Store Categories allow you to display the items you have for sale in the same way when you go to the supermarket. Similar products are placed in the same aisle. Categories make it easy for you to guide your customers through your listings. Categories are all about making it easy for your customers to buy from you and showing them more products that they may like to buy!
Always rename the default store categories. When you first start using them take a look at your current stock and decide which products go together. If for instance you sell clothes, you may have men’s, women’s, boys, girls and babies clothes. If someone is buying ladies clothing by looking at the ‘Womens’ category they won’t have to browse through the clothes they’re not interested in.
When you list new items you can choose which of your store categories the item is to be displayed in, similar to choosing which eBay category they’ll appear in. Sometimes you may have items which suit more than one of your store categories, and eBay allow you to list them in both with no increase in fees. This is great because if you list in two eBay categories you have to pay double – you don’t with store categories!
“Don’t forget to highlight seasonal goods, at this time of year almost every eBay store should have a Christmas section.”
When you have a link in an auction such as "Buy this item now in our eBay store" consider linking to the store category that the item is located in, not direct to the item. This means the buyer is presented with all the similar items you have for sale – they may find a more expensive (or cheaper) item, one with more features, or they may find two items they like and buy them both!
Start using store categories as soon as you open your store and classify your existing listings into the categories that your create. You can do this in bulk in the store tools in the “Manage my store” section of eBay. If you show your buyers more items similar to the first they looked at there is a good chance they will make multiple purchases!
Another great use of store categories is to have a sale and/or wholesale section depending on the type of buyers you attract. If you’re using eBay MarkDownManager to discount a set of products and they’re currently only in one store category then add them all to a sale category and drive traffic to that section of your store.
Don’t forget to highlight seasonal goods, at this time of year almost every eBay store should have a Christmas section. Even if you sell clothing or products which are not traditionally viewed as Christmas goods you could have party dresses and tuxedos in a Christmas Party Outfits store category.
It’s well worth visiting major high street stores and seeing how they organize their stock and how they display their goods in different sections. Retail chains are experts in marketing their goods to customers that walk through their doors and you can pick up a lot of valuable information which can be translated into how you organize your own store categories on eBay.
The great thing about having an eBay store is that you can choose and experiment with how you arrange your items to get the best results. You can’t do this with the ‘View Sellers Other Items’ link as eBay set the defaults for this. By opening a store you can not only use your own categories to help buyers find the product they want, but also present similar products to the customer – tempting them to make multiple purchases. ‘View Sellers Other Items’ is the standard eBay look and feel, whereas when searching your store they are constantly having your unique brand embossed and embedded in their minds which will help them remember you later, at Christmas for instance!
Store Categories make it easier to direct customers to your products – give categories meaningful names and use them to drive customers to the product they’re interested in.
A final tip, make sure that you give your store categories relevant names as this will assist in getting your products ranked more highly on Internet search engines such as Google. If you have a pair of “iPod compatible headphones” listed in the subcategory “iPod Accessories” in the category “iPods” in a store called “MP3 Accessories” will be ranked as more significant than if in the default show category “Other”.
