Does eBay prioritize free shipping listings? Wondering if I should lower prices, or switch to FS?
According to USPS calculator, shipping can cost me anywhere from $7-$10 (east to west coast) for a 13oz item. Is it better to list an item with free shipping and assume I'll pay $10 shipping, and price accordingly? Any thoughts?
8 comments
dealforyou22
OP2 years agovery interesting responses, thank you all for your input! I think I'll try both methods and see if I notice any differences
brightlightbookseller
·2 years agoIt depends on the category, but in general I'd say no, they don't necessarily prioritize them. Most people are going to use the default sort method, which is Lowest Price + Shipping, so that puts those that use free shipping and those who use flat or calculated (paid) shipping options on level ground. I kinda like that method and wish more sites would implement that sort option. We almost never use free shipping, except for a few items where we felt it would do better, and we get plenty of sales on items with paid shipping. We even tested it about a year or two ago, and found we didn't get any better sales by baking our shipping price into the item price.
dbfolks166mt
·2 years agoIt depends. I am on the east coast so there is a greater range in my shipping costs across the zones. I almost always use calculated shipping except when I know that there is only one cheapest way to send an item regardless of the buyers location. This usually involves items that I ship in flat rate envelopes or boxes. Most of the times the contents of those boxes and envelops are heavy.
If I was to incorporate the worst case shipping cost into my price and offer free shipping I would probably loose a lot of east coast sales and gain very few west coast ones. There really is no such thing as free shipping but some buyers seem enthralled when they see free shipping. I don't buy a lot on eBay these days but when I am searching for something I always rack and stack the results by Price + shipping lowest first. In most cases the lowest cost items all have calculated shipping unless it is a seller that really doesn't understand shipping cost and also thinks shipping is free.
angelno_11
·2 years agoDoes eBay prioritize free shipping listings?
The Best Match algorithm gives a slight boost to Free Shipping. But Best Match is a scoring system that considers dozens of factors, so it is hard to tell if it would have any meaningful effect on your placement in Best Match searches.
But eBay does allow a buyer to filter his results to only show items with free shipping, so when a buyers uses that filter it can mean the difference between being seen and not being seen.
caldreamer
·2 years agoWhen you do EBAY search (at top of page there is box to click to view "free shipping" items only). Of course, customer want "free shipping" (you can incorporate that in your pricing).
But if item is something that customer might "return" it is better to keep shipping costs "separate". Reason for that is because if customer returns item for "buyer remorse" you only have to refund "purchase price" (NOT shipping costs).
If item is listed with "free shipping" you would have to refund "entire amount" customer paid (including free shipping).
lakefor94
·2 years agoeBay hints that Free Shipping helps drive sales.
There is a toggle in search to define by Free Shipping.
onefootflipper
·2 years agoThe algorithm is most important in hard to search categories like clothes and antiques. Thinks like video games it really just doesn't matter on as most search those price lowest first.
dealforyou22
OP2 years agoThat's interesting, I never knew it was category-specific. I do tend to sell both clothing, as well as electronics.