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07-11-2023
06:43 AM
Is your eBay Store in need of a refresh? eBay Advocate Lead for Seller Experience, Chuck Van Pelt brings us five tips for revitalizing your eBay Store’s appeal to buyers. Griff and Brian answer seller questions about the new USPS Ground Advantage service and hazardous materials, and how to view your listings on international sites.
Episode Links:
USPS Ground Advantage Site
Business Policies Help Page
Recurring Links:
eBay for Business Podcast
eBay Seller Spotlight Podcast
eBay for Business Podcast Listener Survey
eBay Seller News Announcements
eBay for Business Facebook
Community Chat with eBay Staff
eBay Seller Center
eBay Help
eBay Local Seller Events
Seller Hub
eBay Events
Brian: I'm Brian.
Griff: I'm Griff, and this is the eBay for Business Podcast. Your source for the information and inspiration to help you start, manage and grow your business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 250. Two Fifty!
Brian: Oh my god. A quarter of a thousand.
Griff: Oh Brother. The way you look at milestones two fifty, that's alot.
Brian: Well done Griff. August of 2018.
Griff: That's right. But it wasn't just me. I mean I didn't do this alone.
Brian: Of course. I mean there was Audrey and Alan.
Griff: And You.
Brian: Rebecca.
Griff: Oh yeah. And then the behind the scenes teams like you know, Stephanie.
Brian: Liz, Liz, Liz was both behind the scenes and sometimes, I was gonna say in front of the camera, but there is no camera.
Griff: But she was in front of a camera. We used to do the Facebook Live streams.
Brian: Oh, that's right. That's right.
Griff: Those were the days.
Brian: Yes.
Griff: Well anyway, onward.
Brian: Yes, onward to the next 250.
Griff: I'm gonna hold my tongue on that one.
Brian: Okay. Who's our guest this week?
Griff: Oh, this week we're gonna talk with eBay seller advocate lead from the Seller Experience Team, Chuck Van Pelt, Chuck and I'll be continuing our summer theme with a view to refreshing your eBay store for the summer and beyond. And I noticed a lot of eBay sellers their stores, they could do with some work. So hopefully they'll take some of the cues from this talk we're gonna have.
Brian: Stores aren't a set it and forget it thing.
Griff: They're not. They're not.
Brian: Definitely.
Griff: But first, before we get to Chuck, what's new in the eBay news, Brian?
Brian: Well, no big news this week, but there was a change made to a recent announcement. Last week we talked about the new USPS Advantage Ground service that replaced USPS First Class Package, Parcel Select and Retail Ground Services. We said that the only service that would automatically change over to Advantage Ground was USPS Parcel Select and only if it was the only shipping option for a listing or shipping policy.
Griff: I remember that, yes. So that's not the case?
Brian: We just received word that this has been updated. Previously it was set up where Parcel Select was required to be the sole service offered in order for eBay to automatically update the listing to reflect Ground Advantage.
Griff: Yes.
Brian: This is no longer the case. Now your listing can offer multiple shipping options and still have Parcel select automatically updated to Ground Advantage. All instances of USPS Parcel Select will change automatically to Advantage Ground including listings or shipping policies where Parcel Select is not the only USPS class of service offered as a shipping option.
Griff: And that's a clarification by the team that makes the announcements. We were just reporting the news so it wasn't our fault on this one.
Brian: No. And the change from USPS is coming on the ninth. So yesterday and we encourage the listeners to check for other announcements from eBay as we clarify this. I think everyone was moving rather fast as these changes were announced. And check your listings.
Griff: Yeah, check your listings. The interesting thing about this, and I'm already starting to get emails, Brian, from people who say, you know, what do I have to do? And then I'll say, well it depends. Are you opted into business policies or are you not opted into Business Policies? Now I know it sounds like we're beating a dead horse, but there's a reason why business policies make sense for sellers who are not just hobbyists. They make your life easier. Yes, I know if you go to visit it the first time, and we've had this segment many times on previous episodes, it is a little overwhelming at first. Bite the bullet and opt into them. You'll do less work over time. And this was a perfect example because if you've got Business Policies and some of them have First Class or retail ground, you're gonna go in and edit those policies. That's all you have to do. So say you have 10, maybe 20 policies, you go to Business Policies, go to the shipping policies, you can edit each one and just change that service to Ground Advantage. If you've got hundreds of listings and you don't have business policies, you have to edit every single one of those listings. If they have First Class as an option.
Brian: That's a huge difference.
Griff: Huge difference. Even though you can bulk edit, you're still in the bulk editor going to have to make one change at a time to every listing as opposed to changing business policies. They're templates. You create a policy and you can apply it to thousands of listings. You can create 10, 20 business policies and apply them as needed to as many listings. And then you only have to edit the business policy. You don't have to edit all the hundreds, potentially thousands of listings.
Brian: And when you edit the business policy for any listing that is live that currently has that business policy with it, let's say there's a shipping policy that you call ABC shipping. Let's say you've changed it to Advantage Ground and you've selected Advantage Ground from whatever First Class option you had before. Do you have to do anything to the listings or does it automatically get updated?
Griff: You don't have to do anything when you edit a policy. All of the listings to which it's applied that are live listings change immediately.
Brian: And that's the advantage.
Griff: Exactly. There was a purpose behind business policies and it remains the same, which is to make your life easier, not harder.
Brian: I do remember the first time I went to the business policy page, I was confused cuz there were so many. And once I cleaned that up, now I go in and I think I have five.One's a local pickup one that I rarely ever use and one's a free shipping one and one's a paid shipping. And so life is easier.
Griff: Right? And if you've got hundreds of listings and now you're gonna opt into business policies, what the system does automatically is it looks for each listing. If each listing is slightly different in your shipping services, it's gonna create a policy based on that. Because we don't want you to opt into policies and then suddenly have listings that now don't have any shipping options, that just can't happen. So if you happen to have a lot of listings prior to opting in and each one is a little bit different when it comes to shipping, then there could be a separate shipping policy for each of those listings. And many of them may actually be nearly identical. They'll also be policies created by eBay for listings that are no longer active. So this can be a little confusing and a little overwhelming. However, if you use the cleanup policy feature on the business policy page, it's right there, it's a little button. It will delete those policies that are not currently applied to an active listing. That'll make your job a little easier. And the feature will also rename the existing policies that are attached to one or more listings in a manner that makes it a lot more easy for you to determine which ones to combine. So yeah, there's a little work involved. But please, those of you who have been hesitant for whatever reason, you are doing yourself a disservice if you don't opt into Business Policies. I know I'm gonna get email that says gr you don't know what you're talking about. I like the way I do it. It's the old way. And to you I say Mazel tov, boy are you doing a lot of extra work already? I can't believe it.
Brian: Right. And if you think USPS or UPS or eBay after this particular change with this particular thing is not gonna make some other change down the road that's gonna have a similar impact. You know, just make the assumption that that will happen and migrate over to business policies.
Griff: Cuz it's gonna be a lot easier to to face those changes.
Brian: Yes.
Griff: I think that's all we had for news, right?
Brian: No other pressing news. Except if you want to talk about the newest edition to the social media app universe. Threads.
Griff: Threads. That's all anyone's been talking about since last week!
Brian: I saw you created a Thread. I even went in and liked it.
Griff: Oh thanks. It was an interesting day last Thursday, Wednesday night and Thursday. Cuz as everyone knows, Facebook released their what they call Threads. And it was interesting to watch this happen because it got released and within 24 hours there were over 30 plus million users already subscribed. My first thought was a lot of eBay sellers utilize not so much Facebook, but they utilize Instagram for their business. And if you have an Instagram account, you automatically have a Threads account. It's real easy to just start it. And I'm wondering how many sellers have already started utilizing Threads as a social media platform of some sort for their business. And if you're one of those people, we'd love to hear from you and just send us an email or call us at (888) 723-4630 and let us know how that's working out or how you plan on using it and be interesting to see how it works out.
Brian: I don't know, Threads.
Griff: And of course, let's admit it, it is fun to watch what's going to be sort of the war Yeah, the cage battle. Anyway, enough about Threads. Let's meet our guest for this.
Griff: Last week we talked about possible promotion campaigns for the summer shopping season. This week we're exploring ways to refresh and reinvigorate your eBay store. And joining us with some wise words of advice on the topic is eBay seller advocate, lead seller experience product. Chuck Van Pelt. Welcome Chuck. Welcome back. In fact, I should say.
Chuck: Thanks Griff
Griff: Your team actually had come to us with this as a possible subject and we jumped on it because we haven't really talked about eBay stores for quite some time and there's never a bad time to rethink how your store looks and how it works and how it appeals to buyers. Some are, for a lot of sellers, might be a good time to do this because things might have slowed down. What's up with refreshing your store? Can I just get by with the bare minimum? I mean I'm subscribing, I'm putting in my listings, what else do I need to do?
Chuck: You could do that. I know everyone's time is always valuable to them, but I think a lot of sellers who do that are missing out on a lot of the opportunities that come from subscribing to a store.
Griff: For example?
Chuck: On the storefront there's a lot of opportunity to tell your story, to tell about your business and the kinds of things you're selling and to drive traffic to those areas of things that you want to promote. You can freshen up stale inventory. There are all kinds of tools on the site to allow you to move your product.
Griff: As a buyer. I'm always amazed when I go to visit an eBay seller store and discover that they are just doing the bare minimum. So there's nothing in there about me, there's nothing for a marketing banner. It basically looks just like any generic eBay page. And I always wonder, is it putting that seller at a disadvantage not to be taking advantage of all the things that come with a store?
Chuck: Oh, I believe so. You certainly get some benefits from your store without doing anything. In fact, eBay does an okay job of putting your name up there and kind of grouping all of your content and your items into one area, but you can really create a brand for yourself. I know that term brand sometimes will scare sellers, like I don't have a brand, but it's really just your presence on eBay. It's creating an image for yourself. Let's start with the very top of your store. There's an opportunity for you to put a billboard graphic also called a banner. And that graphic spans the whole top of your store. It really makes a big impact on your storefront. Do you have one on your store, Griff?
Griff: I do. And I confess I put it together myself using Photoshop. But I did it several years ago and it's one of the things I'm guilty about is I'm here for a summer store refresh because that banner is so tired. But yeah, I immediately took advantage of it when they first came out.
Chuck: It's something you can just make and you can put it there and leave it. But I try not to think of it as a set and forget it thing. I think there's a great opportunity there. I'll make seasonal variations of my banner. I'll make different versions of my banner to focus on the different kinds of inventory that I'm trying to move at that time.
Griff: For me, I feel like I had the basic bare minimum skills in Photoshop to put together an OK graphic. But what if I'm a seller who feels this is just not an area of expertise for me. What are some of the options for that seller to get a graphic made when they feel they can't make it themselves?
Chuck: I hear that a lot from sellers and I'm not a graphic designer either, but fortunately built into the eBay store tool is access to a graphic tool called VistaCreate. It's a pretty powerful tool. It lets you design your own custom banners. It's included in the cost of your eBay store. There are some upgrades and things you can do if you want, but you can make a quite serviceable banner. Pick your own colors, your text, your imagery and export that image directly on your storefront.
Griff: I don't have to go out and learn a bunch of Photoshop or Illustrate in order to put a banner together. This built-in tool can help me do it?
Chuck: Exactly. Yeah, you don't have to. If you have that skill and you want to, you can certainly put anything up there you want. We have the graphical dimensions right on there so you can see what size you're building to, but if you want to take five minutes you can make a pretty nice band or just with the VistaCreate tool.
Griff: The other thing we talk about a lot and it's part of a wider discussion on branding, is the need or the benefits of having an identifiable logo. Because that's supported within the eBay store.
Chuck: So a logo graphic you'll see at the top of your store screen right below the wallpaper we talked about. And it's just a way to represent what your business is about. You don't have to have like a big business has a logo like FedEx or Google or something like that. You don't have to put that kind of effort into it, but at least if you make something that represents your business that's a little bit recognizable, you'll get some kind of brand equity with the buyers who come to your site. And one great thing that you may not realize is that logo carries through with you to several places in eBay besides your storefront. If you go to the item page and you scroll down to the bottom, there's a whole module there about your store and your logo shows right up there.
Griff: I had somebody make me a logo, it's like a little cartoon and I liked it so much. I've been using it ever since.
Chuck: My old logo is I called my store Recycled Gadgets and so my logo is a little recycle symbol with a Rubik's cube from the eighties on top of it. Just thought these were two things that illustrate quite literally what my store is all about.
Griff: How quickly were you able to solve a Rubik’s Cube and can you still meet that speed?
Chuck: I don't think I've ever solved one to be honest. No, but my son, he explained to me that there's an algorithm to it and he can do it within two minutes. He can solve one. Pretty amazing.
Griff: Anyway, we're getting off topic but yeah, Rubik’s Cube, that's identifiable.
Chuck: Absolutely. Speaking of making your storefront identifiable below the wallpaper and the logo, there's a thing we call Feature Categories, Feature Categories if you think of it like everyone has like their top 3, 4, 5 categories that they sell in. So how can you draw people into those top categories or even let them know, hey, this is an area that I like to sell in. So there's a strip along the top and you can make a custom graphic for each category that you want to link to. The idea is what I would recommend for your summer update is go look at your sales performance, look in Seller Hub, see what categories are hot for you and then you want to come up with graphics to fit each of those topics. Use imagery to represent the kind of items you have in those categories and ideally you wanna draw people in, make it more exciting than just the regular hero image on your listing. Something really representative, like for example, I do vintage computers so I have an old Macintosh computer in there and I sell cameras, so I have an old SLR 35 millimeter camera as one.
Griff: Wait, you and me were selling the same stuff!
Chuck: We're competitors I guess, huh?
Griff: Well I think we might be be. I have to reconsider this interview. I'm sorry. But yeah that's cool about being able on those featured categories to put your own graphic there.
Chuck: Absolutely. Yeah. I always recommend to take advantage of the featured category strip because no matter what you sell, it'll always stay there. It'll never change. So you can always be confident that that first screen full of information on your storefront is gonna be consistent as opposed to the item strips below that.
Griff: I use those a lot.
Chuck: Yeah, yeah. They're a great way to show off individual items and they work the same way. It's like a horizontal strip and you can kinda slide it back and forth. The nice thing about featured item strips is you can do automated strips or manual strips. Automated is kind of like the set it and forget it idea. You can either say, show all my newest listings in this strip. You could say show listings that are ending soon, which would really be valuable for those who do a lot of auctions. Now if you want to really target specific items, maybe you found something really wonderful and you just want to show right up on the front of your store, you would use a manual item strip and you would individually pick those items.
Griff: That's what I tend to do when I list something I go through and I say, these four or five are the ones I wanna put into the list of featured items strip. And I do it manually.
Chuck: I do that too. I've been playing around with this new photo tool that lets me customize my hero images on my listings and I can put some interesting backgrounds in and things like that. And when I have a listing like a hero image, I really am proud of, I want that one to show right on the home page. I'll put it right on there.
Griff: Absolutely.
Chuck: Now when you manually pick listings, one thing you have to stay on top of is as you sell those listings, they'll start to disappear out of that strip.
Griff: But not right away necessarily. Right?
Chuck: Right.
Griff: So sometimes, if you leave it up, it still shows, but it's been sold and it's not available.
Chuck: I believe the way it works is as you're managing your own store in the Seller Management Tool, you'll still see them in there and it'll give you a warning. It'll say some of these have been sold when you go to someone's storefront they'll just disappear. So they may disappear. So I've seen storefronts where people set them and then they don't come back to the store for a while and there's just like one or two lonely little items sitting there in that strip.
Griff: Cuz the ones that were there that sold no longer show up. So if you're gonna commit to doing this manually for the Featured Items strip, you gotta revisit it on a regular basis.
Chuck: I would recommend that. In fact I would say that's a good rule of thumb in general as a store subscriber to pop back in there and take a look, make sure that everything looks how you would want it to look as a buyer.
Griff: Absolutely. What are some other, other aspects of freshening up our storefront itself?
Chuck: Further down the screen we have what we call the marketing banner. Are you familiar with that one?
Griff: That's not the banner that's on the top?
Chuck: Yeah, the top is more of a general branding banner. It's a banner that spans the whole width of the column and it's divided in half. And the right half is an image that you pick and then the left half is some copy. And the idea is you can use it to show off a promotion you have, you can use it to point to a particular category of items or like I mentioned before, if you have one item you're particularly proud of, you could point just to that one item. But the idea is it's large, it gives a big impact and it gives you an opportunity to have customizable copy. I sell a lot of records, tapes and CDs on my store. I have a pretty much permanent sale with a shipping discount if you combine items and I use that right there. I have a picture that shows a bunch of vintage cassette tapes on the right and it says buy more than one cassette tape and you get a deal on shipping. The idea is I like to drive multiple items per cart. That's the vision there.
Griff: Years ago we had something called about me on eBay and about me went away. But if you have a story, there's a whole area where you can add stuff.
Chuck: Yeah. And you nailed it. I think it is one of the most underused resources on eBay stores. And I get it. People are busy when it comes to investing your time and your storefront. You're gonna do it in things that aren't gonna generate immediate results for you. And I understand that, but I would urge everyone who has a source subscription to take a moment in your storefront and click on that little About Tab and see what's in there. Take a moment to write something about yourself. People are always worried, oh, I don't know what to say and I''m nervous about talking about myself. And I always say, you know, actually that's genuine. And I think it's a place where you can be authentic and you can tell your story. It gives people some empathy for your business. And one of the components of that About Tab that I see very few people take advantage of, and in fact it's been on my to-do list for a long time, but we have a place where you can upload a video about yourself. Have you done that Griff on yours?
Griff: No, I'm sorry I haven't.
Chuck: I haven't done it either. I've had this wonderful idea in my head for how to tell my story. I mean really all you need is 30 seconds to just say it could be anything. It's really a great way to build some trust, build some empathy. You could tell the story of your business, you could show how you prep your inventory for sale.
Griff: Oh that's a really good one.
Chuck: Yeah, absolutely. I think people are really interested in how the items are treated that they want to buy. And another idea I had for my video was to show the care that I put into shipping items. I have custom boxes and padding and I get so many compliments about my shipping and I thought, hey, wouldn't that be a great marketing thing to be able to talk about all the effort I put into making sure that the item reaches you safely?
Griff: Yeah. And I know that if you're a seller and you get a question from somebody saying, now I want to make sure you pack this correctly, you should never take it personally, I get those as well. It's usually because they bought something recently or within memory from a seller and it wasn't really packed very well and it may have arrived damaged. And so they're now just taking preemptive steps to make sure that doesn't happen. So don't take it personally. Use it as an opportunity to assure them, I don't know what you've gone through in the past, but with me, these items are packed like this. And you can, as you said, show that in a video. That's a great idea. I'm stealing it.
Chuck: I think we've all heard the stories of the Swarovsi crystal vase arriving in a Fruit Loops box or that kinda thing. Yeah, for sure. I think anything you can do to assuage the concerns of your buyers, will be helpful.
Griff: Those are different aspects of the storefront itself. What about other parts of the store should we be looking to refresh?
Chuck: There's an aspect of stores that I also find has a lot of value and is underutilized. That is store categories. Just to elaborate on that, there's eBay categories. We have our own taxonomy for how to organize things. It's a good taxonomy. But for certain businesses like mine, the types of items I sell go a little deeper than the eBay taxonomy. There are some camera categories as you I'm sure are aware Griff, those categories are pretty good. But I have a lot more detail in the kinds of digital and film cameras that I sell and I want to be able to break that down a little more. With your summer time, it's a great opportunity to go in and evaluate how you're using store categories. Why are store categories valuable? Why is it worth spending your time on this? I'm already putting them in these eBay categories, why would I use the store categories? So the answer I always give people is it allows you to target your promotions and manage your storefront in a much more specific way than eBay categories will allow. For example, with the cameras, I would have, instead of just film cameras, I would have SLR cameras and 110 cameras and medium format cameras and I'd have it broken down integrate detail and then that allows me to target promotions and marketing emails and that kinda thing based on those more specific categories.
Griff: For example, if you're gonna set up a markdown event, you can use eBay categories as an option for selecting or filtering merchandise. So you can use your own store categories and the store categories can give you a lot more control over what you're putting into that markdown event as an example.
Chuck: Exactly. And I think a lot of people don't realize one benefit you get with store categories, when you list an item and you put it in an eBay category, if you want to add it to a second eBay category, there's a charge for that. Yes. But with store categories you can add to two store categories for no extra cost. Why would you want to put it in two categories? Well let's say you have a category for Film Cameras and you had a category called Father's Day Gifts and you took that camera and you put it in both. So now you run a camera sale, you pull all the cameras in, you run a Father's Day sale, now you're pulling that same camera into that sale. So it gives you that flexibility.
Griff: So I'm a big proponent of store categories and I agree the customization based on your own particular needs is beyond compared. It's just frankly something eBay couldn't offer with their own categories because there's too many sellers to actually implement that kind of customization. But in your eBay story you can make this structure of categories your own and utilize it to its best benefit.
Chuck: And I always tell people to think outside the box of categories. The taxonomy of you know, cameras or video games or that kinda thing is one thing. But I say create categories named after holidays or colors or hobbies. I know a seller who likes a lot of things that are red and that's kind of part of her marketing. She could definitely make a sale category or a marketing banner or any of the featured listing strips that we talked about earlier and focus those right on that red category. Now those items all still live in their other categories, but that's a way she can heart it.
Griff: The possibilities are endless. While we were talking, I just realized I often have a big box of cameras that are parts only and cuz you know old cameras, there's people looking for parts all the time. You could create a category that's just parts only so that people know I'm gonna get the reduced price and I'm looking for cameras that aren't necessarily fixable that I can use the parts for fixing another camera.
Chuck: That is a great idea. Griff, I'm stealing that.
Griff: Okay, great. It's mutual stealing in here on the podcast. I love it. So what other considerations are there?
Chuck: We have recently rolled out some significant changes associated with your store subscription to social media accounts in tying your account to the social media accounts you already have. Ideally you can associate to Facebook, to Instagram, to Pinterest. So now we're tying your eBay account to those and then you can share from within eBay single listings, categories of listings, promotions that you're running or even your own storefront out to all of your social accounts.
Griff: This is something sellers love to have access to but before it wasn't as easy to do. And now you say it's built into the eBay store subscription, I assume you have to provide your social media account?
Chuck: Exactly. Yeah, I think a lot of people are used to binding different logins to their social media. It's pretty easy. You go to your storefront management, you pull down the store's menu, it's in Seller Hub and there's a link in there called Social. I think it has a little New next to it right now. . So you open that up and right in there it'll say which account would you like to bind to? Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest. You can do all three or one and then use your existing social media network and footprint to drive traffic to your listings.
Griff: That's pretty cool.
Chuck: Once you've shared with social media, one of the benefits is you can use the analytics tools within the social media tab to look at the traffic that you've generated. So it helps you see where you're having the most impact.
Griff: Right. And sellers always want to know this, where are my buyers coming from? I know that promotions is always a big part of any store refresh consideration. And we talked a lot about this last week with Evan Swanson, but I think it bears repeating the importance of promotions.
Chuck: Sure. There were things like markdown, sales coupons combined, shipping discounts. There are different ways to draw people into your site. Ideally you want to drive more sales, more conversion, you want to get people to put more of your items in their cart. And the promotion tools, if you go into the Seller Hub under Promotions and you'll see the link right in there. And I would recommend taking some time to explore these. Use your summer hours to figure out some of the best ways. Don't don't just do the coupon, that's the easy one. Try a markdown sale but also try some of the other like combined shipping discounts and those kinds of things. I think you'll find that they do have an effect.
Griff: For me in the past, markdown sales have been an effective way of liquidating a volume of merchandise to make way for more new merchandise. And it's not like you're limited to what you put in your store, but you've got stuff that's been sitting around and maybe getting a little tired. You wanna focus on some new stuff. This is a great way to use a promotion, the markdown event to actually liquidate a bunch of merchandise so you get that capital back and go find some new cameras to list new old cameras to list on eBay.
Chuck: I do the same thing, Griff. Have stale inventory that's sitting in my backlog turning over every month and these coupons and discounts are way great way to move it. And a great way to free up space, physical space where I keep my inventory so when the big season comes in the fall, I'm ready and I can put some more stuff in there that is gonna make bigger sales.
Griff: And finally, let's talk about store subscriptions. How that becomes an important aspect of store refresh.
Chuck: And this is something you can do in the summer or any time, but I recommend sellers from time to time will look at their current subscription level and think about has my inventory grown since I signed up for that subscription? You may find that you can enjoy some fee savings by changing your store subscription level. I find the easiest way to get to the page on eBay that tells you what those levels are is just going to Google search for eBay store subscriptions. It's the first link there and it will give you a breakdown of at what point you get final value fee breaks and more importantly when you get a discount on listing fees, how many items you can flip over each month before you start getting charged for listing. So that will determine how much inventory you can have active listings on hand before you start to get charged.
Griff: If you started out, for example, in the around a thousand to two thousand items at a time live listings roughly month to month and you're adding about that much and selling hopefully that much, you may discover that that second tier may be good for you for just a basic store. But if you've been inching up closer to 10,000 listings at a time and you're adding even more, you might want to look at the next level up because you could be saving some money on insertion fees.
Chuck: Exactly. Summer's a really good time to have that inner conversation.
Griff: That's an important one. Before we go, Chuck, I thought these are five good points, let's review them.
Chuck: Sounds good. So the first point is to freshen up your store home screen. There's a lot of opportunity there. Your storefront is your window to the world and why not take a few minutes to make it look a little better. The second thing is to clean up your store categories. Just take a few minutes, make sure you have things set out the way you like it. The third thing is to link your social media accounts to your eBay store. You can really take advantage of your existing social media footprint, drive people to your listings. Number four is to use promotions, use coupons, markdown sales, any of the tools that we have to drive traffic to your site and move that stale inventory. And finally, number five, review your subscription level. You could be leaving money on the table, enjoy some fee savings, look at your store subscription level, your inventory and see if the numbers line up or if it's time to bump up to the next level.
Griff: Well there you go. Five calls to action for your store. Summer refresh. We hope you've been writing them down, but if you haven't, you know you can go visit the transcript with episode 250. Chuck, I want to thank you so much. It's always a pleasure.
Chuck: Thanks Griff. It's been my pleasure.
Chuck: Chuck Van Pelt is an eBay Seller Advocate Lead on the Seller Experience Product Team. And we've been talking about ways that you can refresh your store during the summer.
Brian: You got questions?
Griff: We've got, we've got answers., And you'll see in a minute why I'm hesitant. And we start off this week, Brian, with a brand new regular, or actually I hope irregular sub-segment of you've got questions and it's called We Stand Corrected.
Brian: Oh no.
Griff: Oh yes. What did you get wrong now Griff ?
Griff: Me, what did I get wrong?
Brian: Okay, what did we get wrong this time?
Griff: Well, Brian, last week, eBay seller James asked us about making the sold filter the default for text and image searches, mostly on his iPhone. We said, alas, it's not possible. And I remember I did the research and tried to find a way and I couldn't find it. So I said sorry, not possible.
Brian: I remember that.
Griff: Yeah, and guess what? We were wrong! Or wait a minute, I was wrong.
Brian: We were wrong. It's a team effort.
Griff: Okay, I thought you were gonna say what's his we stuff and not one, Brian, not one, but two people emailed us to let us know we were wrong.
Brian: So we have at least two listeners.
Griff: One of them is our guest this week. So in our defense, I have to say the steps for making sold the default view are not intuitive at all. Why am I talking? Why don't you read the first email?
Brian: The first email correction comes from eBay seller Jeff Kagan who wrote, hello Gentlemen. Well at least he didn't say hello, you wrongheaded talking heads idiots. Hello gentlemen. Love the show every week. I believe you were incorrect in your answer to a question this past week about being able to save the sold search feature to continue to look up only sold items instead of currently listed items and then switching to sold at least on an Android.
Griff: And I should preface this, and I'm gonna say this again later. This works on Android. What he's gonna describe works on Android and iOS. So works for the iPhone too.
Brian: If you do the following steps, only sold items will be displayed for every search until you turn it off. Search for an item, go to the filter option and turn the Sold Items on off selector to On. To the left of sold items you'll now see an unlocked padlock icon. Push the icon, which will change it to a locked padlock icon. Now scroll all the way to the bottom of the filters and push Customize, turn the lockable filters on off switch to On, click the Show Results Button at the bottom. This will show your sold results for the current item you were searching for, but also show only sold results for any item you search for until you click the padlock icon again to unlock it or turn off the lockable filters option.
Griff: Amazing.
Brian: That is amazing. That is great info from Jeff. He continues. You can lock in just about any filter. If you want to search for things like only items that benefit charity, items listed as lots, authenticity guaranteed, et cetera. And as a reminder from then on you'll see a locked padlock next to the filter option anytime you do a search and the feature is turned on. Turn it off anytime to go back to searching. Currently listed items. Thanks for a great show. Would love a fancy new swag for my wife, who's the real Oz behind the curtain for us. Jeff Username, JKFamily13, eBay store JK Family Treasures. So it turns out, James, that you can in fact set the default for tech searches in the eBay app to sold.
Griff: That's true, yes. And who knew? But we didn’t. We should have known.
Brian: I love the way that he actually sent that email in and just step-by-step. We can actually take the, and just paste it. Well we It'll actually be in the transcript.
Griff: It'll be in the transcript. Of course.
Brian: That was very, very helpful. Thank you Jeff. And the second email came from our very own guest this week. Chuck Van Pelt, who sent an email outlining the very steps that Jeff sent with a little more information. Chuck says, the steps for making sold the default for text searches works for both Android and iOS. Chuck also added this regarding image searches on Android. It is not possible to search sold listings using image search.
Griff: So we got that right?
Brian: Yes. One part of it, right.
Griff: Yay!
Brian: On iOS, currently the Image Search honors the locked completed items and sold items filters. So you will see only sold listings on an image search if you have followed the steps for a text search.
Griff: And that's if you have an iPhone.
Brian: Right. I'm not sure if the developers intended for it to work this way, but it does. So enjoy it while it lasts. That's a good tip from Chuck.
Griff: So developers, if you're listening, pay no attention to this. Keep it on. Well anyway, there it is. Our first issue of a new sub-segment called we stand corrected.
Brian: We're gonna have to work hard and make sure that doesn't come up too often. We don't want it to be weekly.
Griff: Yeah, no, that's why I said irregular, not a regular segment. Our next question was posted to our eBay for Business podcast Facebook group by seller, the Kitty Shop and The Kitty Shop posted this. Hey Brian and Griff, I have a question for you guys on the new USPS Ground Advantage service. I apologize if this may have been asked already. As I'm behind on the podcast and still on episode 246, I swear I'll catch up this week. I almost always use First Class and Priority for shipping. On a very rare occasion, I may use other services like Media Mail and of course Ground services specifically for Ground, I would like to send items that service, if I think the item I'm sending is not appropriate for Air Service as First Class can sometimes go by ground, air, or water. Currently I have a character themed reusable ice pack in my store. And since I don't know if the gel is acceptable via air, I have listed it for Ground Service only, how can we designate items for the New Advantage Service to only go ground? That particular item might even be fine going by air. I have no idea. But I always like to play things safe. And of course the USPS employee safety is important as well. Thank you Jen. The Kitty Shop.
Brian: A few people responded that parcel sent via USPS Ground Advantage may actually be sent at least partway via Air Transit. Which when you think about it doesn't make sense given the name of the new service, Ground Advantage.
Griff: Yeah, it doesn't say ground and sometimes air advantage it's ground advantage. I thought the same thing. So I did some sleuthing and discovered actually wasn't that hard. I just went to the website for USPS and I discovered that you don't need to indicate ground only for these shipments that are going by USPS Ground Advantage. And in fact, there isn't a way to indicate this officially. Even if you needed to, you don't need to. Don't worry about it.
Brian: And the services ground per the USPS website.
Griff: Yes, per the USPS website.
Brian: As for the gel Kitty Shop, if you can determine that the gel is considered hazmat, then you would have to mark your parcel according to USPS regulations regarding hazmat shipments.
Griff: Yeah, and I wanna be clear about this because this is all according to USPS's own website and according to the page for Ground Advantage, Ground Advantage is now considered the only class of service they provide domestically that's suitable for hazmat shipments. That must go by ground.
Brian: Actually that that simplifies it for anyone selling that kind of material.
Griff: Now you can read more about USPS Ground Advantage and I urge you to do so at the USPS website. It's a medium length url, which we will put into our transcript, the summary overview for episode 250. But you just can go to USPS website or search Google on USPS Ground Advantage and that website shows up.
Brian: Great, good info. And finally this week an interesting question from seller Shannon who sent the following to podcast@ebay.com. Hey guys, thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. Firstly, ever since changing over to eBay international shipping, I've not had any sales to Australia. I've had two different buyers reach out to me stating that I did not ship to their country. I have contacted eBay about this and they said there should be no issue and my account settings were fined. So what do I do? The first time it was a knife, so I thought, okay, it's restricted, but the second time around it's just a shirt. So there's definitely an issue. My international shipments have decreased a ton ever since eBay switched over from GSP and I'm worried it's affecting other countries as well. My second question is a lot of my listings still have Germany as a country I do not ship to. I've gone through all the steps with an eBay rep as well as looking online to change all my settings and all shipping restrictions are turned off. Important to note, I also do not have any shipping policies active. Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thank you Shannon. eBay store Chaz's Collectibles and her user ID is NoPhalange
Griff: No phalange.
Brian: No phalange.
Griff: Brian, this one took some back and forth with Shannon to determine that nothing in fact is amiss with her listings or her international shipping settings. I have no idea why her buyers in Australia were saying they couldn't purchase her items. It's just not the case. But the question itself raised a larger issue that I sometimes hear from sellers and I thought this would be a good opportunity to address it. And that question is buyers who claim on international sites, international buyers claiming that they're unable to purchase the US sellers items even though the seller has made them available to the buyer on that particular site by using, for example, in this case, eBay international shipping. This is, something I hear on occasion and there is a way to actually ..
Brian: Test to see if a buyer, an international buyer can see your items.
Griff: Yes. Exactly. There's two pathways to find the information that an international buyer might see. The two things are the listing itself on the international site and the cost of shipping shown to that buyer. Cause those are the two questions we get.
Brian: How would an eBay seller who's in the US go about pretending they were, let's say an Australian buyer?
Griff: It's easy. To see how much, for example, the shipping for your item is to an international buyer. You don't have to do much, you can just go to your listing. Then you scroll down to the description area and on the top of the description area, there is a tab for shipping returns and payments, you click that and on the next page, the box that shows up change the country shown from United States, for example, to say, in this case Australia, this will display the cost for shipping that item to Australia. It'll show you the cost that buyers in Australia see when they look at your listing on the eBay.au site. This works for eBay International Shipping. So if you're wondering what the total shipping cost for that buyer is going to be through eBay International Shipping, that's how you find it. That's how you see it.
Brian: That's a really good tip and pretty easy for them to go to.
Griff: It's very easy. Just remember, by the way, when you've seen it and you're done, change your country back to the United States. Otherwise you're gonna be seeing, it'll default all the other listings you go to view thinking you're n Australian now it's gonna show you outrageous shipping prices.
Brian: As well as Australian dollars for prices.
Griff: Yes, exactly. Now the other pathway is to view the listing itself. And this one I've been giving as a tip for years to people who say, what does the buyer see? And I said, well, you can find it yourself. You just go to the international site in question any of the international sites. Again, let's say in this case it's eBay Australia. You go to eBay.au and then navigate to the listing by either searching on the item number or searching on the full title or part of the title of the keyword and you find the listing that way. And if it shows up, if it displays, that means it's available. People can find your listing and they can purchase it.
Brian: And would the seller have to log out of the US site before they go to the other site?
Griff: No.
Brian: So that means it's as simple as going to the bottom of the homepage and clicking on the flag that you want to go to. And, go off to that site.
Griff: In my experience, using Chrome on either my Mac or on a Windows laptop, that if I open up a different Chrome window and I navigate to eBay Australia and then log in and you can use your existing login for any of the international sites, it'll log me into eBay Australia in that browser window. But I don't log out on the other window. So again, just to be clear, what you are logging into, make sure that when you viewed what you need to see, that you then log out of that site or close the window.
Brian: And if you log into a site and it's the first time you've ever logged in, let's say you go to the German site and you're logging in, you will likely get a message around accepting cookies and the standard kind of messages that you would get as a new person signing in. So don't be surprised to see any of that.
Griff: I hope that that little tip is gonna help you when you're looking for your listings, you have questions about how listings or shipping costs are showing up to your international buyers. It's really easy to find. You don't have to guess, you don't have to assume, just go check it out. These are the two ways to do it.
Brian: Good info for our listeners.
Griff: Let's hope.
Brian: Yes, let's hope
Griff: And let's hope I don't have to correct it next week.
Brian: We don't want that episode coming back for a little while at least. We stand Corrected! If you have a question you are hoping we answer correctly, why not take a chance and call us on (888) 723-4630.
Griff: That's (888) 723-4630. You can call that hotline any time of the day. Leave a question or comment and who knows, we might just put it on the air.
Brian: If you're not a call on the phone person, you can always email us at podcast@ebay.com. That's podcast@ebay.com.
Griff: And now it's your weekly Three Point Podcast Checklist.
Brian: Check the Announcement Board at ebay.com/announcements for UpToDate Seller News every day.
Griff: Review and edit as needed. Any of your shipping policies that have USPS First Class Package or USPS Retail Ground as shipping options and change them to USPS Ground Advantage. Don't wait, don't put it off. Don't procrastinate. Do it today.
Brian: Need to review any anything in this episode? It's easy. Check the transcript for this and all episodes for follow up on what you've heard and to find the links we referenced during the episode.
Griff: And on our next episode, episode 251, we'll go behind the scenes of eBay tech issues with Valeri Yee.
Brian: We'd like to again thank our guests this week, eBay Advocate from Seller Experience Chuck Van Pelt.
Griff: The eBay for Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.
Is your eBay Store in need of a refresh? eBay Advocate Lead for Seller Experience, Chuck Van Pelt brings us five tips for revitalizing your eBay Store’s appeal to buyers. Griff and Brian answer seller questions about the new USPS Ground Advantage service and hazardous materials, and how to view your listings on international sites.
Episode Links:
USPS Ground Advantage Site
Business Policies Help Page
Recurring Links:
eBay for Business Podcast
eBay Seller Spotlight Podcast
eBay for Business Podcast Listener Survey
eBay Seller News Announcements
eBay for Business Facebook
Community Chat with eBay Staff
eBay Seller Center
eBay Help
eBay Local Seller Events
Seller Hub
eBay Events
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