TameBay Tools: eBay Best Offers
7/04/2009 at 09:41
One of the things that may have passed you by while Sue and I were taking a sabbatical was the implementation of eBay Tools on TameBay. The tools are powered by our chums at Goofbay and cover everything from finding a bargain, local search for buyers and a whole suite of research tools for sellers.
Each week we’ll look at one of these tools, how to use it and how to interpret the results.
eBay Best Offers Tool
The eBay Best Offers was the tool which got an instant reaction from sellers with several jokingly contacting us asking us to take it down! It’s uses for buyers are obvious, but can be very useful for sellers too
The tool can be used for researching your competitors – recent sales play a big part in Best Match and especially when listing a new item it’s often worth accepting Best Offers to gain recent sales. Even if your Best Offers are at slightly less than you’d normally accept, the advantage of gaining recent sales can far outweigh the cost of using listing enhancements for the same visibility in search results.
One great idea is to use the Best Offers tool to find the price your competitors are willing to accept for an item (which is an indication of the current market price for the product) and then to use eBay email marketing to tell customers for a limited time you’ll accept a certain price for the item. I’ve used this tactic successfully in the past as buyers love special offers and I’ve sold out of entire lines by limiting the offer to just one weekend.
Finally, and possibly the most obvious use for the Best Offers tool is to check the average Best Offer that you yourself accept. If (like me!) you’re giving a large discount on a regular basis is it time to reduce your prices? Do you ever sell an item at the full asking price or is every sale a Best Offer?
We realise that we realise that not all sellers want to use Best Offers (or even sell in a fixed price format) but, for those who do, it can be a really powerful marketing tool. It’s worth spending a few minutes checking out what prices your competitors accept as well as reviewing the offers you yourself have accepted over the last few weeks.
vzaar Jamie says
9:48 am on 07/04/2009
That’s a lovely, if cheeky, little feature. I can certainly see myself using that when buying from larger sellers who turnover significant volumes of repeat items.
Chris Dawson says
10:12 am on 07/04/2009
I should have said…. leave the tool running in the background – the longer it runs the more results it will find
John Pemberton says
10:40 am on 07/04/2009
Is there no sanctuary for the poor old seller, whose prices are beaten into the ground?
Chris Dawson says
10:59 am on 07/04/2009
One other useful feature is that once the report has run you can download your competitors data into a spreadsheet for further analysis
John Pemberton says
11:00 am on 07/04/2009
nice…..
Linzi says
3:16 pm on 07/04/2009
That’s a great and very useful tool – thanks for the heads-up
Barry Mann says
8:19 pm on 07/04/2009
tut tut
fortunately it cant cope with my sales and falls over
Matt says
1:21 am on 08/04/2009
Best Offer is really a powerful tool, but it needs labour and time
Two of my collegue are bound up in it.
In the several weeks we implementing BO, the sale volume raised dramatically. What’s more important is that our listings get better ranking in search result.
Chris Dawson says
10:18 am on 08/04/2009
Hey Barry – I managed to run one of your accounts on a 30 day and it completed without falling over – can download and send you as a CSV if you like?
Matt Best Offers are one of *the* best ways to get recent sales and a boost in Best Match. You gotta love em
whirly says
10:27 am on 08/04/2009
Great article guys.
Best offer is a goldmine, I love it.
ebuyerfb says
6:14 pm on 08/04/2009
I don’t know. It seems like accepting best offers for the sole purpose of best match placement is analogous to bribing a voter.
Seller verified says
7:00 pm on 08/04/2009
Anything that sets you apart from the crowd in a positive way is a good thing. It’s a great way to get the ball rolling on your listings.
whirly says
2:31 pm on 10/04/2009
“Anything that sets you apart from the crowd in a positive way is a good thing.”
To bloody right, best offer puts some excitement into the purchase for a buyer, they get the feeling of “doing a deal” and unlike normal haggling where buyers might feel to embarrased to do it, you are inviting it which sets them at ease.