How to increase visibility

[cb-boards]

We have been selling for about 8 years and sell somewhere in the neghborhood of 50-60 items a day with about $300k a year in revenue while mainintaining a 99.7% positive feedback rating.

However, we have some items that we have listed with quality pictures, that are aggressively priced, good reviews from those who have purchased them and the appropriate tag words in the heading; however they don't seem to be getting the visibility they deserve so sales for the items are disappointing and we may sell 1-2 over a week on average.  We may get lucky and over a 2 day period we sell 2-3 of them...then the sales for them seem to be steamroll and we get another 8-10 sold over a week.  Perhaps I'm mistaken but it would appear to us that the increase in sales is a function less of luck and more to those products getting enhanced visibility on the eBay backend.  There certainly appears to be sufficient demand for our products as once that product seems to get the better visibility, the sales for them appear to really snowball from 1-2 a week to 8-10.

Our pictures are good, are pricing is aggressive, the reviews are strong, our feedback is very good, we ship within one business  day, and our tag words are on point.  Are there any tricks of the trade that other sellers use to get the sort of persistent enhanced visibility that will lead to larger sales?  We are not suffering, but just feel that sales of some of our products could be doing  much better  as we have seen noticeable spikes time after time once we manage to get a few sales over a relatively short period.  

[thenobletuckylife]

Mornin,

Wow...I am in awe of your success.

Your business is probably a perfect example of how the retail business is suffering despite doing everything right.

It's like when we have an election...all eyes are on Ohio...it's a bellweather state.

You only can perfect things so much...looks to me like when the dust settles your more prone to be one of those left standing.

Congrats.

Mr C

[mr_lincoln]

@cb-boards  I see this is your posting ID and not your Sales ID so without seeing your listings I am just throwing out a few tidbits here.

1. Remove all puntuation in the title like commas, hyphens, quotation marks, etc. so it is just letters and maybe numbers (if necessary)

2. Limit the length of the Description detail

3. I think somewhere around 50% of sales are coming from mobile devices so for the title and description less is more per se

4. Raise the price

[cb-boards]

Thanks for the ideas.  While there is certainly always room to improve, we do feel that our listings are accurate and work for us for the most part.

Perhaps I'm mistaken but for an item that usually sells 1-2 items a week, we will from time to time get 2-3 within a 2 day period and then see a spike over then next 5-6 days to an additional 8-10 units.   Maybe I'm mistaken, but I'm attributing that spike to enhanced visibility and am not as sure if some of the things you point to will neccessarily generate that increase in visibility.

[mr_lincoln]

@cb-boards

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@cb-boards wrote:

Thanks for the ideas.  While there is certainly always room to improve, we do feel that our listings are accurate and work for us for the most part.

Perhaps I'm mistaken but for an item that usually sells 1-2 items a week, we will from time to time get 2-3 within a 2 day period and then see a spike over then next 5-6 days to an additional 8-10 units.   Maybe I'm mistaken, but I'm attributing that spike to enhanced visibility and am not as sure if some of the things you point to will neccessarily generate that increase in visibility.

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Mittens sell great in Alaska but not so good in Ecuador.  Can not comment further without details but certainly wish you an increase in sales, as I do for everyone.

[bubbleman2010]

Without anything to reference from all you're going to get are guesses..... My guess is you're being trottled by ebay.  Supply probably exceeds demand so ebay spreads out the wealth to keep everyone mildly happy....

[bubbleman2010 · Accepted solution]

Trottling is very easy to spot,but forget about anyone admitting its taking place because thats just not going to happen..

[cb-boards]

That could be the unfortunate truth. We don't want to use our listing ID or give too much detail about our products themselves; the overwhelming majority of people on these boards as great people just trying to help out their fellow sellers. But the fact is that there are a few crazy lurkers out there that we don't want to attract any attention to so I hope our product's anonymity will be respected.

But we are not trying to sell "mittens in Ecuador" as our spike in sales we referenced moves about 8-10 units a week from the typical 1-2 a week does demonstrate a demand for our products.

[cb-boards]

bubbleman,

quick question on trottling or how to potentially circumvent it.  let's say hypthetically i sell womens swimsuits.  if i listed a black swimsuit for $19.95 under the womens swimwear category and then listed it again (maybe making a small revision to the heading) under misc. sporting goods for $19.89 would i stand a chance of having eBay give lesser visibility to that new listing for the same swimsuit since it is in a new category?   or do you think they would trottle all the listings regardless of what category they are listed in? 

[dhbookds]

I would guess your visibility idea is at least partially correct.....perhaps more than partially........

But then as you say, how to get better visibility becomes the question.....

I think (and have seen) items generally move up and down a search list so there are times when you are on the top and times you are on the bottom.....we presume that higher placement in the list equates more sales.....  Of course if a search only returns 50 items, probably placement doesn't matter that much as all will be shown on the first page.

But I digress somewhat, lol.  If you want to see if you can determine what might influence placement/movement.... I suggest an experiment.....  Take several items and narrow the search to return only 50 or so, so you easily tell what happens......  Watch that for several weeks....to see the progression as it is now.  Then start playing with the possible influences, one at a time......add/subtract free shipping/lower prices/ returns/more/less pictures, markdown manger/promoted listings.....anything you can think of that ebay may "count" favorably or unfavorably in their "algorithm"  and see any change is made in the placement.  Sales aren't the goal......but does free shipping make the item stay on top longer/ not go to the bottom, etc?  You may find a "key"....that helps visibility, but I do imagine there will still be some upward/downward progression, just because they aren't going to let one listing dominate forever. 

Alot of work.........but if you have the mind that like doing stuff like this......could be fun as well as enlightening. 

Beyond all that......the one thing that might keep your multiquantity items near the top are the # of sales they get.....in that case, might be worthwhile to cut the profit margin a bit to get the sales to get to the top, then raise the prices and see if you stay there.........

lol, just thoughts.........

[bubbleman2010]

cd like I said its nothing but guesses without facts. For me I work all the angles of ebay when selling something and the angles all depend on the item. On this ID you can search rocky mountain featherbed and see a item I sold two days ago that I used a angle and then search wheat shocker and see another item with a different angle used to snag a sale. I could post with my million dollar shooting star selling ID. My wife dusted it off and got it rolling again,but with every item you have to just understand the angles and what angles you need to use to make the same instead of letting the other guy have it...

[bubbleman2010]

That should read make the sale not make the same...

[oas3]

Heres me as a shoting star I think.....

[oas3]

Gee that should be shooting.....

[bubbleman2010]

It makes my heart pump to see my old ID up in the lights again. It made me and ebay a ton of money,but in the end they tossed me aside just like a red headed stepchild....