Free eBay Consultation: indiansteps

This free eBay consultation is supposed to serve two purposes. First of all, it is supposed to act as a case study in eBay selling. I am hoping that you will learn what types of things to do in your auctions and stores, as well as what sort of things you should try to avoid. Secondly, this free consultation is supposed to help the sellers by giving them personalized instruction on how they might improve or alter their selling techniques.

If you are interested in a free eBay consultation, please submit your information here.

Now it is time to get down to business. The second eBay seller I am going to give some tips to is Denise. She operates under the user name indiansteps, and her store is called: Denise's Bargain Bin.

Denise sells a variety of clothing and accessories for men, women, and babies. The majority of her items are gently used. Please check out several of her auctions so that we can be on the same page while discussing them.

OK, hopefully you checked out some of Denise's auctions, and store. The main topic that we are going to work on today is: how to create a brand through consistency.

I am assuming that anyone wants to create some sort of a brand for their business by the time that they make a store. If this is true, here are some steps that Denise should take:

Step 1: Create a logo. Logos are easy to create, and will make it so that your customers instantly recognize and distinguish your auction from the others.

Step 2: Find one auction template and use it for all of your auctions. Having one standard auction template will make it so all of your auctions will be identifiable by their layout. This way, even if the bidder is not looking at your logo, they notice continuity while shopping through your listings. Another benefit to having only one template will be that you save a lot of time by not having to rewrite the same information over and over. You can keep all of your terms of sale in one nice bottom location and never have to mess with them again. They are also very efficient when listing multiple items, as you only have to change some parts of the description and images.

Here are some things that I recommend Denise changes on her auction formatting:

• Use an auction format that will be universal for all of your listings.
  
• Don't use more than two colors in your auction text. It seems like you have a new color for each paragraph, and I do not quite understand the concept behind this. I recommend using black for the regular text, and a bright color like red to use sparingly to draw the readers attention to important bits of your auction.
• I would also decrease the size of your font a little bit. Size 12 to 14 font should be what you keep the majority of your writing in. Anything else looks unprofessional (and we are trying to be professional here).
  
• Proof read all of your auctions. I did not catch so many grammatical or spelling errors, but I did find one place where there was some repetition of information. In the same auction (Swaddlem Baby Wrap) your payment info was repeated, but also differed from location to location:
  
  • Payment is expected with 3 days of ending of auction, I accept Paypal /Money Orders
• Please contact me within 3 days of auction end to confirm payment Payment is expected within 7 days of auction end.
• The second Payment request one seems more reasonable, and is within eBays regulations. Technically, the bidder always has seven days to pay, no matter what the terms of sale say.
• Also, you should add information about how you handle returns. This will be helpful to refer your bidder to in future situations.

Step 3: Make Changes to the little things. There are several little adjustments I would make to your store and auctions. They are fairly easy so I will not go into to much detail.

• Use your whole title in your listing. Make sure to use as many relevant keywords as possible. There is one title that has the word "cords" in it, but not pants. Be as descriptive as possible!
• Use gallery pictures in all of your auctions. I don't know how you shop, but I never click on items that do not have pictures. Add them and you will get more bids. If running auctions is too expensive for you to not include gallery pictures, then I suggest you look very closely at the next tip.
  
• Change your auction to store ratio. If I were you I would decrease the amount of items I list as auctions, and put more of them into the store. Run about 10% as auctions with low starting prices and inside the auctions refer the bidders to your store.
  
• Add more categories to your store. Instead of Men's Clothing, it should be: Men's Shirts, Men's Shoes, Men's Pants. Do this with the rest of your categories as well. And don't bother with subcategories (they take too much effort on the buyers part).
• Change your auction title from "Womans" to the correct term "Womens." (Actually, the real correct term is "Women's" but the eBay search engine does not care about the apostrophe, and you need all of the space available to maximize your title)
• Consider using a large white piece of paper for a backdrop for your pictures.

Praise: Your pictures are crisp and nice, and it appears that your customers are happy with your shipping speed and price. This is great, because although these changes might get you some extra bidders, your superior customer service will get your old bidders to come back over and over.

Good luck, and if you would like a logo or template created, or some one on one phone assistance, please email me. carl8630 gmail com (that invitation goes out to other readers as well).