Markdown Manager is the perfect solution for setting up a sale in your eBay shop. Not available in the UK yet but launched for US shop (store) owners it allows you to literally slash prices on Buy It Now and Shop Inventory Format listings.
Buyers will be able to see the original item price displayed with a strike through next to the sale price. Sellers will be able to choose which items to discount by category, all SIF listings, all BIN listings or by choosing individual items.
Sensibly eBay have set some limits – the minimum discount in a sale will be 5% (Maximum 75%) but this is going to be such a popular feature. Imagine you have stock in specially for Valentines day which is in two weeks time. You probably have listings launched already but on say the 7th February you could launch a sale to clear your inventory rather than have it hanging around waiting for next year. Similarly for other seasonal goods such as Christmas, summer goods, winter goods – start a sale towards the end of the season.Of course any savvy seller is going to prime their buyers with email marketing, there is nothing so compelling as to tell a buyer that the sale will start in two days time at 9pm but you’re giving them a heads up so that they can be logged on to snag the best bargains. Major high street stores do this all the time and now so can eBay sellers!
This is just such a compelling feature, I’m amazed that yet again eBay.com get the best and most useful features first while other marketplaces get stuffed with experiments such as Feedback 2.0. Is this simply because eBay are petrified of upsetting US sellers or do they not think other countries are ready for the best selling tools?
