How to win Best Match on eBay

Of the myriad ways in which you can improve sales on eBay, perhaps the most effective is to drive your listings up eBay’s Best Match search results. The higher your listings, the more visible to potential buyers your products become (and with greater visibility comes more sales).

If you aren’t familiar with Best Match, here’s the quick and dirty: when someone enters a search string in the main search box without refining or sorting, they’re presented with eBay’s Best Match results. The idea is to get your listing as far up the Best Match results as possible for these initial search queries, as quite often people don’t refine their searches any further and may bounce out of the shopping process before they ever even see your beautiful listing!

In my time using eBay I’ve found the number one thing that will propel your listing up the Best Match rankings is sales: make more sales and your listing positions will sky rocket – it’s like a rolling snowball, get those initial first sales and watch momentum gather. With a mind to generate more sales and improve your Best Match rankings, here are five keys your strategy needs to win Best Match on eBay.

Great copy

It’s amazing how many listings on eBay suffer from bland, boring and unhelpful descriptions. When someone clicks on your listing, the sales copy you use needs to jump off the page and grab that user’s attention. Don’t just use overly technical descriptions from the manufacturer’s website or booklets – take some time to craft copy that’s geared toward make the sale.

For example, the popular Sony PlayStation – sellers typically trot out the stock Sony specification saying the console has X GB of RAM and Y GHz of processing power.

To 90% of people that means nothing.

Buyers are far more interested in the fact that it includes an extra controller and an exclusive title, or that it can play your Blu-Ray movies and stream Netflix!

Keep the listing user friendly – if you’re going to include long technical specifications include them towards the bottom of the description page – don’t bombard users with specs the second they click on your listing. My top tip is to come up with your five biggest selling points for each product and write five bullet points to kick-off your description. Often times a few well-written bullet points are enough to entice a user to buy.

Better pictures

People really do buy with their eyes. When you buy things in the supermarket you’ve got those products in front of you – you can look at them, hold them, feel them and then make a decision whether to buy the item or not. When you shop on eBay you are shopping just as much with your eyes as you are in the supermarket!

In fact, subconsciously you are doing more than just evaluating the product.  You are also evaluating the seller! How many times have you passed over a product online because of the poor quality in the images? I would bet the answer is more than once.

Look at your pictures objectively: if you took them on your camera phone in a hurry, chances are that your pictures aren’t up to scratch. You don’t have to be a professional photographer to take better eBay pictures – just use a white back drop, get the lighting right, and use a good digital camera where possible. A picture is worth a thousand words after all!

Pricing Strategy

Pricing is probably the most important factor that you can control. It’s often the first and last thing people take into consideration when looking to make a purchase – whether it’s a $10 watch or a $50,000 car. In order to climb the Best Match rankings fast, you’ll probably want to consider making a small loss on each sale initially. It’s a technique known as penetration pricing, and it works very well on eBay.

The idea is to set your price low and draw in some buyers. As your listings make more sales, they’ll gradually rise through the ranks – there’s nothing complicated or hard to grasp about it, it’s really simple. The hardest decision to make is how low to price those initial items, or how much of a loss you’re willing to accept. Those willing to make the biggest losses will likely see the fastest gains in the Best Match results.

Once your listing has risen to the pinnacle of the Best Match results you simply increase the price to what it was supposed to be. Providing that price is in line or better than what your competitors charge, your listing should remain around the pinnacle of the Best Match results for a long time to come, bringing plenty of sales with it.

Outstanding feedback

Feedback really does matter on eBay for a range of reasons. The fact your feedback score is made so prominent on listings means you need to keep it as high as possible. If things like price and dispatch time are equal between different sellers, buyers usually look to purchase from the seller with the best feedback rating – quite often it’s a deal breaker!

Sometimes buyers will even pay more for goods from sellers with great feedback. It’s impossible to stress how important your feedback score is – keep it looking healthy!

Quick dispatch and preferred shipping services

The dispatch times and shipping services you offer to customers have an effect on the placement of your listing in the Best Match search results. Ideally you should offer a one-day dispatch time, along with a range of shipping services (including a standard and expedited/express option).

If you only offer slow shipping services buyers are likely to shop elsewhere, and your ranking in Best Match will suffer. Dispatch times and shipping services can be a deal clincher – go all out to make your offer better than that of your competitors (or at least make it equal).

To conclude…

If you address all of the above points, I have zero doubt you’ll increase your rank in Best Match and grow your sales. As I said earlier, the biggest factor that goes into determining eBay’s Best Match results, in my experience, is sales. Make lots of sales and your listings will sky rocket.

But, we all must start somewhere, so spend the time now to optimize your titles, keywords, copy, dispatch, imagery… Work your way up Best Match search ladder and open yourself up to the traffic eBay can deliver. It will pay huge dividends for your business.