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Cheers,

Deirdre
eBay Community Development

Tip 1 is to remember to use colors that compliment each other. How many times have you seen orange on bright blue? Dark blue on black? Yellow on white? This is when I say that someone stumbled upon enough HTML to be dangerous! The most important thing is to know that shoppers with different types of screens are likely to be able to read your listing. That means that random text in red or sentences that abuse HTML font color capability are more likely to make you look like an amateur than a solid pro.

Sometimes I'm asked if I know which is better: dark colors on a light background or light colored text on a dark background. I don't know of any studies on that. I can only report that we try both for our clients' templates, and both seem to work equally. A great resource that I found is the "Colour Contrast Analyser" here. You'll need to know the hexadecimal code for your colors (this is in your HTML). So if I'm thinking about writing in pink (color #FFCCFF) on white (color #FFFFFF), the analyzer will tell me that there is not enough contrast.

Edit your text and policies for nice. A search for "please don't bid" in all titles and descriptions revealed over 140,000 items. Why so grumpy? I'd like to see the following phrases go extinct (copied and pasted from real listings, so the bad spellings/grammar are real too!):

"Please dont bid unless you are serious about the item...."

"If you do not agree with the shipping costs, please DO NOT bid!"

"If you can’t afford it please don’t bid. I really don't have time for dead beats."

"the buyer has 14 days to complete, this is due to time wasters."

"PLEASE READ ALL INFORMATION BEFORE BIDDING (ESPECIALLY SHIPPING & PAYMENT OPTIONS)!!!"

"I hate to leave negative feedback but I will do so if necessary."

Has bossing people around before they became your customer saved you from problems? Probably not. Do you think this makes you look like a more trustworthy seller? People on eBay are basically good, and problems should be minimal to rare if you're also doing the right things. Let's treat your shopper with courtesy and respect. Let's treat shoppers like they're great people rather than like they are out to get you. Stop yelling at people; get rid of all those capital letters, and get rid of anything that seems like some sort of threat.

Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was
Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®.
Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.

Most buyers don't remember their seller's user ID, and might tell a friend, "I got it from some guy on eBay." You've killed your shot at repeat business AND word of mouth when both would have cost you nothing. Give people one consistent name that they can remember. Why should people remember your name? Would you like them to come back and buy again? Would you like them to tell a friend? Then it's important that your name be memorable.

Your name should also be easy to spell when people think about or hear it. I might somehow remember that your eBay user ID is *items_4u*, but how likely am I to go through the whole process of telling my friend that I got it from, "Star, items, underscore (that's that underline thing), 4 (the number four), u (the letter u), and star again." GOOD LUCK!

Therefore, I recommend that the following NOT be in your eBay user ID:

No words that are not often spelled correctly by the general public

No homonyms (there, their, they're or high, hi)

No words that are wrong or unconventional spellings of common words (like sportz, gr8t, or krafts)

No made-up or nonsense words

No number 4 (for "for") and no letter u (for "you")

No non-alphanumeric characters (*, !, -, _)

No "com" to try to make your user ID look like a .com domain name; find other ways to promote your website but don't hurt your marketing by making your user ID longer and harder to correctly spell

You can change your eBay user ID as long as you haven't changed it in the last 30 days, and you can keep your feedback and score. Then, I also recommend matching your eBay Store name with your name. It's not good for your branding and identity to have a user ID that's dlevitt3987439874 and a Store name that's "Deb's Items 4U!" If someone remembers your Store name but searches "by seller," they're searching user IDs and won't find you. I like to start Store names with the user ID and add a few words about what you have.

Once you've settled on a great and memorable user ID with a matching and meaningful Store name, then you can plug these all over your template. It's your opportunity at great marketing, and it'll cost you little or nothing!

Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was
Unique template design, marketing, and strategy consulting from As Was®.
Start, market, & improve your eBay sales.

Another question we tend to get in these workshops is about copyright issues. Yes, if you create your own template, that is technically your work unless and until you sign the rights away to someone else. That may not stop someone from stealing it, but you can complain to eBay if someone is ripping off your look and trying to make buyers thing he's you. However, eBay may not stand behind you if your template is not unique and looks like a lot of what's on eBay anyway. If your template is truly unique and someone copies it, that's more of an obvious situation, and you're likely to get some help from eBay on that matter.

Don't steal someone else's template. That doesn't make you unique or stand out. That makes you look just like them, and can put you in a bad position if eBay starts taking your items down because you stole from someone else. Just imagine it in reverse. What if you had someone design you something special, and some guy just stole it. You'd probably be angry and feel a great injustice, and you'd be right to feel that! So don't do that to someone else. It ranges from wrong to illegal.

That also goes for taking a template you like and just changing it a bit. That template is someone else's work. What you are creating is called a "dervative work," and that's not legal without having the rights in writing to the original work. The "wife test" for this matter is to imagine if you could do this to a large company like eBay or Microsoft without hearing from lawyers. Replace the seller whose template you like with those big names.

Be unique and original. Stand out and market yourself. Be the brown truck driving down the street. We all know what it is without having to see the logo. It's that unique from every other delivery truck! So is that red can of soda with the white swoosh on it. You know what that is! You can and should be that special. Don't steal or "borrow" from any other seller. You wouldn't want it done to you, and let's not forget that what goes around always comes around! Or you might get to know some powerful lawyers before it gets the chance to come around!

Hi

hi, nascar!