How to improve your feedback P&P DSR

13/02/2008 at 20:50

This evening ChannelAdvisor hosted a seminar aimed at understanding the recent changes announced by eBay. Scot Wingo, ChannelAdvisor’s CEO, opened saying “We’re not going to talk about if the changes are right but, assuming you’re going to roll with them, how can you make them work best for you”. This is something many sellers are still coming to terms with and Scot is right – sellers who succeed in the new eBay world will be those that embrace the changes and work to excel within them.

To introduce the topic Scot looked at eBay’s motivation behind the changes, gross merchandise volume has slowed, active users are not growing, fixed price listings are growing (40% of sales are now fixed price) and what are the most important issues for eBay’s top buyers.

When asked what the number one thing top buyers wanted eBay to focus on they were

  1. Shipping
  2. Feedback – buyers receiving retaliatory negatives
  3. Ease of use
  4. Trust and Safety
  5. Conflict resolution

If you look at the fee and feedback changes that eBay have made they directly address the number one and number two buyer concern.

It’s not all a stick though, there is a carrot for top sellers. Currently in the UK it is simply seller discounts for those who meet volume and service requirements. In the US however Best Match will be advantaging sellers whose customers believe give the best service as reflected in their DSRs.

Best Match will be driven by three factors – Seller Feedback/DSRs, Relevance/Historic buyer behaviour, Time/Price. Relevance will be driven with the item title, description, item specifics – the parts of listings that is fairly straightforward to control. Possibly the best part of the presentation was the revelation of an eBay tool for tuning eBay titles.

Optimize Your eBay Listing Title’s BayEstimate

http://labs.ebay.com/raghavgupta/demoto/to

The tool will analyse each word in your title and give it a relevancy rating, along with suggested replacement words. Even more importantly it will give suggested keywords with desirability ratings which can improve your titles relevance. Every seller should be using this tool when creating titles for eBay listings as it’s directly tied to seaches on eBay.com

The remaining two Best Match variables are the listing factors such as time ending, price, distance and the country listed on and the feedback variable. In order to come top in Best Match you need to be top in all three variable and indications are that feedback will be more heavily weighted than the other two.

Having checked the DSRs for the top 4000 sellers by GMV ChannelAdvisor found the average DSRs were:
Item as described 4.724, Communication 4.674, Despatch Time 4.018, Postage and packaging charges 3.907
The P&P DSR is hardest to achieve high scores on and so the DSR most sellers should focus on improving.

10 Best practises to increase your P&P DSR

  1. Specify reasonable flat rate shipping at lowest possible rate
  2. Have links to shipping, contact etc above the fold in your auction descriptions
  3. Shipping options should be clearly spelt out
  4. Specify International shipping and set expectations early
  5. Have a return policy
  6. Provide and communicate combined shipping discounts
  7. Keep shipping simple as possible – don’t give global terms in every listing, just those that apply to that item
  8. Consider Shipping domestic only, open another ID for international – protect your main eBay account from low P&P DSRs for expensive internation shipping to protect you seller discounts
  9. Amp up customer service – have links to email or call for any questions and communicate your opening times
  10. Consider free shipping, but not the most expensive for free. Expedited shipping costs extra.

    and

  11. Communicate!! Suggest in communications that you’re aiming for five stars and ask for it! eg in despatch emails!!!

Finally there were some tips on leaving feedback. Leave feedback on despatch, there’s no longer any point leaving it on receipt of feedback. Use feedback as further communication with buyers with variants of:

“Thank you for your purchase, please contact us with any problems”
“Thank you – we have sent your tracking number and your package is on its way”
“Thank you – we strive for 5 stars in detailed seller ratings – let us know if we did not live up to that”

If you let buyers know you want to meet or exceed their expectations and ask for contact if you don’t you’re more likely to receive five stars across the board.

Overall this was a great seminar and definately was worth the time attending. The tips for increasing your P&P DSR are definately worthwhile and the title relevancy checker invaluable.