Failproof EBay Descriptions In Three Easy Steps

Author xlxmarketing 14.1.2010. | 19:15

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writing ebay descriptions copy
When you make selling on eBay, your own online store or one of the many eBay Alternatives You’ve usually got one thing on mind. You want to sell as many products as possible and make as much money as you can.

To do that you need to do two things:

  • Pictures and a title that will get lots of people to look at your description
  • A description that convinces the buyer that they can’t live without the item

While we have previously covered how to get the titles right (check out 5 Ways To Fail At EBay Titles for a quick guide on how to win at eBay titles) we haven’t looked at how to nail the description.

ebay title fail
 

Write good eBay titles effortlessly, read 5 Ways To Fail At EBay Titles to learn how.
When creating a description for eBay you need to know two things, the product and the person who will be buying it.

 

Do Your Research

 

 

Know Your Buyer: As the seller you need to get into the heads of the buyer to find out what needs they want fulfilled and the type of environment they live in.

This doesn’t mean you should spend time spying on existing customers with keyloggers and hidden cameras, it does mean that you should find out what they’re searching for and talking about online.

Getting the keywords that will get your item in front of the people most likely to buy is as simple as visiting a site like adwords.

adwords
Once you’ve got the keywords you are after it’s time to see what the customers think about the items and what they want.

This can be done simply by visiting Google and reading the stories that crops up in the news and blog section… or visiting a service like whostalkin.com to see what people are saying on social networks.

Know Your Product: The more you know about the products that you are selling the better you will be at selling them.

This is because you will be in a better position to judge the exciting features of the product and tell the customers what they want to hear.

By reading blogs, white papers articles and industry news you’ll be able to keep up to date with the latest developments and newest technology and by becoming a member of a forum you will become an expert in the topic your customers expect you to be.

This means when you get the product in your hands for testing you will be able to find out exactly what it does in a short time.

As a dropshipper or reseller it’s essential that you buy a sample of the items you get in and play around with it so that you know what items to list and what items to ignore.

Start exploring the features and functions, get a feel for it. You’ll probably find out that it also plays music and videos and its got FM radio and a FM transmitter.

You need to really explore the functions and setup of the gadget to know what really makes it so special. This goes down to knowing what chipset powers it, what GUI it uses and what OS is used.

The video and audio formats something works in can also be selling features if you’re reselling wholesale electronics. Formats like MP3, WAV, MPEG-4, RMVB are commonplace enough but Video File Formats like MKV or Audio Codecs like FLAC would be worth mentioning.

 

Writing Your Description

When it comes time to write you should already have a pitch in mind from the research and testing stage.

One thing to keep in mind is the importance of selling a concept rather than the service or idea. This means, that instead of selling somebody a GPS for example you are selling them the idea of always knowing where they are.

CVMF-CS30
 

The Adventurist – 4.3 Inch Touchscreen Portable GPS Navigator is not so much of a a GPS device as a way to get where you want to go.
You also will want to make the copy very addictive so that the potential won’t want to stop reading. One way to do that is to anticipate the questions they are likely to ask about the product and answer it for them. Is it a GPS player? Then they’ll probably ask about the software, the charge time, the screen size, the OS.

By answering the questions that they are asking you will draw them from one paragraph to the next till they get to your last sentence, which will be such a strong ‘buy now’ message that they can do nothing but refuse.

In saying that though your descriptions shouldn’t be too long. As the old copywriter adage goes “Copy should like a woman’s skirt… It should be long enough to cover the essentials but short
enough to make it interesting.”

 

Editing And Proofreading Your Description

Once you have finished your description it always pays to proof it for mistakes. Nothing will kill your credibility with a buyer faster than poorly written descriptions and errors in your work. As a result it pays to print out the descriptions and then read through them.

These are some of the things that professional proof readers do to prevent errors slipping through in writing:

 

 

    • Inch their way: They place a ruler beneath the text they are reading.
    • Don’t look back: As an alternative to “inching their way,” they place a ruler above each line of copy to prevent themselves from rereading any lines.
    • They pace themselves: They move their finger down the page and let their eye roam over the page in slow rhythmic movements keeping pace with their finger.
    • They go in reverse: an excellent way to catch spelling errors is to go in reverse up the page because it forces them to take each word individually.

While this may seem a little extreme it will almost guarantee that you get word perfect descriptions.

But in the very least you should run a spell checker through your description to pick up the more glaring errors.

So research your buyers and your products, sell the sizzle and not the steak, and ensure your descriptions are free of errors and you will find yourself doubling your sales in no time.

Author xlxmarketing 14.1.2010. | 19:15
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2 Comments

  1. Yvonne @ Gopher Promo August 26, 14:33

    It is funny, but many SEO rules can be applied to eBay listings just as one would apply it to your web pages. Keyword research is the first aspect, and then the titles and descriptions are all important. Thank you for today’s lesson, you just opened my eyes in a major way!

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