Building a Storefront: Benefits?

[literaryconundrums]

Hi all,

I sell books. Some of them need to hang around for a while before they find the right buyer (a seller on YouTube was talking about having patience for a vintage book on the biochemistry of the lemon; that's the flavor, here). So, as my business grew a little, I decided to spring for a Basic store subscription. My thought was that the $0.35 fee every 30 days for the renewal of any item over 250 listings would make the $21.95 seem small in comparison. I've been concentrating so much on building my store's quantity of listings that I have been neglecting other benefits of the subscription, such as providing a billboard, logo, running sales, and doing a monthly store newsletter.

My question is: Which aspects of the Basic subscription have you found most beneficial to your sales? I don't want to spend a bunch of time pouring my heart into features of this platform that are not going to help my business in the longrun. I'd love to hear both from sellers who have been successful long before the subscription tiers came into play and from those who are newer and have experienced both not having a store and having a Basic subscription. Thanks, as always, in advance.

[m60driver]

For me the primary benefit of a store is having categories.  It makes it easier for me to manage listings and it makes it possible to allow for volume discounts within the category.   But perhaps more importantly for a potential buyer, it makes for easier browsing in their area of interest.  You could create separate categories for fiction, non-fiction, and children's books as book buyers tend to focus on such categories.  As for all that other stuff such as providing a billboard, logo, running sales, and doing a monthly store newsletter, I believe the modern term is meh.

[tree*fern]

Hi, I also sell books and have a Basic store. I love the ability to create and schedule markdown sales. I've tried promoted listings but that hasn't worked well for me.

As they've made some improvements, I'm now thinking about doing a newsletter, and hope to hear about how that's working out for others. 

Setting up store categories and subcategories is worth the time. For example, someone in a Facebook group asked for booksellers to share their children's books for sale, so I was able to post a direct link to my store's Children's Books category for her. 

The quarterly $25 coupon off eBay shipping supplies helps offset the cost too.

I think for books you become more successful if you have more than 250 listings, so a store is needed. I also have a secondary selling ID without a store, so the comparison has become obvious. 

Years ago at first I put off having a store, but only because eBay was often doing listing promotions (for example, an extra 500+ free listings a month). That was helpful, but you couldn't always count on it. Having a store is better.

[chapeau-noir]

I've had a store for about 15 years, anywhere from premium to starter.  Don't make too much out of this - it's mostly a good way to organise things, run sales which is great, and save a little money.  If you get around to it, having a banner and the like is nice. Some of the worst store formats I've seen have been from people who have gone all out on it with flashy graphics - keep it simple. I just threw together a banner to give a little umph - took about 5 minutes, and it was fun to play with.

It like the little foot print it gives me, but I have a lot of people who shop my store.

Haven't done newsletters - I use social media instead.

[krazzykats]

The time away feature and shipping supply coupons.

[femmefan1946]

The small discount on FVF and the coupon on branded shipping supplies.

But the latter has become problematical for us Canadian sellers since the USPS has started cracking down on shipping goods as Letter Post . The difference is $3.19-$11.14 for 'letters'  compared to $8.59-$ 17.71 for parcels . (100gr to 500 gr.)

The branding makes it more obvious that we are not sending Auntie Laura a birthday card.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@literaryconundrums  Others have mentioned the value of creating strong categories, the packing supplies credit, reduced fees, and promotions generally, so I'll focus on the storefront and newsletter...

I think you said you are fairly new to ebay, so first some background: For many years, ebay has horribly neglected stores , which is one reason some sellers tend to be dismissive of things like the store billboard, etc.  In fact, the previous CEO, Wenig, disbanded the stores team, and so as existing store features broke, there was no one to repair them. Wenig saw ebay as a giant catalog of items, all available on ebay. While he talked about sellers' ability to "brand" their businesses, in fact, sellers existed to supply inventory for ebay's catalog, and that was about it. 

It has only been since the new CEO arrived that we've started to see ebay embrace stores and the idea that sellers should not just supply inventory, but should also have the opportunity to build a distinct business on ebay.  At the moment, because this is really just getting started, and because it is very different from what sellers---and buyers especially---have experienced, I see no pressing need to  create a billboard etc. 

However, I recommend it anyway, if you want to do more than sell some stuff...if you want to build a business. Because things are changing, and I believe the site is going to become more focused on stores. Two things supposedly in the pipeline, for example: a reduced FVF (something like 2.5% I think) for store sales made through social media, and, coming in the last half of this year, some sort of ads tool for stores. We already know ebay is looking for more ways to direct buyers to our storefronts, not just our listings.

Why is ebay doing this? I'm sure there are multiple reasons, but I think three main reasons are: increased traffic to the site (through a seller's own efforts at social media, for example), ebay's emphasis on "high value buyers" (in this case, maybe better termed "repeat buyers" (newsletters, coded coupons, etc), and a desire to attract younger buyers, many of whom like to buy from small sellers, and they like to know a little about the seller (About page, store video)....an advantage ebay has over many sites, but which ebay has underutilized for years. And of course, #4: ebay hopes stores will serve as the basis for yet another ad revenue stream.

Does this mean sellers who don't optimize their stores will make no sales? No. But it does mean those who optimize will likely see very real benefits down the road. At present, I doubt many buyers ever come to my store homepage....for years, there has been so little difference between the store homepage and the "see other items" page that it hasn't been worth it. But if ebay is successful in driving more traffic to store homepages, I think having a well designed page will pay. For example, due to the USPS increase coming in April, I'm offering a coded coupon on my larger items, and I'm using the "marketing banner" feature to explain the increase to my buyers. BUT....if buyers aren't actually coming to my store homepage, it isn't doing much good. A year from now, something like that will probably be more effective. For now, it was easy to set up, so I did it.

So, I see no need to rush into designing a billboard for example. In fact, I'd suggest thinking about it and playing around with ideas, because ideally your Billboard should represent your "brand"...and if you get into social media, having a logo and so forth that can be used on other sites so buyers recognize your store no matter where you are posting....that's helpful. Same thing with a store video (Of course, you can always change this stuff whenever you want ).  

[bashort]

the two best things about a store are categories and time away.

In my description  I put a link to items related to the listing to encourage multiple purchases, easy with store categories.

The time away is very handy also.