One of the biggest complaints eBay sellers have had for decades is the inability to discount postage when a buyer purchases multiple items from a single listings for which free postage is offered. eBay multi-buy discounts now provide a solution for free post discounts.
The issue sellers have faced in the past is that with Free Postage you can’t set your postage rates to offer discounts for multiple purchases. This Autumn eBay introduced the ability to offer multi-buy discounts on a listing and now for the first time sellers are able to offer free post discounts.
The problem is that there is no such thing as free postage. No matter how much a marketplace may want you to offer it and how much consumers say that they like free postage it still has to be paid for. Free postage is a myth and effectively means that the postage cost is included in the product cost.
For many items, it’s quite possible to ship multiple items for the same cost or very little additional cost than shipping a single item. For example, a £12 product might be sold for £15 allowing £3 for postage. Buyers see this product as a £15 product with free postage. If two items are sold, depending on the size and weight, it may well be possible to ship two items for the same postage cost. When buying two units from the same listing, buyers will pay £30 but sellers may be very willing to offer the two items for a total cost of £27 (£12 x 2 plus £3 shipping). Hitherto there has been no option to offer the lower price on eBay.
Now with eBay multi-buy discounts it’s simple to set up free post discounts for volume purchases. eBay say that their analysis shows that sellers could see up to a 23% uplift in average order size when using a Multi-Buy discount. If you offer free postage then there is very little reason why you wouldn’t want to offer discounts based on your postage savings to tempt buyers into buying larger quantities.
Other than the ability to offer free post discounts, the main benefits of eBay multi-buy discounts are:
- Extra visibility for offers in the View Item page – with discounted prices in a prominent position
- One click Multi-Buy experience, with easy to understand discounts
- Potential savings on postage costs for Multi-Buy sales – as repeat buyers buy in multiple quantities, so sellers can send items in one go.
The only limitation with eBay multi-buy discounts are that buyers have to buy multiple quantities of the same item and can’t obtain discounts across multiple eBay listings. If you want to offer then then you can through the eBay promotions manager found in the Seller Dashboard.
You can learn how to set up eBay multi-buy discounts on the eBay help page.
2 Responses
We have been Offering a “BUY 3, GET £5 OFF” for the last two years on many items before this introduction.
I have not looked at the Multi Buy option yet and not sure if my listing software supports it.