Using Your eBay Store Categories - By Jason Griffith

Few things are more frustrating than visiting an eBay store and be presented only with a mile long list of items that one has to scroll through. It is very difficult to find items in a long list if you are looking for a particular type or genre of item.

What many eBay store owners do not seem to realize is that eBay buyers are not desperate to find and buy their particular items. There are so many auctions going on at any particular point in time, that the browser Back button is probably the most used function when browsing or searching for items.

The default sort order for the listing display in an eBay store is listing end time, with those auctions ending soonest displayed at the top. There are other listing sort orders available as well, but unfortunately none of those are necessarily very well suited for a store inventory display.

The primary means at your disposal to make it easier for an eBay buyer to find what he or she is looking for are the categories.

Think of the categories as virtual aisles in your store. You need to use those virtual aisles in your store to guide the buyer through the merchandise on offer.

The easier you make it for the buyer to find the desired item, the better the chances that the person will buy your item and not someone else's.

You know your merchandise best and know how you can slice and dice the types of merchandise into meaningful categories. However, do not limit a particular item to only one category. With an eBay store, you can list an item in two different store categories free of charge. Make full use of it.

An eBay buyer might miss an item while browsing one category but notice it in the second category. This is synonymous to putting cans of the same cream in both the dairy section and in the baking section of a groceries store.

You cannot predict all the uses that a buyer will have in mind for your merchandise, but you can at least cover off the most obvious ones. When a buyer visits your eBay store and sees the categories, they will first think of what they want to use the item for and see if there is a matching category.

You can have up to 300 different categories in your eBay store. Make full use of it to help your buyer easily find the item (or even similar item) they want to buy.

Generally, a person visits your store wanting to buy something, i.e., with money in hand. It is a great loss when they leave your store because they couldn’t find your item that is hidden amongst tens or hundreds of other items.

Jason Griffith writes eBay Store reviews for BestAuctionStores.com, a site dedicated to providing eBay Buyers with the ability to review and rate eBay stores.