How to Build the Perfect Listing to sell online
At Shopiago, we want your Ecommerce listing to sell and we want you to get as much as possible for it. You’ve got items that people want, and our job is to help you get them into the biggest marketplaces on earth so pre-loved items can go to a new home, not a landfill site.
Sites like eBay, Etsy and Shopify will put the things you’re selling in front of potentially millions of eyeballs, all of them looking for quality second-hand goods. That means you can sell your stuff faster and for top prices.
There are two downsides to online marketplaces: you’re likely to be competing with other people selling similar things, and it can be hard to get your listing found among the thousands of other options. That’s why you need to become an expert in listing. Read on to find out how...
Write a killer title for your listing
Titles matter. A lot. Before anyone sees a thumbnail image (that’s important too, but we’ll come to that) they are going to be searching and filtering through swathes of listings. Getting your title right is going to help your listing float to the top of the heap. You might have heard expressions such as ‘discoverability’ or ‘visibility’. That’s what this is.
Your listing title should explain what the product is, and be specific – in that order. Ebay’s search prioritises the words that appear early in the title, so make sure you write what it is before adding details about age, condition or anything else. The first four of five words of your title are most important. Bear in mind that words such as ‘the’, ‘a’ and ‘of’ are likely to be ignored by the search function. If you can lose them, you should.
Ebay allows up to 80 characters in the title. Don’t waste them on commas or other punctuation. If you find you have space left over, think about other keywords a buyer looking for your item might search for, and put in as many as you can fit.
Wrong: Worn twice, black evening dress from Phase Eight
Right: Phase Eight 8 black dress occasion evening long sleeve designer great condition
Use the best photography you can
Once your listing is appearing in front of humans, you’ll need to grab their attention with a great photo. Good news – you don’t need a specialist camera to take really good pictures that will stand out in listings. You can read our photography tips to help charities sell on eBay to find out more about how to frame, shoot and present your pictures.
Remember to take pictures of defects and details as well as the item in the whole and use common items (such as coins) for scale where appropriate.
Pick the right eBay category
It’s vital to put your listing in the category that fits it best. In most cases that’s an easy decision, but you may have an item that could comfortably fit into two categories. An old novel might go in ‘fiction books’ or ‘antiquarian and collectable books’, for instance. There is an option to add a secondary category, but it comes as an additional cost, even for charities.
Use your branding as part of your listing
One of the superpowers of charities is their brand awareness. Not only can this instil a sense of trust in a hovering buyer, they are likely to feel better about paying for an item when they feel the proceeds are going to a good cause, not into someone else’s pocket.
Ebay and other online marketplaces allow you to build branding into your listings, but it’s not a default option, so you’ll need to use an HTML template. HTML is the basic display language of the internet and doesn’t require coding training. The templates allow you to insert branding into your listing and create more visually arresting description designs.
You can buy ready made listings or use a tool such as dewiso to create your own. Shopiago also has its own template generator to help with this.
Add specifics to your eBay listing
When you list an item, you’ll be asked for all sorts of extra details to help buyers find what they’re looking for. That might be a model number, a colour, dimensions or age. Try to give as many of these as you can (without making assumptions) as they will help buyers who are filtering through the many products available.
If you have standard EAN/ISBN barcode information for the item, add it. It can help buyers research the item more carefully if they wish but can also help to find the item if you have multiple storage and retail locations. Don’t confuse this with barcodes created in Shopiago for inventory management.
Make the listing description matter
The more information you add to your item’s description, the more likely you are to sell it to a happy customer. Less information increases the risk of questions being asked by potential buyers or – worse – of items being sent back or negative feedback.
Filling in the item’s condition is part of the listing process. It’s vital to be honest and the description is your opportunity to elaborate on wear and tear and any damage or defects. You can also use the description to talk about item history if you know it. Has it been refurbished or cleaned? If so, put this in the description.
Perhaps more importantly from a sales perspective, the description is an opportunity to add extra details to let the buyer know what to expect and instil a sense of trust.
Pricing and shipping your eBay item
The biggest factor in a buying decision is price. Shopiago’s blog on researching the right price to list your products will help you decide for how much and in what format (auction, fixed price etc) to sell your items.
There are many postage options available, from regular post to couriers to click-and-collect. Regardless of which options you choose, it’s important to be clear about how much the buyer will pay in shipping costs, and how long it should take to arrive.
And finally…
Your listing should now be primed to perform and will be found by buyers looking for exactly what you’ve got, giving your items a new lease of life. But before you post it, check there are no spelling or grammatical errors – or prohibited items.
You should also pause to think about what you’re selling and how that will look from a legal and brand perspective. If you’re a charity that is working to abolish modern slavery, be careful you aren’t selling brands that have a poor record on human rights.