and grammar, as well. Grammerly, Scribens, and Ginger are some fantastic options.

Price right from the get-go

You want to be a player in the market, so you absolutely cannot assume that your pricing is what that market needs before you do a thorough comb through of other ecommerce realms. Your listing will be all but a dud if you don’t price it correctly immediately out of the gate. Of course, the impact this makes works the same on the flipside of things, too. If you undervalue yourself and price too low, that’s another ward-off for potential buyers. They’ll wonder if you’re trying to bait them, or what “the catch is” on such a decreased amount, and most likely steer clear from your listing all together.

Research a million and one times

What key words or SEO tricks do you see as a trend on the eBay selling platform? Learn more about SEO tricks What description styles seem to stick out in listings, and what types of photos seem to instantly resonate with buyers? From all the big stuff to even the smallest of things, research until your eyes cross so that you are as knowledgeable as you can be on what makes a listing gold.

Create multiple versions of your listing

Even if you think you’ve got the perfect ONE listing to go live, you could be seriously wrong from the viewpoint of someone else. What catches the eye is different for every person, so creating more than one listing and live-testing it out to see what does best is essential to getting it right. Two versions to start with is a great idea, but the more you do — and the more frequently — the better view you’ll have of what’s working.

Actually watch and keep track of your results

This probably seems like a weird tip to even mention, but sometimes with all the things there are to do to start up, or to keep a business going, we can find ourselves all too easily just robotically checking boxes in the hopes of getting them checked off. Don’t let setting up a great tracking system for your listings fall prey to one of these automatic lists. Take full advantage of the tracking tools that eBay offers, or invest in your own if you like. Following closely on your results will ensure you’re getting the most out of your listings.

Here are some great outside eBay tools to consider:

Auctiva

Sellbrite

Inkfrog

Vendio

Kyozou

Perfect the art of being a seller sleuth

It becomes something reminiscent of a Sherlock Holmes novel when you’re attempting to pick through your tracking results to see what works and what doesn’t. Maybe one of your listings performed better than the other, and the reasoning isn’t something so simple to figure out. Trial and error really can be the name of the game when dealing with making multiple listings work in varying ways from one another. Is this a lot of brain work and a lot of time spent? You betcha. But that’s a pretty fantastic trade-off to be able to be your own boss. And you’ll become a better seller for it.

Don’t argue with the results you find from tracking

Spending all that time finding the right trackers for your business means just that — they are the right trackers. You have to keep faith in the data that the trackers ultimately provide you, and then use it as the tool it’s meant to be. This might sound like a no-brainer, but we’re only human, and you’d be surprised how easily stubbornness can cloud your judgement. Of course you think you know what’s best when it comes to your business — and yes, that is mostly true. But the whole reason you adopted certain listing tools in the first place was to amp up the great things you already provide for your selling space. So, always be open to what the non-biased info the data is telling you.

Remember that this is an ongoing process

You will invest tons of time into trying to get it right; into trying to get the listing process perfected. But here’s the thing: the market changes constantly and rapidly, which means so does the definition of “what makes a perfect listing to a buyer’s eyes”. Does it feel good in that moment when you’ve figured it out? Absolutely! You should certainly keep a file of what worked great, because more often than not, you’ll refer back to the best ideas to utilize again. Changing with the winds of the ecommerce world is what separates the mediocre sellers and the great businesses.

More tips & tricks

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