eBay Feature first replacement — eBay Ad Commerce

Recently eBay has announced that it eliminate its Featured First advertising which will be retiring after June 29. The program allows Top Rated sellers to upgrade their listings and optimized spots on eBay as the sample bellow shows.

eBay said there were no plans to replace Featured First at the moment. Therefore, Featured First will automatically expire from any existing listings on this July 29 (the feature is not available for listing since June 29).
Therefore, we would strongly suggest eBay merchants to allocate their budget to the eBay Ad Commerce* program (see the Illustration bellow).

With high percentage of the exposure which was allocated to the feature first section, it will be reasonable to predict that eBay Ad Commerce Conversion rates will increase, hence, the program ROI will be improved.
Considering, most merchants will not take this step (as they are not aware of the possibility). We’re strongly encouraging you to shift the feature first budget and try out the Ad commerce strategy.

imOnline specializes in multi channeling strategy. With imOnline’s full-service eCommerce program a retailer’s products are listed in deep data processes, where they appear simultaneously on all the biggest Online Marketplaces. Whether it’s a veteran marketplace or an emerging one, we are there to list our clients’ products on it.

eBay Best Match : Fixed Price versus Good Till Canceled (GTC) – Which To Choose For Maximizing My Search Standing?

eBay Best Match is the primary focus to consider during your strategy process (read more about our strategy). To keep things simple, Best Match works by considering the following elements:

1. Demand factors such as free shipping, recent sales, keywords or item specifics common to the most successful listings in a specific category.
2. Listing factors such as distance and comparable cost to other items in a specific category.
3. Seller performance factors – whether a seller is Below Standard, Above Standard, or Top Rated.
4. Recent sales – fixed price listings that generate repeat sales can get a boost in their search exposure.
5. Soonest ending time is a factor for auction-style listings.

Currently, eBay offers two very similar listings types: Fixed Price and Good Till Canceled (GTC). We have seen very clearly that new listings get a Best Match boost -high rank in the first page of the search results – for a few hours.

On the other hand, GTC items – which stay at a fixed price for 30 days with an auto-renew function – are not getting a visibility boost during the renew process.

The quick, albeit incorrect conclusion is that in order to maximize your Best Match visibility you should list only fixed price items in the peak hours. Why is this conclusion incorrect? Let’s take a look…

At imOnline we work with many different types of sellers. We have huge sellers in many categories, such as apparel, jewelry and rugs. Does the conclusion above apply to all of our clients? No, of course not.

While GTC improves listings efficiency, it also has a few more advantages over fixed price items. First, let’s be clear: eBay’s Best Match algorithm does not consider quantity available or duration options (7 days, 30 days) on the listings. So it doesn’t really matter if you list your item for 30 days or 7 days, or if you list you item with quantity 1 or 1000. At imOnline, our strategy process takes into account that a recent sales score is based only on the recent sale of that item. Thus, as a sale becomes older it has less relevance to the score. Eventually a sale becomes too old to contribute at all. That timeframe varies depending on which eBay category it belongs to.

For example, for engagement rings in the jewelry category the timeframe is between 1 – 72 hours. In general, sales between 7 – 14 days old contribute much less, and sales between 30-60 days old don’t count at all.

If you take the above points into account, you will see that GTC is the best option for high velocity items.

As you can see, fixed price listings get a visibility boost while GTC items don’t. When eBay first launched Best Match, they only allowed the history to carry over once because of a technical limitation in the underlying functions they were using. Today the listings sales factor is carried over to new listings over and over again. So, while it appears that for items with high sales/view history, GTC and Fixed price items may have the same search standing, fixed price items have a huge advantage in Best Match when the item ends without a sale, due to their visibility boost.

We at imOnline recommend that sellers with low sales/view history use a fixed price listings strategy and sellers with high sales/view history sellers use GTC as their listing strategy.

Don’t forget – besides the sales history factor, there are few other super important factors to consider in your listing strategy: competitive item price, relevant title keywords and accurate items specifics.

imOnline specializes in multi channeling strategy. With imOnline’s full-service eCommerce program a retailer’s products are listed in deep data processes, where they appear simultaneously on all the biggest Online Marketplaces. Whether it’s a veteran marketplace or an emerging one, we are there to list our clients’ products on it.

Why ImOnline is The Ultimate Full Service eCommerce Solution For You

imOnline’s full-service program is an performance-based model program, where we analyze and evaluate the relative strength and weaknesses of each merchant.

We mainly look for small to medium-sized companies that already generate $50K- 250K+ per month in online sales or $100K-500K in offline sales. We aim to boost sales by at least double.

We offer clients with this kind of potential to join our full-service program.

If both we and the client are interested in going forward, we initiate a full-service program where imOnline takes care of everything from top to bottom. We will carry out the Amazon listing, the eBay strategy, listings on Marketplaces such as eBay, Amazon and Buy.com, Comparison Search Engines, auction management, shipping integration, coding of thewebsite, API integration with 3rd party carts, gateway processors, Google Adwords campaign, affiliate programs, search engine optimizationcampaign, etc. We handle ALL the online marketing activity with a truly compelling offer to the client: a pay-per-performance model where we’re being paid for results only.

What if you have already developed or implemented at least some part of an online package? imOnline gives you the flexibility to decide which steps of the program you want us to perform, and which you would like to retain control over.

What’s in it for you? The following is a list of some advantages you enjoy with our unparalleled program:

• A true multi-channel solution

• Tailor-made service



• Growth rate-focused model

• Dedicated account manager

• PPP – Pay-Per-Performance pricing means no hidden fees



• International representation for your company and products

• The peace of mind that comes from the industry’s most comprehensive eCommerce package