The month of October and Halloween traditionally marks the start of the busy holiday sales season with eBay sellers gearing up for what should be the most wonderful time of the year. But 2021 is no ordinary year (as if you needed reminding). Instead, many online retailers are navigating what could be described as the perfect logistic storm. While every Christmas sales period is frantic, this year there will be absolutely no room for complacency.

Primed by panic-buying at the petrol pumps and the sight of empty shelves in supermarkets, consumers already know that the retail industry faces its challenges this year. This news has been amplified by headlines screaming about retailers chartering ships to attempt to circumnavigate the threat of toy, turkey and tinsel shortages this year.

Changing Consumer Priorities – The Circular Economy

With the prospect of shortages looming across many different categories, consumers are likely to change their buying habits and priorities this year. They certainly won’t wait until Black Friday or Super Saturday to try and secure that “must-have gift” at a great price. So if you have access to premium stock, there is no better time than the present to sell it at a premium rate.

We are also expecting increased interest in pre-loved, vintage, and re-furbished items. Not all of this is due to a lack of availability or price. Many shoppers will be drawn to the second-hand and re-furbished market through their concern for the environment.

At the recent eBay Open event in Manchester, Murray Lambell, general manager of eBay.co.uk, spoke passionately about how the marketplace was increasingly attracting Gen Z shoppers keen to distance themselves from the linear economy’s approach of make, use, and dispose. The move towards the circular economy is clearly working for eBay, with the company adding 5 million new customers in the last year.

Optimise Your eBay Product Listings Now

Regardless of what you are selling, the competition is going to be fierce this year. Anything you can do to make your product listings stand out from the crowd will benefit your business. This is particularly true if you are selling products that are readily available elsewhere. If your competition is positioned to take business from you today, you may struggle to catch up tomorrow. A business that sells early also reduces the risk of being left sitting on stock and heavily discounting later.

eBay product listings can and should be optimised in several different ways. These include:

• Unique titles: Like a good newspaper headline, your eBay titles need to tell the whole story and encourage your customers to take the next step.
• Item specifics: Make sure your products are listed in the right place and optimised for search so that people can find them. Item specifics include details like brand, size, length, width, height, type, colour, style, and much more, depending on what you are selling.
• Professional listing templates: When people have saved up all year for their Christmas shopping, they are far more likely to trust a retailer who has given some thought to the layout of their listings. Don’t be that retailer who loses out on business because their listings look they were created on a mobile phone on the bus on the way into the office. By the way, our templates can even make content that is created on a mobile phone on the bus on the way into the office look great.
• Cross Promotion: Dynamic cross-promotion should be a considerable part of your eBay listing optimisation process. Cross-promotion offers your visitors the opportunity to find additional products in your eBay account without returning to the core eBay search results and potentially clicking on your competitors’ products.
• Branding: Taking consumer trust to the next level with professional design. Branding will also help you take that next step from being an online marketplace seller to a fully-formed multi-channel retailer.
• eBay Promoted Listings: Adding additional visibility to your listings is essential if you want to sell more in a competitive arena. As a relatively new feature on eBay, promoted listings are something that you will want to experiment with, balancing cost-per-click and cost-per-sale strategies and optimising accordingly. But, like paid search on Google, this isn’t something you should switch on and leave unattended.

Optimise Your Christmas on eBay Now

While you might be nervous about completely revamping your eBay business in the weeks and days before your busiest sales period, it is possible to optimise your listings in such a manner that doesn’t interrupt your workflow. With Frooition, eBay templates can be created and applied to your listings with just a few clicks. Then you can start looking at your best selling items to ensure their titles and item specifics are optimised before looking back at your more long-tail items. Meanwhile, your cross-promotion activities will look after themselves, and your branding and design can follow when you are ready.

Christmas comes but once a year — but in 2021, it’s going to be a little bit different than normal, so be prepared.

Frooition will be at InternetRetailing EXPO at the Birmingham NEC on October 13th and 14th. Our experts will be available to talk with you about your eBay listing and eCommerce store optimisation and design projects. Alternatively, contact the team here.