eBay is a cornerstone of the local online trade. The platform, which was launched in the nineties as a pure online auction house, has long since evolved into a full-fledged marketplace. With new functions, the operator wants to further improve the sales opportunities of its merchants. In this post, we look at the latest eBay updates and what opportunities they present for your business.
eBay updates: Increased visibility and customer loyalty
Anyone who uses eBay can’t help but notice that the platform has become a bit dusty. The Berliner Morgenpost also makes no secret of this, stating that eBay is lagging behind competitors such as Amazon and Alibaba “in honor” of its 25th birthday.
In fact, there is a lot going on in the background: Several times a year, the Group rolls out a series of innovations. Sometimes something changes in the payment processing, sometimes eBay emulates the Amazon BuyBox model with its in-house super price.
With its latest updates, eBay aims to create goodwill among its merchants, including offering increased visibility for their products. At the same time, customer loyalty is to be improved. Let’s take a look at the changes in detail.
Product videos
One of the biggest challenges of e-commerce is to vividly convey product features even though customers cannot touch or try out the items. Videos are particularly well suited for this purpose. They can include a 360-degree view of an item and/or show it in action. eBay also knows that the mostly short but informative product videos are sales-promoting and has recently offered its dealers the option of embedding them in product pages.
To increase your chances of success even more, the marketplace operator has a few tips up its sleeve. The video should…
- … show the article from all perspectives
- … answer the most frequently asked questions
- … illustrate how the product facilitates or enriches everyday life
- … give a look behind the scenes (e.g. show the manufacturing process)
Reading tip: SnapTrade customer Wark24 saves much of the budget for its eBay ads with SnapTrade.
More personalizable newsletters
In a survey by optinmonster (source in English), 59 percent of respondents said their purchasing decisions are influenced by email marketing. Thus, this form of addressing customers is still one of the most effective. eBay’s new newsletter templates let you contact targeted audiences. For example, you can send a message to subscribers who have bought something from your eBay store in the last 30 days, alerting them to matching accessories or discount promotions.
The templates can be used via Seller Cockpit Pro. In addition to the templates, new analytics features have been added to help measure the success of your newsletter campaigns.
Source: ebay.com
Place top offers
Whether it’s new, seasonal, discontinued or discounted items, eBay now lets you place certain items in rows of top deals. You can do the placement manually or automate it. According to the company’s own data, the likelihood of sales is around 25 percent higher for highlighted items.
Snapchat and Instagram connectivity
Especially in the B2C sector, social media platforms are real frequency drivers. On Instagram and Snapchat, the focus is primarily on imagery and a young target group. Food, DIY, beauty or fashion items, but also some others can be promoted particularly well through these channels.
eBay now enables the connection of the two image platforms. Together with Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, this already allows 5 channels to be connected to eBay stores. You can also use the Snapchat or Instagram app to create personalized stickers that can be inserted into your Stories.
With eBay price optimization you will find your products even better!
One of the essential factors for the placement in the search results is the price. With SnapTrade’s eBay price optimization, you can automate your pricing and sell in a market-oriented way.
eBay updates to improve visibility
To make eBay stores easier to find by potential buyers, the marketplace operator has made some changes. For example, the search line shows a link to the store when someone enters an already known dealer by name.
The names of the stores now also appear on offer pages together with the deposited logo. Previously, the profile name and picture were played out here instead. At the moment, however, the playout only takes place in the desktop view.
Conclusion
Alongside its main competitor Amazon, eBay is one of the most important online marketplaces in this country. To ensure that this remains the case, the e-commerce veteran is very keen to make it as convenient as possible for retailers to sell their products. However, the latest eBay updates are by no means a market revolution, especially in view of the company’s own online stores and their numerous design options. Rather, some of the omissions of recent years have been made up for: embedding product videos or highlighting articles has been standard practice among competitors for quite some time. Above all, however, the professionalization of the long-established e-mail marketing reveals that eBay is indeed lagging behind in some respects.
But there is one thing the company from San José cannot be accused of: Standstill. As banal as individual innovations may seem, eBay is nevertheless gaining ground with them. In any case, it will not hurt retailers at all if they are offered opportunities to sell their products better in the future.
