eBay Collections are an effective, but for many sellers underutilised, way of attracting additional traffic to your listings.
Anyone on eBay can create a collection, which is basically a group of eBay items hand-selected around a theme, concept or passion. Collections are ranked by popularity to decide which are most highly surfaced but the Collections page can also be searched and of course you can share you collections on social media.
Many highly ranked collections are from the big companies, but this doesn’t mean you should get involved. It probably means that the large retailers have shared their collection on social media, but if you too share you collection you can attract traffic from your followers as well as their family and friends if they share you connection too.
So to create a collection you should decide which product you want to promote. You then create a theme around the product. The eBay items in your collection need not all be items that you’re selling – they could be items from other sellers as well. This isn’t a bad thing as although you may send some traffic to other seller’s items, at the same time it increases the attractiveness of your collection and people searching for other items may find your collection and thus the product(s) that you have for sale.
Once you’ve created your collection share it as widely as possible. Getting your collection onto Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google Plus and Tumblr is simple – just click the sharing button at the top of your collection and you’ll find the links.
You can have up to 100 collections, but you should be aware that they need to be maintained. Once listings end, products will disappear from your collections (unless relisted) so over time you’ll need to add replacements. A collection should always have a minimum of 10 to 15 products to be attractive. You’re also more likely to have success if you build a dozen or more collections and share them on social media on a regular basis.
In the old days there were any tools for sharing your eBay items on social media. We probably all have the friend who posted every single item they listed for sale (I know I did… I unfriended them in the end as they just clogged my Facebook feed up). Collections are a much more sensitive way to share your products and your friends and friends of friends are much more likely to be receptive to a thoughtful and topical collection shared on social media than they are to a single product posting.
Start your first eBay collection today by clicking the “Add to Collection” button (Under the bid or buy it now button) on any eBay listing. Once you’ve created it, don’t forget to share it on your social media channels.
11 Responses
never mind collections and social media hows about ebay attracting buyers on their own platform with an effective search program
Chris, The Ebay Collection link in your piece goes to an error page.
Do these really work?
Got about 15 collections, and have shared them on social media. I can see how they can be useful on desktop, but not so much on mobile.
Ours do show up at the side of product categories. There is no way to tell if these actually drive sales however. I do sometimes get some multi-buys. You have to be clever with your keywords.
They are easy to create, however eBay have a habit of helping and automatically adding products to collections and normally getting them in totally the wrong place.
If you want to add a banner you cannot do this at eBay.co.uk you must do this on eBay.com.
Products do not disappear once an item has sold either, but randomly some that are active seem to drop off and need to be added again. I can see what they are trying but it has not really caught on yet.