eBay Accepts Offers tab added to search results

If you sell on eBay.com then it’s worth being aware that eBay have added an Accepts Offers tab at the top of search results. This sits aside the traditional All Listings, Auctions and Buy It Now tabs that we are accustomed to seeing.

The eBay Accepts Offers tab is likely to appeal to the bargain concious shopper, even if a listing with Best Offer is at a higher price than a listings for a similar product without a Best Offer. It’s a midway step between eBay’s traditional auction shopper and the 80+% of listings on eBay today that are offered at a fixed price, enabling the buyer to think that they’ve got a bargain if their offer is accepted at a lower price than the Buy It Now headline price.

There are a number of implications here which could affect your listings strategies. Firstly, the Accepts Offers tab comes before the Auctions and Buy It Now tabs – eBay have not only added the new option but decided to give it relatively higher placement than if they’d placed it at the end after Buy It Now. This could have a serious impact on buyers who choose to click the Accepts Offers tab and if you don’t have a Best Offer on your listing you could be missing out on sales.

Best Offer is a feature that you may love or hate, but with the new tab it should be something that you seriously consider when selling on eBay.com in the future. Most sellers will set an auto accept and auto reject in order to cut their workload. Generally if you set the two to the same level then you’ll be accepting any offers that are reasonable while rejecting those at margins you’re not willing to accept.

There are cases when you have deep inventory that you may wish to set an auto accept at a lower price than your auto accept leaving a price range where you manually review and accept eBay Best Offers. This gives you some leeway to accept lower prices for multiple quantity orders than for single quantities, especially useful if you have built in free shipping and can ship multiple items for the same or similar shipping costs.

eBay Promoted Listings and Accepts Offers tab

It’s worth noting that eBay Promoted Listings are still appearing when the Accepts Offers tab is selected, even if the sponsored listing doesn’t have a Best Offer attached to it. If you see views on your eBay listings without Best Offers dropping and don’t wish to offer discounted prices then consider the use of eBay Promoted Listings to maintain visibility. Remember you only pay the bid percentage on eBay Promoted Listings when you get a sale so it’ll cost nothing to be visible if your offer isn’t successful.