Best Match Secrets Part 3: 5 Top Tips for Best Match
by Chris Dawson
This is the third of a series of three articles looking at how eBay recalls products when a buyer searches eBay, the order those products are presented to buyers, and tips for getting your items to the top of Best Match.
The first parts to this series are:
Best Match Secrets Part 1: Getting found
Best Match Secrets Part 2: How products are sorted
1) Be a good seller
This is the most important aspect of Best Match. If you don’t reach minimum sellers standards your listings will be actively demoted in Best Match, and by a significant amount. It’s not just that you won’t be on the first page of Best Match, it means that all of your listings (auctions and fixed price) will be at the bottom on the last page of search results. Being demoted will have a devastating effect on your sales as no matter how great your product and price you’ll be at the bottom in the place buyers are least likely to see.
Standard and Above standard sellers will be mixed with Top Rated Sellers in Best Match. Top Rated sellers will receive a boost in search results and their listings will also be highlighted in search so that even if their item isn’t the most relevant under Best Match it will catch a buyers eye as they browse the page.
2) Long Duration Listings
Use long duration, preferably 30 day listings, and place all of your inventory of a product onto a single listing. Consider using Featured First if you are a Top Rated Seller and, if available in your categories, use Multi Variant Listings to fold all of your inventory into a single listing. This becomes particularly important when considering popularity.
3) Popularity – Sales/Impressions
When Best Match was first introduced “Recent Sales” – how often an item had previously been purchased, was used to judge which listings were most likely to appeal to buyers. This led to listings which had previously received many purchases sticking to the top of sales results even if a new listing was a better deal. eBay have now combined recent sales with impressions to allow better deals to quickly displace incumbent listings from the top of search results.
Best Match will consider how many sales your listing has achieved, in conjunction with how many times a buyer has seen your item on the search results page. The more sales you get compared to impressions the better score your listing will have and the higher up the page it’ll appear.
4) Correct Price / Title
Once your product is seen by a potential buyer they need to know that it’s the right product for them. Your title needs to contain relevant keywords confirming it’s the item the buyer wants and the price needs to be attractive in order for them to buy.
Don’t forget that keyword spamming will actively lower your product in search results due to sales/impressions ratio. Sellers have become more adept at keyword spamming by choosing irrelevant brands in Item Specifics in a attempt to get their product found. Best Match will take account of this with the sales/impression score so whilst listing a non-branded handbag with “Prada” as an Item Specific may initially get you an increase in impressions, buyers looking for a Prada handbag are unlikely to buy and ultimately your listing will sink to the bottom.
5) Free Shipping
Like it or not free shipping is attractive to buyers. eBay have revealed that all things being equal buyers will purchase items with free shipping more often than the same item with shipping charged separately. For that reason if you list with free shipping not only will you receive a small boost in Best Match, but it’ll increase your sales helping your sales/impression popularity rating.
Best Match Tutorial
56 Responses on "Best Match Secrets Part 3: 5 Top Tips for Best Match"
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Re.5 Free Shipping.
Did eBay tell you that or is eBay data relating to free shipping available.?
I am not nit picking, stating ‘if you offer free shipping you will get more sales’ is a strong statement.
eBay won’t release the metrics (see Dan’s video
) but they did divulge that all things being equal buyers tend to purchase items with free shipping more frequently than an identical item with shipping charged.
I do know that they’re constantly running site tests and will run comparisons such as promoting items with free shipping higher in search to see how it affects sales and run a control group where they don’t promote items with free shipping and compare the resultant buyer activity. You’ve probably been a guinea pig in site tests of one sort or another which is one of the reasons different people see different search results from time to time, and that’s how they get their metrics.
Chris, As I understood it each variation in a multi variation listing created it’s own rank within “best match”. So if you had a listing “fruit of the loom t-shirt” with six colours available, your sales of black t-shirts wouldn’t boost your position if someone was searching for a red t-shirt. If your sales were good on all colours you could potentially get six on the first page for a targeted search term rather than one. You could sill cross promote the alternative colours through each listing. Would this strategy be hindering “best match” placement and if so why?
You make a good point – the way Best Match treats MVL listings is that it uses the best score based on the search term available.
Lets for arguments sake say you’re selling “Disney Mickey Mouse Fruit of the Loom T-Shirts” in red, blue, black and green. If you sold an equal number of each colour your Best Match boost would be the same as if you listed them on separate listings.
However if you sold 10 red, 20 blue, 2 black and 1 green and someone searched for “Disney T-Shirt” your Best Match ranking would be based on selling 20. If they searched for “Mickey Mouse T-Shirt” your Best Match score would also be based on 20 sales even if they buyer then went on to buy a green one.
If you then got some pink versions in you could add them to the MVL and they’d also benefit from recent sales of 20 (unless colour was specified) and pink just might turn out to be the best selling colour going so any boost from other colours on your listing can only be an advantage.
Don’t forget the reverse is also true. If all colour listings were shown separately people searching for the “Mickey Mouse T-Shirt” would see six of your listings (impressions) but only buy from one of your listings so the other colours would actually suffer by not being purchased (popularity=sales/impressions) and the less popular colours would be driven ever lower in search results.
What we do really need is some decent tools to see what search phrases are being used in general and what specific phrases are being used for our listings.
I would think that at the moment people are likely to put specifics like “red” in if searching for a shirt but maybe that is changing as buyers become use to drilling down from their initial search.
Is the same weight (or more, or less) given to a search term if it appears in a listing title as when it appears as an item specific?
Pretty sure there is a tool on .com Jimbo. No use unless you sell on .com though as it only gives detailed data on .com listings.
http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?BMSTMain
Thats the one.
Wonder if/when we’ll get it?
RE:free shipping is attractive to buyers.
I’d like to argue that isn’t always the case in my recent experience.
We sell CDs and vinyl and since the recent change to inclusive P&P in the media cats, I’ve noticed a trend.
CD sales have remained static, the postage element being a small %. Changing from (for example)£4.99 +1.00 to £5.99 inclusive isn’t greatly noticable.
But sales of the heavier vinyl have plummeted overnight . Especially with international buyers. Here we’ve gone from (for example)£4.99 +£4.00 shipping to Europe to £7.99 +£1.00 shipping. It’s the same total but my feeling is the the potential buyer is just seeing the higher headline £7.99
and not buying.
Time will tell if they get used to it after a while or whether eBay have totally killed vinyl sales
I’m also seller of vinyl, predominantly highly collectible vinyl and I always ship insured on records over $25 but shipping is much more expensive than most people think and even if I charge $3.75 on one vinyl, truth is it can cost me in excess of $6.00 to ship an item $100 or more.
On most of my higher priced items, I always offer free shipping as an extra bonus for my buyers but what irks me is that in my niche, best match, the TRS’s still outrank me using comparative band names in their titles even though it’s keyword stuffing. My sales have plummeted in the last few months on eBay but than God I send inserts to my customers and I get many of them buying from me directly instead of through eBay. That’s eBays loss.
Whether ‘free’ P&P is attractive to buyers is open to opinion, personally I see arguments for both sides.
However while eBay continue to see it as attractive to buyers, they will promote it, so it’s then up to sellers whether they want to play along (if they have a choice).
I think the point is – as Dan said – that eBay have data on this. It’s not so much a matter of opinion if they can see that (for example) normal STR is 30% but items with free P&P have a 60% STR [I made those figures up]. It’s only a matter of argument and conjecture and anecdote because they won’t give us the figures. If they would give us the figures, broken down perhaps by category, we would know.
Of course, there is plenty of off-eBay evidence in favour of free shipping:
http://is.gd/4U9tO
http://is.gd/4U9tY
http://is.gd/4U9wU
http://is.gd/4U9xu
I of course bow to your knowledge Sue. Maybe I shouldn’t have said opinion. My point being though that if eBay see it as better, they will promote it, whether we agree with it or not.
The choice is then down to us. Go along with it to get the boost in search, or don’t go along with, and don’t get the boost in search.
I really do like something Terry T Pink said a few days ago too – ‘The only opinion that matters is the buyers’.
How about the opinion of the non buyers (why didn’t he buy my product, why don’t they shop at eBay)?
The only opinion that matters is the buyers…
…Absolutely, however you have to remember some of the biggest buyers on eBay are also the biggest sellers.
That’s actually not true a lot of the time. I remember hearing of an event in London where eBay invited all the shooting star feedback sellers along.
Apparently there was one poor bemused eBayer there who didn’t really understand what was going on. He had a shooting star all right – trouble was eBay were talking about all this selling stuff and he’d never sold a thing on eBay!
His shooter was entirely from buying activity!
I sat at the same table as him. He was buying newish CD’s and selling them on Amazon (he was a bit of a collector as well). eBay gave him a digital camera for being the top UK buyer
‘if you offer free shipping you will get more sales’ – I don’t think so, not within media categories anyway.
We commenced selling with a strategy of cross promoting products and offering postal discount on combined purchases, and it worked very well.
There is now no longer any financial incentive for a buyer to make multiple purchases from a single seller and as such our ebay sales are significantly down.
We know that offering a discount by way of a postal discount or a discount on the product total works because we carried that model over to our own web site.
I would have been happy to embrace free post if I could offer discount at checkout i.e. a shopping trolley.
As a media seller I have no doubt whatsoever that offering free postage has reduced our sales, forcing us to look for other channels to sell on, and that we now receive multiple purchases at our shop similar to those we were getting at ebay before free postage.
I so agree with this post. I used to shop on eBay a lot and would definitely use up any combined postage allowances.
A seller of mailing bags on eBay lost my regular custom when his price leapt to £14.99 (per hundred bags with free shipping) from £9.99 with shipping at £4.99 for any quantity of bags. I used to buy between 300-500 bags. I’ve now gone to one of his competitors (off eBay) who sells them for £7.99 plus £4.00 shipping for any quantity.
The original seller’s “free shipping” lost him my business, but he said he felt obliged to do this to get further up the “best match” ranks in a fiercely competitive category. Go figure….
I must be the exception to the rule as I avoid sellers/companies which offer free shipping unless it can be demonstrated that they are still the most cost effective option (eg, Amazon products with ‘super saver’ delivery. They must have huge purchasing power to be able to do this and still be cheapest).
Slightly off topic, for the same reason I am suspicious of companies with free phone numbers as I think that the expense of having the service means that it’s probably built into the cost of their goods, so I look around to see if I can get them cheaper.
combined shipping is the curse of ebay
only on ebay can 2+2 equal 3,
if you presented yourself too Ryan Air
with one ticket then asked them to take the rest of the family and their baggage ,in with the price of that ticket, because everything was going in the same aircraft,
they would stick you in a straight jacket
It really is quite simple – Before Free post I charged a fix rate (value Y) for shipping
The cost of sending two items was not Y x2, and two items could go into one bag just as easy as one. A clear saving on post and packing costs.
To encourage multiple purchasing I offered a discount on every additional item, which meant that the buyer got an overall better price and I saved money. It benefited both of us.
With Free post only ebay benefit. They receive that extra slice of sales fee and paypal who likewise getter a bigger slice of the pie.
So all this nonsense about the buyer having a better buying experience is total nonsense.
I’m sure that buyers were queuing up to thank ebay for removing the ability to make savings when making multiple purchases.
Before Free post I had numerous buyers purchasing ten or more items and receiving £10 or more in postal discount.
Guess what they don’t do it any more !
Free Post was the Kiss of Death for media sellers, which is why I have had no choice but to explore other channels
if you charge over the top for your shipping you can delude the buyer into thinking they are receiving a discount by buying mulitples.
plus
most mail and shipping companies ,charge by weight and size , Science has proved conclusivly that 2 items in the same bag are bigger and heavier , so how on earth can there be a saving in cost?
We have had a 0800 for years. Great communication tool imho.
Costs involved are minimal, a typical call to us might cost me 10p. No need to be suspicious
And if you find cheaper elsewhere, I got that covered also http://www.thewhirlpoolbathshop.com/Price-Promise-i-18.html
we had 0800 when it first came out about 20 years ago
one of our cupboards used to pulsate their was such an amount of hardware needed in those days,
great idea for those that have a lot of telephone sales and back in those days of high charges, folks were leary of phoneing outside of their locality, so it was useful for that too
When will Trading Standards catch up with Ebay and “Free Postage” Free Postage should just be that, a price cannot be increased to cover postage. If I sell an item say for the last few months @ 99p and Ebay tell me I must include postage I would have to sell the item at 1.98. I cannot say Free Postage, I can state Postage Included and this is what Ebay should promote.
As an example HMV have free postage icons all over their website. They do not use the term inclusive. Are they breaking the law?
The real issue is not free postage. It is that eBay charge a fee on the shipping cost element of the price. If eBay did not charge a fee on the shipping componenet of the all inclusive price then free shipping would not be an issue.
eBay could come up with a system that permits a seller to break the inclusive price that the customer sees into its component parts and then charge a seller fee on the product component only. If they did this end of argument!
“eBay could come up with a system that permits a seller to break the inclusive price that the customer sees into its component parts and then charge a seller fee on the product component only. If they did this end of argument!”
That’s a whole can of worms you really don’t want to open up, next they’ll want to know our cost price and make sure we’re not making excessive profit on items. It’s just silly. The only things that need concern a buyer is the total price they’ll pay and the service they recieve from the seller.
If eBay knows the service you are using, your postal code, and the buyer’s postal code they don’t need anything else to determine you cost of postage.
Or they could just remove the FVF charge off the last x number of pounds (dependent on category).
Either way it wouldn’t reveal any costs to eBay they wouldn’t already know.
As I sell in one of the recently affected categories that’s gone to Free P&P I’ve been doing a lot of reading of the various eBay forums. There’s one thing I’ve noticed, the vast majority of those complaining are the ones that sell stuff for 99p? on auction. Call me cynical, but the only reason they’re complaining so hard is that they’ll have to raise their starting price above 99p to include P&P and not get free insertion fees, it has nothing to do with their morals or sense of fairness, that’s just a band wagon they’ve jumped on.
Sales wise since the change to Free P&P, I’ve not seen any dramatic rise or fall in sales, the only noticable shift is less cheaper stuff is selling but it’s made up for with more expensive items selling that didn’t do so well before. Make of that what you will as it’s really a bit too early to see if this trend continues, but one I find interesting.
Chris, I really appreciate you going to all this effort to explain Best Match. All I know is that since best Match was introduced my sales have plummeted. I also (like Leigh) sell vinyl and CD’s, but I blame Best Match and nothing else for my decline in sales. I have been offering Free Postage for over a year now, so I know that particular change is not to blame.
To be honest, I just get a headache trying to understand how Best Match works. But from what I’ve read about it, I’ve come to the conclusion that leaving all my inventory on GTC is what’s killing me.
Because I have many items that have been listed for months, or even years in some cases, am I right in assuming that the chances of these listings ever being seen again are nil, due to the fact that they have achieved many viewing impressions but no sales (something, I hasten to add is very common with browsers of collectable items)?
If this is the case, am I also right to assume (and I appreciate anybody’s advice or opinion on this) that GTC is no longer a sensible option to use when listing ANYTHING on eBay, and that it is now much wiser to use 30 day listings, then relist everything as ‘Sell a Similar Item’ after they’ve expired? I have come to this conclusion because the way I see it is, that every time an item gets a certain amount of impressions with no sales, it gets buried at the bottom of Best Match never to be seen again. Therefore to have this item left permanently on GTC is basically throwing money away ‘cos unless you cancel the listing and start again, nobody is ever going to see it.
Is my assumption correct, or am I missing something?
The answer is I don’t know!
Personally I never use GTC for exactly the reason you point out – stock can sit there forever and using 30 day listings forces me to review the listing periodically.
It may be price, a change (e.g. when eBay change Item Specifics), or simply that the item just isn’t that desirable and is waiting for a very specific buyer to come along.
I don’t know if you’re selling rare Vinyl/CDs or run of the mill stuff. If it’s rare I’d expect Best Match to surface it when a buyer comes along. If it’s more common then price is going to be critical – if you’re not offering the best value deal then the chances of your item rising to the top are sadly minimal these days.
I’d strongly consider running some auctions – they’re performing surprisingly well in some categories – much better than before Best Match when eBay could be flooded with fixed price sorted by time ending soonest.
Lastly (and the first thing you should be doing) is go search on eBay for your own items as if you were a buyer. What do you see? Are other sellers copies of the same CD way above yours? Other items from the same artist? What listings are above yours and can you figure out why?
Hope that helps or at least gives you some pointers
I can’t add much to that, can only agree about auctions.
An immediate difference has been noticed since this latest change, alot of enquiries are coming from auction items where as before I don’t think I had listed a bath in auction format for a couple of years.
Thanks Chris and Whirly,
You’ve given me some food for thought. It’s a bit of both but mainly one-off collectable items that I sell. The problem is that rare collectables often attract lots of impressions from curious collectors who have no intention of buying your particular item, but are just curious for a good look at it anyway.
In the past this was never a problem, because all of this curious interest had no detrimental effect on the item’s visibility in search.
Of course, it’s not just ‘Best Match’ that’s causing problems. Almost any general search for on eBay now returns pages and pages of 99p tat from ‘private sellers’ taking advantage of free listings. Many of whom list thousands of 99p items on one-day auctions that get automatically re-listed on expiry.
When I started selling on eBay (in 1998) I did nothing but auctions. Over time I gradually became converted to the fixed price GTC route. This has worked very well for me for the past two or three years. After reading what you’ve just posted, I’m beginning to think that now is the time to start trying auctions again.
Thanks for the reply Chris.
My first move now will be to start ending most of my listings.
Time for a serious re-think on strategy for me.
That’s assuming that the sales for that listing are poor. If the sell through rate is good, then the longer it is active the better.
After all if you only give a listing 30 days to get to the top of it’s game, that may not be long enough, depends what you sell I suppose.
A couple of comments on the eBay video: Not that keen on what seems to be a common theme coming from eBay at the moment – that people come to eBay for a bargain. I would prefer the idea that people came to eBay for a diverse & rich shopping experience where a wide range of goods can be found at good prices on a site that functions in a user friendly way and that is straight forward
Also the ipod comment is rather nice Search for an ipod on eBay after wading through all the accessories, red herrings and drilling through all the item specifics, find yourself an ipod from a seller you think you can trust but your still going to pay more than you would on Amazon, which would have immediately given you the result you wanted.
Oh and on trust, I wonder if having a first page of search results full of 99p items from Hong Kong / China is going to instil trust when someone new to the site.
Do you think my mind has been warped by reading to many of the posts on the PS board
?
PS I’m still bullish for eBay
A nice thought, but I really don’t think that the majority of people go to eBay for a “diverse and rich shopping experience”. For that, they go to Harrods.
I (used to) go on eBay wanting an item dirt cheap, or a hard to find collectible. That’s the long lasting reputation eBay has – a flea market – and there’s really nothing wrong or snobby about that. That position in the market made eBay billions. As Dan pointed out in his video, going up market “encroaches” on other, well established, e-commerce sites’ territories, such as Amazon. Personally, I feel there was no need to do that because eBay had a flea market monopoly.
The question you have to ask is did eBay go “up market” or did it’s sellers go “up market”?.
Have eBay responded to the changing nature of sellers on the site or did eBay purposefully change to attract a different kind of seller?
By diverse and rich I certainly didn’t have Harrods in mind
, I meant something with a unique flavor/quality
Chris I think your right that eBay has changed partly due to the nature of it’s sellers (if that’s your view). I would like eBay to take more control of managing the marketplace.
Regarding shipping. It seems that some sellers in the media categories are using “collection in person” as their ‘free shipping’ method to beat the system!
http://forums.ebay.co.uk/thread.jspa?threadID=1200321317&tstart=0&mod=1256838234700
free postage just makes items dearer for the buyer because of the extra fees that Ebay cream off from your inclusive postage price.Fees on a buy it now £4.99 + £1 postage item would be .89p whereas fees on a £5.99 inclusive of postage item would be .99p. Who stands the extra cost? to make same profit you would need to increase price by 10 or 11p.
or sell more at less profit per item.
and how does that keep gross profit margins the same?
it doesnt
but its better than going hungry.
some folk get hung up on margins and percentages and forget they have to eat.
true. but I feel for the little guys who sell 99p stuff and now have to pay fees on the combined item+postage cost, which could double their final selling fee. You sell a 99p poster, postage cost is £1.28, cost of tube 60p = £2.87 that you pay fees on instead of 99p.
Enjoy your time at the OZ Round Table but be forewarned; you will be hijacked, that is the nature of that very small forum.
I have just watched the ebay ‘Best Match’ tutorial and I’m amazed that they put TRUST as the top priority.
Trust suggests HONESTY
This is something which appears sadly lacking within ebays methodology is calculating DSR’s
Item as described – Quite simply if an item is Not as described the buyer if fully entitled to return the product and seek a refund.
There should not be a sliding scale of Honesty with star values. Either the product is as described or it isn’t
Communication – If sellers are going to be judged on communication or lack of it – leave it to the sellers to decide content and frequency. With ebay now sending pre formatted emails to buyers the value of communication stars is diminished.
Dispatch time – Every listing now requires a Dispatch time. It surely can not be that hard to calculate the time between payment being received and the seller notifying the buyer of dispatch and comparing that number against the stated dispatch time. Buyers judge the arrival time and not dispatch time, and sellers have no control over post delays.
Postage and packaging charges – Within those categories that are FREE post this is a pointless DSR. Since shipping items with FREE post I have received low DSR marks within this DSR.
Following the low DSR marks for P & P my TSR score is at risk.
I might loose my TSR because I have been marked down on the P & P DSR despite Free post.
The loss of TRS status will effect sales and discounts and yet ebay are quite happy to accept data which clearly FALSE (How on each can P & P charges be excessive if P & P is Free), and penalise me on it.
Before they start going on about Trust, they need to get there own house in order
They want you to fail the DSR threshold so that you do pay more fees. DSRs were designed to raise revenue in this way.
Ebay’s profits were down a third last quarter, so expect to be squeezed more until your pips squeak.
I don’t mean to be facetious, but good luck.
If eBay wanted to put fees up, they’d just put fees up. It’s not like there’s no precedent for that.
Selling on eBay recently feels more like trying to hop along a tight-rope while balancing a ball on your nose carrying a sack of coal and whistling the theme tune to Monthy Python.
Your absolutely right. But, if you can stick at it well rome burns there is loads of dosh still there.
If eBay wasn’t worth the pain I would have left years ago.
You got the bit about being a pain right.
Don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard for so little in 30 years. If it still works for you that’s great, but for some things it’s become more effort than it’s worth. I have to question whether some folk are living on pure cash flow rather than making a sensible profit. Short term that works well during a tough patch, but long term it’s a recipe for disaster. I’ve seen it happen to far too many once big sellers on eBay. Randy Smythe once described it as “eBay Crack” in one of his articles.
Living on cash flow (and then credit) is what much of economy does all the time.
It does also depend on the products being sold.
At one time it seemed like just about anything could be sold on eBay. A dodgy photo, A description in Purple capitals & terms like. No time wasters – if it doesn’t arrive call Royal Mail & you could still get a sale.
actually ebay has become far easier to sell on over the years, its the competition that has increased and upped its game, jumped on the gravy train and slowed it down,
years ago ebay crashed most days, before paypal many sellers could not take credit card payment.
non paying bidders were a major problem.
no selling software, no SMP no
my ebay. no ebay shops ,
ebay customer support was very basic if at all, and there are probably a thousand more improvements that we take as every day normal now
I know this is probably a stupid question but what about when you view your own listings? Does eBay include those in the total impressions? In other words, would eBay penalize you for viewing your own eBay items?
Also, by using eBay’s Adcommerce scheme couldn’t you infact be damaging your visibility by increasing the number of impressions?
An “Impression” is when a listing appears on a page of search results presented to a buyer.
If you use AdCommerce and direct buyers to a specific listing it isn’t counted as an “impression” as they didn’t appear in search results.