With more customers expecting free, fast, and tracked delivery, focusing on your selling experience can make a real difference to your business performance.
We call offering this level of service Retail Standards, and we’re introducing some exciting new tools and features to help you achieve it, including the ability to use the eBay labels platform for speed and convenience, and using your eBay funds in a new way to pay for postage.
– eBay
eBay Retail Standards are made up of five key factors:
- 1-3 day delivery on items
- Free delivery
- Using a tracked delivery service
- Offering Click & Collect as an alternative delivery option
- Offering a returns period of 30 days or more
The Carrot
eBay say that offering Retail Standards can give your listings a competitive edge, making them more attractive to potential buyers. It’s a very simple proposition, if you offer these standards you’ll get more sales and see fewer buyer complaints according to eBay internal stats:
- By offering delivery within 3 days, you can see your sales increase by as much as 7%.
- Sellers see a double digit decrease in buyer complaints and queries when they use tracked delivery.
Shipping Labels
You’ve previously only been able to access Royal Mail and Parcelforce directly from Seller Hub. To give you more options, Evri, Yodel and DPD labels are also now available here for the first time. When you choose to use the labels platform, eBay will automatically fill in your delivery information and provide buyers with tracking information so there’s less work for you, and more reassurance for your customers.
Paying for shipping
You can now pay for delivery with your eBay funds for non-Royal Mail services, with Royal Mail capability coming soon in 2024. When you next sell an item, you’ll see an option to pay with ‘Your funds’ directly from Seller Hub. If at that point your funds aren’t sufficient to cover the full amount, eBay will charge the rest of the postage to your registered card or bank account.
You can still use PayPal to purchase Royal Mail labels. Labels from other services can only be purchased with your eBay funds or your payment method on file.
6 Responses
Delivery in 3 days enhances ebays site and profits with little or no cost to them the potential increase of 7% in sales no mention of cost impact to the seller
And of course tracking reduces buyer complaints
Its a sellers only defence to ebays ineffective policing of serial grifters
For the first time in 15 years I have started to show a postal charge on some listings. For years I did fast and free and all that, premium service all that sha bang.
I actually think things have changed and eBay are behind the curve a bit again. Sure people want things fast.
However sites like Vinted show the shipping charges and are proving very popular, and a lot of websites are starting to show the shipping charges also, charge for returning etc.
I think people can see through all the FREE shipping malarkey now they know nothing is FREE it is an obsolete way of looking at it.
Sure the integrated labels are nice and I use the Evri ones all the time.
My click and drop account has also practically become obsolete these days. I have not even used RMG the last 2 runs all Evri and the parcelshop was full of packets ( rammed actually ) today from Vinted as you can tell with the label’s.
free shipping is ebays iffy carrot to enhance search position,
any fool knows the cost of shipping is included in the price,
ebays fee structure means in some categories they gain more than the10% postage chisel
Kind of pointless when not many Small / Medium UK-based businesses left, the ones left seem to have very low volumes of sales
Surely eBay should target more promotions to Chinese sellers now they are fully committed the platform to them ?
I just can’t reliably offer 1-3 days delivery, the infrastructure isn’t there to support it. Most buyers do receive their items within 3 days anyway but as soon as the Christmas rush hits or more Royal Mail strikes happen, items arrive late and I’m stuck wasting my time chasing deliveries up, responding to disgruntled customers and dodging defects. An extra day or two of leeway is very much needed for such scenarios. Even the big names such as Debenhams or Next offer economy delivery of up to 5 days as standard.
I don’t think most buyers even want it or expect it. I offer an upgrade to Royal Mail 24 on all my listings for a mere £1 extra and no-one ever opts for it.