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
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