@ecochicboutique2 wrote:
We are a top rated plus anchor store selling pre-owned and new clothing, shoes and accessories with 11,500 items listed. (We are not hobby sellers - we have warehouse, office, emplyees). We add new items daily, promote listings (a joke), fill in titles with all characters, use all the drop down boxes, have professional photos and list measurements. We have spent tons of time removing active content and complying to ebay's wishes. We remove stagnant listings. Our sales have decreased dramatically in direct correlation with the decrease in listing impressions. Yes - we understand that summer months are slow - this is not our first rodeo. Last year sales at 250K this year will be no where close to that figure. No solid answers from Merchant Support. Any ideas, suggestions or comments will be greatly appreciated. It seems like the more sellers give to ebay, the more they taketh away.
I would not focus on your impressions count. Look at your views count. Is that also down? and is the decline in the same area as your impressions?
When this happens and it does a few times a year to us, each and every time it is due to new sellers selling exact same items and lower prices. They usually do not last very long but I can always find a new seller who is having short term success undercutting prices. They just do not realize long term success on eBay is not just lower prices.
You need to have someone monitoring changes in your category. Here are a few things that happen a few times a year that can have this same effect.
- default categories and sub cats change a few times a year. The reason this happens is buyer actions change in your category enough the eBay makes changes to keep up with the new direction. Many times these changes are because Big box retailers change there marketing strategies both on eBay and the Internet in general. You need to be able to identify when this happens and make changes to stay current with the buyer flow and how eBay directs them on the site. Not an easy task but there are tools that can do this for you and some of them are free and require simply moving keywords around and seeing if ebay likes your ideas or if they give you suggestions. These suggestions are the most popular versions being used right now so do not discount them as useless.
- New manufactures of very similar items are now available at lower wholesale prices and you are stuck with older stock at higher costs.
- social media marketing efforts that competitors are using successful, which will show a decline in impressions and views because the sellers are directing potential buyer directly to there listing versus a search result.
- They way you are using keywords will have an effect on your impressions. If you have a different person creating the listings they might be using a different method which is causing this.
I know no seller likes to here things like this but after looking at your listings you are falling into a familiar trap. Your titles seem to indicate the brand name, and item features are more important than the actual item. If you are selling a black dress, then you should be using black dress at the beginning of your titles followed by maker, size and then any other features.
My guess is that a larger percentage of shoppers for a black dress is more interested in a black dress than they are about the maker, so they search black dress and then refine the search to maker or size or other features such as price, condition, location, shipping charge.
With the actual item wording at the end of your title tells the search engine that these keywords are not that important but the maker is so you probably show up better when a buyer is looking for a specific brand of black dress and search using that set of keywords versus a generic version that promotes the actual item black dress.
These two styles of listing both have advantages and disadvantages. Using the generic version black dress will allow you to show up in more search results because you are using broad based keywords. Because of this you will also have more impressions, views and probably more sales.
Using the maker as the most important part of your title tells the search engine when a buyer also using these words to make sure your item shows up. You will show up less often but your buyer base will be much more refined to a buyer looking for specifically that makers name. This creates less impressions, views and will probably reflect in the item you are selling being directed to these brand names versus generic based products.
Good Luck Selling!
