We all know the benefits of being an eBay seller. We also know the steps involved in setting up a shop and creating your very first inventory; sending out adverts along with your despatched goods to encourage repeat business all this in the aspiration of building a successful online business. This will of course only happen if you have good quality products, affordable prices and branding yourself effectively on your eBay shop and listings.
So let’s focus on the branding on eBay in more detail.
Ebay is already an established marketplace, where you will find a very wide range of sellers and product types. So you can basically compare it to a very big online shopping mall where you can find anything from clothes, shoes, accessories, to tools, sweets, consumables, household products, pet supplies, furniture, bathroom accessories and many others.
So my two questions for you are:
- First, since there are so many sellers of the same product types as yours, how do YOU stand out from the crowd?
- And secondly, of course eBay has their level of trust, gained over months and years, but how do YOU, as an individual seller stand out from the “crowd”?, send this feeling of security and comfort to your (potential) customers once they are on your store/listing?
The answer is quite simple: BRANDING.
They say “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Keeping this in mind, imagine what kind of impact a nice design has, for a customer that lands on your store/listing for the first time. It not only makes a good impression to the customer but also plants the idea that “this seller must have invested a certain amount of time, effort and financial resources to get this done, so it must be good that I’m looking for my products on here...” So a quick recap, we came to this light bulb moment at the beginning of this article: CONFIDENCE & TRUST. This is one of the ways a seller would transmit these ideas to his customers.
In order to emphasize the above statements, I’ve posted below two images, which show this shop before and after having a design. So you can make up your own mind.
Before:
After:
“Why is it do you think people share so many personal thoughts and personal information on Facebook?” Simple, because they trust the site. This trust has been built by building up a reputable brand and homing in as much as possible as to how the users will interact with each other through the site design.
Design is the first thing that comes to mind when people mention the word brand. But the way the design interacts with the user and what it “says” when you land on the eBay listing or shop is the thoughts that triggers whether you feel comfortable with what content is being shown this is what has the biggest impact on people in any environment. It’s the exact same thing with personal branding. If you go to an interview in a suit you will feel much more impressionable that if you turned up in Jeans and a t-shirt. And to be honest, even if we shouldn’t “judge a book by its cover”, let’s face it, we pretty much do it in 90% of real life situations. So I put it to you what is the first thing that comes to your mind when landing on an eBay shop/website which has a really good responsive design and easy navigation?
I think by now you know the answer!
On a different note, if design wasn’t to play a very important role in any type of business, why would we have such a subject as marketing? Or why would we have branding or advertising agencies?
It is scientifically proven that images and sounds have a much higher impact on our subconscious than words do. And marketing has been developed as a science taking many of its processes from psychology. It has been built on ideas tested and proven by certified psychologists. So apart from using math, forecasting and other ideas taken from other disciplines, it has a large percentage of its ideas based and developed using proven psychological theories, which are related to our cognitive senses, as these ones have the deepest impact on our subconscious, thus determining our behaviour and decisions. And by behaviour and decisions I’m referring to consumer behaviour/decisions. But please don’t click away just yet I think I hit a shot of caffeine whilst writing the last paragraph but If branding were not important for any company of any type, why do multinational corporations invest so much time and resources, especially financial, in advertising?
Again, the answer is simple, and I’m sure that by now you are nodding your head in agreement.
So to close on our blog for today picture yourself in that shopping centre and imagine yourself buying a pair of brand new trainers.
Which store would you go to get your trainers from?
Answer honestly 1, 2 or 3 (see below) ?
1. 
2. 
3. 
Shop no.1 has no real identity. It doesn’t transmit anything to the prospective buyer. Its logo says “sneakers” but it doesn’t aspire you to say “come in we have the latest products you are looking for”. It basically seems like a gamble at the first glance. Consider this an eBay store without a design. You will get sales but how many potential customers will simply walk by ?
Shop no.2 is an example of bad branding. Too many things in one place, advertised all in the same place, clustered all together, you see so many words and offers that you have no idea if you want to go in. Not to mention spelling jewellery wrong. Could you see yourself buying a new pair of trainers a tattoo and an engagement ring? Funny how these three products have been put together isn’t it?
Shop no.3 speaks for itself. I know Adidas are a big and notorious brand, and this is the exact same reason why I posted it. What does branding do for your business? It makes you look BIGGER than you are if done correctly. Surely this is what we want from our businesses?
Before ending this article, I will leave you with these two questions I put to my local BNI fellow members the other day.
- Name a fizzy drink?
- Name a make of trainers?
I would say in 95% of answers you would have answered “Coke” and “Nike”.