How does a Top Rated eBay Seller status affect your sales?
How much does eBay’s Top Rated Seller status really affect your sales?
How much will your sales drop if you lose Top Rated Seller status?
These are common questions for eBay sellers, who these days have to work very hard to gain or maintain their Top Rated status. eBay’s defect system has changed a little over the past year or two but the metrics are still tough.
How do you earn “Top Rated” status?
The metrics and defect scores are designed to reward sellers who are good at what they do. If you find yourself with a Top Rated status it generally means that:
- You sell good quality items.
- You ship fast with reliable carriers.
- You offer great customer service.
How does it affect your sales?
We recently spoke to a number of our larger sellers and received some feedback on Top Rated status. It turns out that the effect of this status can vary, but for anyone with a consistent and reasonable amount of sales per week (say $10,000 a month or more), losing Top Rated Seller status can affect your turnover by anywhere from 10 – 50%.
In our own experience on eBay we saw a similar decrease in sales (and subsequent increase when the status was restored). We were managing an account turning over $1 million per annum and turnover immediately dropped 30-35% when we lost Top Rated for a month.
So, the goal is to work hard to get there and work hard to keep it.
What are the best tips to gain Top Seller Rating?
- Selling good quality items is important, but refining your product range and removing items from sale can be just as important as adding new ones. We recommend regularly downloading your defect report and looking for items that often have issues. Perhaps an item has had a low ‘Item Not As Described‘ rating. If so, take some action and revise the listing. Add more information or more images and consider changing the price. Lowering the price can greatly affect customer’s expectations. If it still doesn’t improve in a month or so then consider removing it from your range. You might find that a lot of your product issues are coming from only one or two items.
- Ship quickly by ensuring you have smooth systems and daily processing and shipping if possible. Customers like to be kept up to date so ship your items as soon as you can. Systems like ReadyToShip import orders from your eBay store in minutes and greatly reduce the time it takes to ship items and send tracking numbers back to your customers. This ensures your customers stay updated and get their items quickly. Carriers can also be a big factor. There are many carriers in the Australian market and you might find that having a mix of carriers can offer better service for your customers as well as a freight saving every month. Need advice? Contact us, and we’ll see if we can help.
- Provide great customer service from end to end in the transaction – simple things can often make a big difference. Be personal where you can. Show that you are a real business or a real person in your listings. Provide a phone number and email address if possible so customers feel like they can get in touch. Answer emails and questions as soon as you can. Set up your Out Of Office automatic email to send a confirmation to the customer that their message has been received and include typical operating hours and response times. This sets expectations and is good communication. Be upfront if there is a problem, and take action to fix issues.
Follow these steps, and you will be well on your way to Top Rated status on eBay.
So to sum up: ship fast and ship often, make sure you sell good quality items, and provide the best service you can!