One of the most enduring uses of the internet has been in the facilitation of commerce and trade between customers and between businesses. The commerce categories being Customer to Customer, C2C, Business to Business, B2B, and Business to Customer, B2C. The internet has made it possible to the various categories mentioned above to be able to engage in useful and meaningful trade interactions thus fuelling trade worldwide.
eCommerce which is the shortened form of electronic commerce is defined as the facilitation of trading of services and products using computer networks, such as the internet and online social networks. It’s drivers include; mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, internet marketing, and online transaction processing among others. These technologies have conspired to create a platform in which one can easily conduct commercial activities online without too much hassle.
Perfect Your Listings
One of the pioneering and largest eCommerce trading platforms is eBay. eBay, is an American company which provides C2C and B2B sales services via the internet. It was founded in 1995 and is currently a multibillion-dollar business with worldwide operations. The platform is an online auction through which people can interact in the buying and selling of goods. Therefore as a business worth your salarium you need to make sure that you have a solid presence on this platform and that you do it right the first time around.
Truth is if perfected listing and selling items on eBay can replace your day job. But the key to this success is largely hinged on how well you invest in market research so that you can be able to position yourself appropriately. There is much more involved in online market research quite apart from the obvious, which is figuring out how much to charge for your product. This research is conducted well and methodically has the potential of yielding invaluable insight into the inner workings of the market and thus will offer you a much sought after competitive advantage over the competition.
Market Research On eBay
The endgame in participating in an eCommerce platform is to make sure that you have buyers clicking on your product and consequently converting by making the requisite purchases. Here is a quick rundown on the four things that you should focus on as you look to getting valuable insights on eBay market research.
- Listings: Historical data can be a good source of information as to how the market is like on eBay. To this end, the best locations from which you can glean a lot of useful information is quite simply by looking at the information from completed listings(where a purchase was actually made) and use this as a basis for setting up your online shop.
Additionally, you will be able to get some useful information including the prices of the item, the popularity of the items, the rule of thumb is fairly simple here the less popular an item the more you should avoid selling it on eBay or if you have to then you have to sell it a lower price in order to attract interested buyers.
- Trends: Another key pointer to use in your exercise is to look at the historical trends. The tool should enable you to be able to track several metrics which are of interest to your listing. A good Amazon tool for sellers should be able to help you track and analyze a wide spectrum of information including; products on sale, listings format, price ranges, direct competitors among others.
It should in addition to the above metrics enable you come up with aa better listing which are targeted to the individual buyers and this will make it easier for you to make the conversions. Some of the suggestions might be as simple as changing the presentation of your listings to your advantage, according to what works best in the portal.
- Positioning: eBay has a very useful tool known as the Best Match System and ass the name suggests this tool should be your best friend. It will sort the order in which interested buyers are browsing through your listings and this information will be of value in determining how you should position yourself in order to have maximal impact.
Some of the factors that will likely have an impact on your listing position include; your track record, your product pricing and whether or not you include shipping costs in the final item price. Therefore this information will be of utmost value in helping you craft a listing that sits in that sweet spot between being informative and making conversions.
- Research: Finally it is important to know that the whole process is a continuous loop. Therefore after making your listings, you need to learn all about its performance by using the free Listing Analytics app which comes bundled for free with eBay. It will provide you with useful data primed to give you an advantage going forward.
