Your brand tells customers that they’re looking at one of your eBay auctions or your online shop. A memorable brand sets you apart. Your brand helps customers remember the great service they received from you in the past. It gives them the confidence to shop again.
If you look at experienced eBay sellers stores you’ll see that they tend to have unique colour schemes. They’ll have a logo, but also a colour scheme that carries through every page. They even use it in their email marketing and end of auction emails.
Branding shouldn’t stop at your eBay shop though. If you have a website or sell on other marketplaces your branding should carry across. This is so that buyers who have purchased from you recognise you wherever they find you. Your branding should carry across all the sites you trade on as well as your flyers, packing slips, thank you notes, business cards, invoices.
“A professional logo not only tells your customers that you’re serious about your business, but also acts as the basis for all your other branding”
The easiest place to start your branding is when you create your logo. A professional logo not only tells your customers that you’re serious about your business, it also acts as the basis for your branding. Whilst it’s easy to create your own logo either in a graphics program or using software such as http://www.aaa-logo.com/, it’s worth investing the money to get a professional designer to create it for you. There are many companies on eBay who will design you a logo, or a company such as Frooition will design your logo in conjunction with branding your eBay listings, eBay shop or your own website.
Once you have a logo ,choose your eBay shop or website colours to complement it. On eBay this is fairly easy. In the shop designer you can customise the colours to match your logo – you don’t need to know any HTML. Choose colours, logos and symbols that reflect what you sell. Make your eBay shop unique and create your brand.
Unless you’re an HTML expert you’ll probably want someone to create and brand your website for you. Most e-commerce packages will allow you a certain amount of customisation, but this is normally restricted to selecting a set theme from a restricted set of options. Almost all e-commerce packages can be fully customised using HTML Style Sheets by a professional designer and if you want strong branding it’s worth investing in your business.
Your branding needn’t stop at your eBay listings, shop or website, it’s possible to extend your branding into eBay search results and even onto Google Product Search and other shopping comparison sites by branding your images. Consider putting a border on your eBay gallery pictures using your brands colours, or if your logo can be reduced in size include your logo in each image and it’ll appear on the thumbnails that eBay display in search. Equally on product comparison sites your branded images will let buyers know that it’s your product that they’re looking at.
When considering branding think about large companies like Nike or Vodafone. As soon as you see the Nike slash you instantly know it’s a Nike product or website. Even if you don’t see their name. Vodafone is equally recognisable from their red quotation mark logo in a circle. If you can create an icon from your logo which is as instantly recognisable you’re well on your way to creating your brand.
Once you or your designer has created your brand you can build a consistent appearance across all the channels you sell on. Your brand will become more important over time in building customer confidence. Consequently, it will help with faster customer acquisition and retention. Branding delivers customer awareness and loyalty. It determines the speed that a company grows. Once you’ve built your brand make sure that it’s used in every contact with a customer. Whether it be on eBay or your website, in email or any communications that you send.
