To begin at the beginning, a very good place to start. Let’s look at two fundamentals of your eBay Shop: what it’s called and what it looks like.
eBay Shop Name
Rather like an eBay User ID, I suspect that many eBay sellers choose their eBay Shop name without being aware of why it’s important. It’s not just about constructing a friendly name, it’s a key part of your Shop’s search engine sexiness (of which much more on Monday). On the High Street a pun or something traditional makes sense. Calling a bakery ‘Wilson & Sons’ or a chippy, ‘The Codfather’ works offline. But online, where Google is God, you need to be thinking ‘keywords’ for maximum effect and the optimum chance of getting into search heaven. For instance, ‘Car parts and Motor Accessories’ is much better than ‘Bob’s Bits and Bobs.’ Which keywords do you want to be associated with in search engine results? Your answer should determine your Shop name and, possibly, influence your User ID too.
eBay Shop Templates and Designs
What should your eBay Shop look like? It will have been obvious these past few weeks that I believe that much success on eBay derives from appealing to the lowest common denominator. I don’t think that whizzy Shops templates and designs contribute too much to an eBay Shop’s success. Indeed, I reckon that too much deviance from the norm can be detrimental for most sellers. An eBay generated colour scheme and layout is just great, as well as free and easy. That said, in some cases, greater customisation could reap rewards, particularly if you are a big-time seller or have a very large catalogue. But certainly, if you’re just setting out, don’t splash out. And everyone should beware anything too flash in any case: it’s disconcerting.
What’s next?
Thanks for the input, I think we’ll look at SEO (search engine optimisation), eBay Shops Marketing Tools and Shops Selling Strategies with particular focus on format mix in the next few days. Tomorrow: eBay Shops and Search Engine Optimisation.