You Can Profit from Personalizing Your Listings on eBay After All (I of IV)

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You Can Profit from Personalizing Your Listings on eBay After All (I of IV)
by Janiece V. Smith
eBay sellers face the challenge of attracting customers to their listings without the customer information or personalization technology successful online marketers are using to build repeat business. Several studies have shown that Web sites providing personalization are five times more likely to attract repeat visitors than noncustomized sites.
Web sites can now identify a particular customer through registered contact information and then present products and services in a manner that fits his or her interests and personality. While eBay offers customizable features to buyers and sellers, information for personalization based on customer data for you, the buyer, is another story.
eBay Combines Comparison Shopping with Ease
One of the secrets of eBay’s success is that it offers a service that makes it easy to sell items on the Internet––easy, that is, in terms of getting started.

You can start in ecommerce without dealing with technical details like buying a domain name, learning about hosting, and creating an attractive Web site.

It costs nothing to start.

The learning curve is minimal and you can have items posted in only a few minutes on the most trusted site on the Internet.

The combination of feedback––comments that help users build credibility and establish positive reputations––and an in-house customer support team create a safe environment in which users feel protected.

But there is a big tradeoff in the developing virtual economy. While eBay collects user information and creates personal files on its users, the company’s privacy policy makes sure that information is not used or disclosed without explicit consent––its own sellers can’t even get it!
It is important to understand that eBay is not as much an auction as a giant comparison shopper. In fact, there is evidence that the opportunity for comparison is a major factor in eBay’s success.
A new study by Wharton and Columbia Business School revealed that online consumers tend to stick to the same sites because it’s too much trouble to find their way around a new site. This may explain why search engines rank relatively low (10%) in terms of the initial starting point for researching online purchases. Online customers also tend to revisit and buy more from their favorite sites because it gets easier to navigate with each visit. That is illustrated in the one-year study’s finding that 70 percent of book and CD shoppers appear to be loyal to a single site.
What eBay provides is the advantage of a familiar and trusted format without sacrificing the ability to make comparisons among a broad selection of items offered for sale by a variety of vendors to its (that is, eBay’s) customers. In return, eBay gets a percentage of the sale and keeps its customer knowledge to itself.
How Does Your Customer Shop?
Although eBay attracts more than 30 million unique customers a month, getting them to your item is your job. Plus, their visit to eBay does not rule out their shopping for competing items at other sites, putting personalization to work in ever more ingenious ways.
Even with the privacy issues, there are still ways that eBay-hosted businesses can “personalize” marketing. While you don’t know the specific individual looking at your site, it is possible to put the customer at the center of your business. Because the average time spent on the page of an ecommerce site declined to only 29 seconds in 2004, the importance of presenting the most relevant information in the most meaningful way to the customer is greater than ever.
A place to start is to learn more about the behavior of online shoppers. For example, two distinct shopping behaviors have emerged online: intense buyers (57%) and casual buyers (43%).
The percentage of intense buyers that are female is slightly higher than those that are male. Additionally, intense buyers have higher incomes and their average online spending is higher compared with casual buyers, which are slightly younger and less likely to be broadband users. Intense buyers enjoy spending more time researching the product and are more price sensitive, whereas casual buyers primarily want a clear, clean, and relatively easy shopping experience.
Both types of buyers undoubtedly use eBay but in distinctively different ways. Both logic and evidence suggests, however, that intense buyers are the bread and butter for eBay. The average person spends 1 hour and 40 minutes a month on eBay compared with only 20 minutes at Amazon.com, suggesting that more information is being sought out on eBay.
A category like hobbies is likely to have a greater percentage of intensive shoppers. In this case, having links to relevant newsletters in your “About Me” section could help establish a relationship with the customer.
Casual buyers, described as “not want to be bothered with the details,” could be swayed to purchase a “Buy It Now” feature item because they want to buy as soon as they make up their mind and not have to deal with the auction. Taking into account the category and how the item will be used can help you predict the need to accommodate the casual buyer. For example, items in such categories as tickets, books, and jewelry are more likely to appeal to casual buyers.
What Benefit is Your Customer Seeking?
Dividing customers into segments aims to identify their needs, purchasing motivations, and desires. This helps you to focus your mind on why particular groups of customers are using eBay and assists you in customizing listings in ways that convert more shoppers to bidders.
Considering the structure and features of eBay, customers can be segmented by the benefit eBay provides:

Opportunists––A place to obtain items at below market prices

Convenience Shoppers––A place to locate items not generally available online

Needs Shoppers––A source of unique, hard–to-find items for use

Collectors––A source of unique, hard-to-find items as collectables

Window Shoppers––A source of information

Repeat Buyers––A source of supply

It might be argued that, because eBay is best known as an auction site, opportunists would be found among all the classifications. To some extent this is true, but for purposes of segmentation there is a distinction. The benefits connected to all the remaining segments imply that the customers come with an intent to buy or to prepare to buy.
eBay provides category-specific news, stats, and discussions that can serve to help you brainstorm which customer segment is most likely to represent the greatest revenue in each category. And each individual listing can then be considered for its potential appeal to each different group. This additional insight should then influence all aspects of the listing, including Item Title, Item Description, and View Item Page. Even the type and perspective of the photo can be decided in terms of this segmentation.
As you come to understand the type of shopper that is most likely to want your particular items, you will be able to determine just how to optimize your ad for the greatest potential sales.
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This is the first part of a four-part series on customer segmentation, “Personalizing Your Listing on eBay.” Next up, “Opportunists and Convenience Shoppers.”
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©Janiece V. Smith All Rights Reserved 2004 Auctionmarketwatch.com 333 Maple Ave, Taft, Ca. 93268Unauthorized Duplication and/or Distribution Is Strictly Prohibited

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