My eBay shop design : Going live

No primary category set

Having given Frooition the approval on the final design for it was installed in one afternoon.

Alun, the designer, has done a fantastic job although I still need to tidy up a couple of custom shop pages. I especially like the way he has changed my brand colours slightly making them deeper and more “mountcomp” than they were before.

One of the things I like best about standard eBay shops is the white space which helps to keep the page clean and fresh. Alun has managed to achieve this whilst injecting colour into the page but without heavy backgrounds.

The shop categories menu now works better than ever – Alun has styled it to make the categories stand out from the sub-categories to assist buyers to find the items they’re looking for.

One of my biggest dislikes of eBay shop search has been removed – I now have a search box which searches titles AND descriptions by default. It also searches my entire shop by every time, instead of just the category the buyer is in. This means if I have products matching a buyers search they’ll always be found. eBay’s standard shop search only looks in the category a buyer is currently browsing, although to be fair eBay do at least now display additional items found in all categories for null search results.

What was most important to me was that the shop looked and felt as much like a standard eBay shop as possible, whilst leveraging the advantages of Frooition technology. This has been achieved admirably retaining the eBay promotion boxes with curvy corners and carrying that theme across to the other display areas on the page.

I’m able to display six key products, automatically select from those available either by price, newly listed/ending soonest, shop category, or a mix of criteria. This enables me to showcase a star item, either an item with great profit, or one that I have large quantities of, and to display a further five items which currently promotes the printers I sell. Whilst the products are chosen automatically from those available a judicious use of criteria pretty much means I can identify the exact products I’d like promoted.

There’s just one thing letting my shop down at the moment, and sad to say that’s down to me and not Frooition – my product photos just aren’t up to standard and all need reshooting and tidying up.

My next job will be to update all of my listings to a new template to match my eBay shop, and that’s where the work begins for me. Up until now Frooition have done all the hard graft. I’m looking forward to it, if they look half as good as my shop they’ll be worth the effort.

Overall I’m extremely pleased with the new design, it’s cleaner, more professional, gentle on the eye, and most important of all it retains everything that was great from a standard eBay shop template and then improves on it.

It’s so much better than my old eBay shop. Quite honestly I think it’s the best looking eBay shop I’ve ever seen.

17 Responses

  1. I think the design is clean, bright and clear – as a buyer that is what I like and I certainly would not be clicking away from your shop.

    I love the double M logo – it reminds me of Vinnie the panda in the new Foxes “bisquits” advert.

  2. Hello
    as your ebay shop is now up and running, maybe will you use this shop converter made available by google (google base), and let us know how you are doing?

    may try one or two weeks without it, and another one or two using it?

    I am looking forward to reading your comments!

  3. Two weeks isn’t a long enough time to get meaningful results from an experiement like that, however it is possible to track increases in hits from Google so that’s one thing I’m looking at already. However hits don’t always convert to sales which is the real interest – does the shop increase conversion rates because until a buyer lands on one of my eBay pages the design counts for nothing.

  4. @ Chris

    In the current climate in which we all trade on ebay wouldn’t you say it would be a better investment to have your own website built for what Frooition charge rather than a redesigned ebay shop given that ebay may pull the plug on any seller at any time with no notice or warning?

  5. Hi Andy, I’d advise most people to get their own website, but my business doesn’t lend itself to doing that easily. I don’t have repeatable products which makes it very difficult to stock eBay and a website at the same time. I want all my product on eBay – if I split it I might put the half onto my website that eBay buyers are looking for and vice versa.

    However that doesn’t mean I rely solely on mountcomp for my income, I do some other bits here and there throughout the year but not generally projects I can talk publicly about due to non-disclosure agreements.

  6. Thanks for the reply Chris. I didn’t mean just you but anyone out there looking to get this sort of project done. It strikes me as high risk for many given the current climate.

  7. Nice shop, I only have one problem with frooition deisgns, and that is the font is quite small. But apart from that, very nice. 😆

  8. I totally agree with you on diversification Andy, I don’t think anyone would argue against it. However assuming I have a life left on eBay of at least six months the real question is, as well as a website, could the eBay shop cost get a return on investment in the six months (I’m hoping to be on eBay for many years yet by the way 😉 ).

    The cost whilst not insignificant also isn’t exhorbitant, I’ve seen alternatives much lower priced and others 3 or 4 times the price. The proof however will be in the ROI and that’s what I’m waiting to see (and hoping it’s good!)

  9. Yael the good thing is that they’re not fixed font so you can adjust it to your personal preference in your browser, but it’s a good point and not one I’d considered so thank you 🙂

  10. But will Ebay still allow customisation of shops in 6 months time?.

    More to the point, with the visibility issues with shops at the moment, will they even exist?

  11. joking aside that girl feeding her face and reading a newspaper does not give the best message
    I think its an alan sugar moment

  12. I wonder how the new ‘maximum 5 links’ policy will be applied from July onwards ?

    There appears to be a lot of uncertainty if or not multiple links to store categories are allowed or not, some say yay, some say nay ?

  13. Eddie, FWIW, that announcement has only been made in the US. We’re still hoping it won’t happen here waiting for the UK announcement.

  14. Not too worried about the links – news is filtering in that the policy refers to “off-eBay” links only. There’s no official announcement but the policy does refer to no more than five links to “eBay property” pages with examples such as half.com, eBay Express etc. I’ve just read a comment from last night by Richard Brewer-Hay who has apparently investigated and said “.. cross-promotion galleries, links, etc. These are permitted without limitation. In fact, any cross-promotion of eBay listings is permitted.”

    Until I hear otherwise I’ll assume linking to my own auctions on eBay is permitted 🙂

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