Price changes no longer affect Best Match

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eBay UK has said that from next month, changes in price will no longer affect the Best Match placement of Buy It Now items listed on the site.

The change was announced in an email sent out from eBay/PayPal account managers to some top sellers, and will be implemented from 2nd February. We’d obviously expect an official announcement for everyone before then, and I’ll update this post when it appears.

From the week commencing 2nd February, sellers will be able to increase or decrease their prices without affecting their recent sales score in Best Match. It’s now possible to change prices even on listings which have had sales, so this could be a useful way to boost your recent sales score: start off multiple item listings at a lower price to encourage quick sales, and then increase later once you have the sales to boost your position in search.

Changes to item title, category and item condition (new with/without tags, used etc.) will continue to affect Best Match standing.

Remove listing features on GTCs

As of 3rd February, sellers will be able to remove listing features (e.g. subtitle, Featured First) from Good Til Cancelled listings, even if they have had sales. Again, this should make it possible to boost your recent sales score for Best Match by piling on the features at the start of the listing, but removing them later on.

It hasn’t been clarified how this will affect fees: if you’ve bought a feature for 30 days but remove it after 15, don’t count on getting half your fee back. This is something I’d expect eBay staff to clarify shortly, so I’ll update this if we find out.

Free P&P ‘could’ boost Best Match score

eBay have reiterated their slightly mysterious statement that “free P&P could boost your exposure in Best Match”. From 27th January, sellers in media categories will have capped P&P prices, and all sellers must specify at least one domestic postage price. Sellers currently have the facility to edit postage costs even on listings which have sales through the SYI form and Turbo Lister; the same functionality will be added to Selling Manager and SMP in the next couple of months.

10 Responses

  1. #1 Free postage across the board will be with us by Easter.

    As for the OP, thats great news. I have a couple of items I have sold to cheap in the past and resisted changing the price because of best match standing. Nice one feeBay.

  2. So the sellers will price low “win the sku” so that they get good placement in Best match and then hope they can raise the price later. The problem with this is that, at least in the US, eBay is going to give greater wait in Best match to lowest total price.

    If you think you will be able to raise prices and not lose sales, you may be fooling yourself.

  3. Sounds like an easy way to create a pricing war dropping the bottom out of the market. Considering the size of eBay it is almost guaranteed to happen with some product. Like Whirly, in the past I would resist moving the price up (or down) because of best match standing.

  4. #4 I’m sure that there will be sellers with daft “strategies” but I think the days of “pricing wars” may be coming to an end (not just on eBay). My prices will be only going one way (unless it’s something that I want to clear).

  5. I am glad that someone at Ebay agrees with my thinking that free shipping will lower selling prices. Ebay should try to increase selling prices, not lower them.

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