Free Shipping & Best Match: An Advantage for Fixed Price Listings Only
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With the roll out of the Fall 2009 changes to Best Match, eBay has provided more transparency than ever before into the inner workings of that algorythim. One of the aspects eBay has clarified pertains to the advantages of offering free shipping when competing for visibility and placement in the Best Match search result pages.
From information available on eBay’s site, we now know that only fixed-price listings get an advantage in the Best Match search results by offering free shipping. However, both fixed-price and auction style listings are penalized in the search results for “excessive” shipping and handling fees.
From eBay.com:
Fixed Price listings with free shipping will continue to receive added exposure. Auction-style and Fixed Price listings with excessive shipping will be demoted.
New eBay Templates Added
Filed Under Sellers' Insights | Leave a Comment
In response to numerous requests, I’ve added a couple of new templates over at the free eBay templates machine for the fall season. There’s a Halloween template incorporating orange and black colors and a template called “autumn” with fall colors.
New Halloween eBay Template
As always, our templates are free with no registration required.
Seller Dashboard Restricted to Those With 10 or More DSRs
Filed Under Sellers' Insights | Leave a Comment
As part of their system changes for fall 2009, eBay.com has restricted access to the seller dashboard to sellers who have received 10 or more Detailed Seller Ratings over the past 12 months. If you don’t meet these qualifications, this is the screen you encounter when you attempt to access the seller dashboard:
This is particularly significant to sellers who want to access the new search visibility tool that is being added to the seller dashboard this fall. This tool offers more transparancy into the Best Match algorithm which can help the seller rank higher in the search results and earn more sales.
I’m not sure why eBay decided to establish a minimum threshold requirement in order to access the seller dashboard, but the value of the search visibility tool should motivate even the most casual seller to maintain enough sales to use this utility.
One of the many changes to Best Match that eBay rolled out in the Fall of 2009 includes something termed the “Listing Performance Score.” This is a ratio of sales to impressions that will impact your Fixed-Price listing’s visibility in the Best Match search results. The higher your Listing Performance Score, the closer to the top of the search results you will appear.
How Listing Performance Score is Calculated
First, remember that this only applies to fixed-price listings offering multiple quantities of items for sale.
Newly posted fixed price listings get an initial boost in visibility under eBay’s revised Best Match search and sort algorithm. Every time a listing is presented to an eBay visitor in the search results counts as an impression.
For the Listing Performance Score, eBay calculates a ratio of sales to impressions. So, if the circled Guitar Hero listing makes one sale for every 50 impressions, its Listing Performance Score is 2%.
All other factors being equal, fixed-price listings with a score above 2% will rank higher in the search results than the listing in my example while those with a lower score will appear after.
Listing Performance Score Tactics
Specific and Relevant Titles
Specific and relevant titles are more important than ever. If your title is too broad, it will show up (initially at least) in a lot of search results for a variety of queries. Many of those potential bidders might not be looking for what you are selling – generating numerous impressions without many corresponding sales. For example, while the title below may show up frequently in the results for “new iPod Nano” searches, it probably won’t be generating many sales — at least not for those buyers who actually wanted a new iPod Nano.
Like NEW MP3 PLAYER better than IPOD NANO
However, if the listing title were more accurate and included something like “used Sansa Clip MP3 Player,” I would generate fewer impressions (due to a lower number of searches for that item), but I would probably have an excellent ratio of sales per impression and a higher Listing Performance Score.
While casting a wide net used to be a good strategy to garner bids, sellers who want to perform well in the Listing Performance Score now need to be more focused.
Increase Sales While Keeping Impressions Low
As explained above, the Listing Performance Score is a ratio calculated by your sales divided by impressions. There are two ways of increasing this ratio:
- Increase the numerator (sales)
- Decrease the denominator (impressions)
Of course, you can combine the two (OK, that makes three ways of increasing the Listing Performance Score!).
But how do you garner sales without increasing impressions?
- By bypassing the eBay search results completely!
Send potential bidders straight to your auction listings. How? Get your free AuctionLink at http://www.auctionlink.to. It’s a short web address that links to a page of your current eBay.com listings.
- There’s no registration required
- It’s not on eBay’s server, so the listings don’t count as impressions served under the Listing Performance Score.
- It’s just your listings – no worries about competing sellers.
- It’s free!