5 ways you can make your ebay listing stand out from the competition

There are over 200,000,000 items being sold on eBay around the globe at any single moment. That’s a lot of zeros. And that means a lot of competition for the minds of the buyers we’re all trying to reach.

One of the top questions I hear sellers ask in my eBay seller meetup group and elsewhere is, “how do I make my listings stand out?” It’s perhaps the most important question there is. If you don’t stand out, that potential buyer is going to jump to the next seller with the same or a similar item.

I teamed up with Danna Crawford, The Power Selling Mom and eBay Hall of Famer, to put together a list of ways to stand out on eBay. And the best part is, it really isn’t that hard to do.

1. Do your research!

I know what you’re thinking: why do I need to do research just to sell something on eBay? Well the idea is pretty simple. Someone has probably already sold that item before, and you can learn from what they did right and what they did wrong. Use a tool like Terapeak to research your product and see what it’s been selling for, the best format (fixed price or auction), the keywords the successful sellers are using and anything else they did to make their listings stand out.

2. Maximize your listing’s title

Your title may very well be the most important aspect of your listing. It’s your one chance to convince the buyer to click on your listing instead of someone else’s. How do you do it? Follow these simple rules:

• Create a descriptive, unique, accurate title with terms buyers use. Include the most important features and characteristics.
• Use all 80 characters, with item-relevant keywords, all you can. (Remember, it used to be 55 so make sure you take advantage of the extra characters.)
• Don’t use punctuation or quotes. eBay needs to “see” a space before and after words to know it’s a word.
• Certain categories have standard acronyms that save you space.

3. Choose the right pricing strategy

This part isn’t easy, but if you followed our first tip it should simplify things. One of the most common problems new eBay sellers have is understanding how all of the different auction formats work. Here’s an overview of your options:

• Auction — Use when selling rare items OR when demand outstrips supply. Auctions with a “Buy It Now” option are taking off and are being used more and more successfully by sellers.
• Fixed Price — For everything else. Also consider adding the “Best Offer” option. It can really boost your sales. Some sellers increase their fixed price and accept a best-offer price that is where they wanted to sell the item in the first place. Buyers still feel they are getting a bargain.
• Charitable Donations – Research shows sellers connected to a charity get more buyers. This also gets your items on the Giving Works pages.
• Group Gifts — Take advantage of this new eBay feature. Friends can “chip in” on a gift for someone in their circle. When you list an item with a Fixed Price or Buy It Now price, the item will be visible to all Group Gifts shoppers.

4. Appeal to the Best Match formula

“Best Match” is the formula eBay uses to determine where listings show up in their search results. They look at a variety of quality factors to help determine how relevant your listing is to the searcher’s intent. It’s important that you understand what factors this formula cares the most about so you can exploit appeal to them. The key components are:

• Fixed price first
• Relevance to the buyer — keywords in the title and item attributes
• Price with shipping
• Seller quality or status
• Sales over impressions. For listings with multiple quantities, the ratio of the number of times your item has appeared in search vs. the number of sales. In some categories, like electronics, this is crucial. In collectibles, where you’re not selling multiple quantities, it’s not.
• Amount of time remaining before an auction ends

5. Peak the buyer’s interest with a beautiful listing design

Now that you’ve brought the buyer to your listing, it’s time to close the deal. This is where so many sellers miss out on sales. It’s not enough to just have a good price and shipping benefits anymore. You need to help the buyer SEE just how beautiful the product is and that they can TRUST you to deliver exactly what they are looking for. How do you do that? There are three things you need to make sure your listing has:

• Pictures – as many of them as you need to give the buyer a sense that they can hold your item in their hands (or walk around it) to really see all of it.
• A professional design. Whether you create the design yourself, or you use a tool like Page Mage’s free eBay selling templates, the concept remains the same: brand your listing, use consistent and elegant fonts, make your pictures stand out and show them that you’re a professional. Research has shown that when you look credible, buyers are more willing to buy from you.
• All of the details without all of the fluff. This is the tricky part. You need to under promise and over deliver, while also recognizing the fact that the buyer doesn’t want to read a book, they want to be able to skim through your description and understand exactly what they are getting.