OBVA Small Business Blog For online businesses

Delegating Your Online Store Can Do Wonders – Here are the Proofs – Performance Reports From eBay and Amazon – Proudly Shared By OBVA Virtual Assistant Team!

OBVA team is very excited to share the performance scores for all our client stores on eBay and Amazon. We would like to scream out the positive feedback  that we get from our clients every now and then, but since we are committed to client privacy, we never share client store ids, contact information, etc. Online market is very competitive and what differentiates one store from another is the feedback score, and then come other factors like pricing, return policy, etc. As we all know, feedback score depends completely on the quality of customer service we offer to online customers. Virtual store Assistants who help clients achieve wonderful store performance are certainly their assets, which they are not very comfortable to share with other competitors. We also respect this aspect, and we are committed to work for only one client in any particular product segment, so that we do not work for competitors.

OBVA eBay and Amazon Virtual Assistants take over all routine online business tasks like shipping label printing, customer service, managing refunds, replacements, feedbacks, claims, Internet Research, Keyword Research, Social Media Marketing, Blogging, and so on. We offer timely, dependable and reliable services for all our client stores and these service qualities help us retain clients for long term ongoing support.

After so much of efforts put in, performance scores and metrics is the pay-back. Online businesses are so transparent that everything is crystal clear. Any delays are clearly visible not only in feedbacks, but also in customer metrics. And it’s a challenge to keep negative and neutral feedback away while we work our way to 100% feedback and total client satisfaction.

We are excited to share performance reports for a few of our clients, as sharing all won’t be possible.We do not share store ids to ensure privacy for our valuable clients. However, we are happy to share the screenshots of the customer metrics scores and feedback scores achieved for a few of our clients.

This is feedback score of one of the Amazon UK Clients of OBVA Virtual assistants. We work for his feedback, claims, customer service, printing shipping labels, refunds and replacements. We work hard to maintain feedback rating for them to be 100%. Do you want your store’s rating to be the same way, contact us. www.obvainc.com.

Customer service efficiency for first quarter to a eBay client who is being helped by OBVA Online Virtual Assistants.

Can you see this response time for Amazon seller. Great isn’t it? This shows the commitment OBVA Virtual assistants towards their clients performances.

This is feedback score of one of the Amazon UK Clients of OBVA Virtual assistants. We work for his feedback, claims, customer service, printing shipping labels, refunds and replacements. We work hard to maintain feedback rating for them to be 100%. Do you want your store’s rating to be the same way, contact us. www.obvainc.com

If you want your store statistics to look like our clients’, contact us today to know how we can help you manage your store better. You can connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and email.

 

6 Factors That Determines Your Performance Metrics In Amazon-By OBVA Virtual Assistants

Amazon virtual assistants at OBVA have been sharing many tips to sell stuff on Amazon. In this post we discuss the 6 factors that can improve your selling. What makes a difference between a normal seller and a top rated seller? To achieve more sales, a top seller finds ways in each and every corner to improve his business. Successful selling not only relies on writing effective listing description for your products but you need to constantly check your Amazon selling metrics to ensure that you are good at managing your sales. So how would you like to improve your selling? You need to constantly look into the ways to manage your performance metrics in Amazon.

1. Customer Metrics

Amazon is improvising its selling metrics to meet the expectation of its customers. As a store owner you need to check your seller performance metrics regularly. Tamebay blog posted about Amazon introduce 24/7 communication metric requirements in which it says “Sellers who respond to 90% or more of their messages within 24 hours have nearly 24% less negative feedback than sellers who take longer to respond.” Therefore it’s good to reply to your customer’s queries as immediately as possible. You can hire customer service professionals who are good at managing customer service for your store.

2. On-Time Delivery Score

Amazon has included on time delivery score, a new feature to achieve better customer satisfaction. Make sure that you ship your orders within 24-48 hours of purchase and confirm the order dispatch status in the manager order section to avoid negative scores on your selling metrics. Therefore confirm dispatch by including ship date, shipping suppliers (Royal Mail, USPS, UPS, Fedex) and the tracking numbers. Now you can easily check your on-time delivery score in the performance metric section and sell stuff on Amazon.

3. Managing orders

As we are working on effective Amazon/eBay store management for our clients, we would like to share from our experience that 2% of negative Feedback for Amazon Online Store arise due to stock inventory issues. Make sure you check your order section regularly and when you go out for stock for some products, immediately check those listings in your Amazon store and change the listing status accordingly. If in case the buyer orders the products that you go out of stock for some reason, immediately write to buyer with an apology, explanation and offers for replacing with other product or full refund. This simple effort can certainly help you avoid negative feedback

4. Including basic shipping information to buyers

Always try to include all basic shipping information when you ship items to your customers. According to Amazon seller support “Including tracking information for your shipments can help buyers verify the status of their packages and anticipate the delivery of their items”.  When you communicate your buyers with basic information, it will assure about your store services that certainly avoids claims and feedback.

 5. Customer service

Always be prompt in replying to your customer’s queries. If you need additional information to get back to them, ask them for some time to get back to them with the information. If they didn’t receive replies,which leads to irritation, frustration and eventually feedback. Here are few tips which can help you  in handling negative feedback. Apart from feedback problem, late replies also results in seller performance rating issues. Follow basic email etiquettes from 101 Email Etiquette Tips to write polite, nice emails. It is better if you do customer service for your store twice a day.  This will greatly improve your seller metrics. If you find it challenging to set time out for customer service more than once daily, hire Amazon Virtual Assistants from OBVA for managing your Customer Service, Feedbacks and Claims within turn around time.

6. Feedback

Feedback also measures your store performance. Failing to resolve your buyers problems affects your store ratings negatively. Try to avoid 7 Customer Service Mistakes That Can Get You Negative/Neutral Feedback In Amazon. Contact your buyers with immediate and best solutions to solve their issues and concerns. It is always good to hire virtual assistants for your business to follow 4 Rules To Manage Positive Feedback Ratings For Clients.

As a store owner, you might be busy in other revenue generating tasks for your business. However, to increase your selling and to manage a good score, you need to hire assistants who can well take care of your business on your behalf. We at OBVA take care of complete store outsourcing services for Amazon/eBay clients. Our customer service experts will keep your customers happy by quickly sending professional replies to their queries. Hire us today to lead a worry free life.

5 Reasons Why Market Research Is Very Important To Sell Something On eBay And Amazon By OBVA Virtual Assistants

Online Business Virtual Assistants suggest that Internet Market Research is a must for all sellers, who aspire to become a topseller in Amazon or eBay business.If you want to become a top seller, and get more eBay starts and sell stuff on Amazon it is important that you need to conduct a market research for your business. Virtual Assistants at OBVA share the 5 reasons why market research is very important to sell something in eBay and Amazon.

Reason 1 – You don’t want to depend on any guessing when you invest lot of time and money:

When you have products to sell on Amazon and eBay the first five things you need to know before selling is:

  • Who are your target customers?
  • What are your niche keywords to start your business?
  • What type of competition your products have in the online market?
  • Who are your competitors?
  • What is your target market?

This is a very important yet very time consuming process. This needs a complete marketing research analysis where you will need to filter out the keywords to get a final niche keyword which is the basement for your eBay/ Amazon business.

Reason 2 – You should know your product well:

When you come to know the demand for your products and sell stuff on Amazon and eBay you can easily increase the profit for that particular product. So, a comprehensive Internet Market Research will help you get the data you need and much demand it has in the target market, how to increase its price, where it has the demand etc. This would help you increase your selling by offering discounts or freebies and also have auctions for income.

Reason 3 – You cannot guess what price you will sell things for:

Fixing price for each and every product matters a lot to increase your sales and making huge profit as well and get more traffic to your webstore.  First thing you need to know is what price your competitors sell the product at.  So, you need to conduct a competitor research to fix the rates of your items. You need to check the overall sale though price in the whole online market to fix the profitable price. If you fail here then you may not see more profit in your business. Also, only experts can do completed perfect research to get a detailed yet accurate data. Research tools like Tarapeak, Bay Research Labs BayEstimator can help you to do this effectively. You can also Write a Winning eBay Ad to attract new customers to you.

Reason 4 – To sell cheap, you need to find good suppliers:

The first key factor in gaining profit in the market is finding the best supplier. It is very important that the voice of your store is the quality of your products. This can lead to a good  customer feedback. This can achieved only be achieved if you find a right supplier for your business. It is wise to deal with manufacturer’s authorized wholesaler so that we can be 100% certain over product’s quality. Also this would help increase our selling by reducing the product cost.  Here is a post on how to find products to sell on eBay and Amazon that might help you.

Reason 5 – You cannot ignore knowing your competitors:

In any business even it is online or offline, how can you attract more customers to your store? The answer is simple. When the quality of your product or service is better and the price you offer is less than your competitors then obviously you can get more customers. So it is important to know the competitors for each and every product so that you can out-sell your competitors. For this you need to a competitor research to find out the competitors of each and every product.

These reasons would insist the importance of market research. If you do not have time to do market research for your eBay/Amazon business, please contact us. We never work for your competitors! You can follow us on Twitter, Fanpage and G+. Grab our RSS feed for more updates.

How You Can Use Amazon As A Tool For Marketing Research to Sell Stuff On Amazon?

Another Holiday Season is over and it might have brought more opportunities for Amazon retailers sell stuff on Amazon and increased your sales, gaining new repeat customers, and fattened revenue . Most of the Amazon sellers are unaware of the fact that doing direct keyword research in Google adsense or any other best keyword research tools won’t provide good results for Amazon selling.  Virtual Assistants at OBVA would like to share how you can use Amazon as your market research tool.

1. Find the best selling items

Amazon itself has its Amazon Best Sellers Data that gives complete information on the best sellers of each item, best selling items, most gifted items and most wished for items, based on each category and even sub – category. For eg: If you are a beauty store owner in Amazon selling skin care products, then click on this link:

 

When you click on the item name, you can see its ranking in Amazon, number of positive reviews to find if it’s a bestselling and good quality product. Once you know the bestselling items, decide your niche. The feasibility of any niche will depend on sales, competition, supplier availability, and so on. Here, you will have to conduct a more detailed market research yourself or you can delegate to a internet market research expert.

 

2. Study your competitors 

See the titles of your competitors and also the descriptions they have given. See what type of images or pictures they use for the items. And also the style of the language used for description. This may attract new customers to your store.  Pay attention to when the top selling items, auctions began and ended. So that you can accordingly set your listings end time. The last but not least the pricing of the items and the shipping cost for the items. 

3.  Conduct detailed  keyword research

Once you know which products are bestsellers, and who are your competitors, next step is to empower your listings and titles. Here you need to conduct a detailed keyword research to know what people search on  Google to read reviews or find products like your products. A professional keyword research package will be a good way to get a list of keywords that work and have less competition. Next step would be to write reviews or posts related to your products based on these keywords, and link them to your Amazon Store Listings.

Advantages You Get By Conducting This Niche Market Research For Your Products/Items?

  • 1) You will know which products have good market yet less competitive
  • 2) You can introduce more items related to your current product category
  • 3) You can learn from top sellers in your product area. Do not have to invent the wheel again!
  • 4) Will be helpful in creating better pricing policy and marketing strategies, when you have access to facts and statistics.

Things to consider:

Here are few things to consider before selling your items.

Remember this tool is applicable only if you are an Amazon seller. Since it is the best time to increase your income, you may not have time to focus on all tasks. You can delegate your tasks to Virtual Assistants who can manage your complete store services. We do product research to find best selling products, its competitive prices, writing concise yet informative listing description, marketing, customer support, managing claims, disputes and 100% positive feedback for our eBay and Amazon store clients. Please contact us to outsource your complete store services. We never work for your competitors.

Last-Minute Tips To Generate More Leads To Sell More In Amazon/eBay This Holiday Season!

It’s exactly just few days left for Holiday season.  Still many of the eBay and Amazon sellers or other small business owners are striving hard to drive more sales.  According to the Ponemon Institute, a full third of holiday shoppers plan to spend more money online than in-store in 2011. Therefore you need to spend more time in promoting your business online to attract your local and global audience.

We at OBVA would like to share Last-Minute Tips how to sell something on eBay/Amazon  this holiday season:

Spread Your Offers In Social Media:

Promote your ads/offers using paid advertising campaigns in Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ to entice more visitors. Attractive offers like Buy two get one free, bonus gifts for every purchase etc..can boost more sales. Also, Flash news about one time offers like “Barbie dolls with gift wrapped for free shipping only today”, Foundation creams with Free shipping for first 20 international customers”  will turn you customers to click the buy buttons. You may not have time to involve in such creative and attractive offers to your customers. Delegate such tasks to Virtual Assistants quickly to end your deals.

Word Of Mouth Spreading Through Referral Marketing:

Once you come with attractive offers, encourage your customers to be your walking advertisements. This with no doubt can increase your sales.  Implementing this will not only increase your sales but would maintain a high volume selling in the coming year 2011.  “Refer your friends and get 20% discount on your next purchase can increase your sales” or ” Share it to your friends and get a free gift coupon today!” can get you high ending sales volume. Here are  Top 3 Tips To Convert Your New Customers To Repeat Customers  that might help you.

Mobile And Email Marketing:

According to a recent research it has  been estimated that more than 420 million smart phones will be selling in this year 2011. Hence make use of this effectively, by sending message alerts with special offers and discounts to your customers may change their buying mood to your store. Email marketing is another best way to promote your business with great offers. More than one-third of online shoppers say they would not make a purchase without a free shipping offer. Hence make this is a subject to increase your selling. Here are few Tips To Encourage Your Customers Share Your Amazon/Ebay Business .

Though many store owners may be enticing their customer with more offers, stand out of the crowd by making your offers clear, focused and easy to understand.  Your offers should be clean, brief, to the point and should turn any customer to click on buy buttons. If you do have time to write such exclusive offers, you can hire experts to quickly generate more leads. Here are few “ Holiday Selling Tips That No Seller Will Share With You” which you can use to increase your sales. No matter if it is too late to choose your Virtual Assistant, delegating to experts always help. Happy Selling!

One More Solid Reason To Add More Listings This November – By OBVA eBay Experts

Like every year, eBay holiday offers are being rolled out. The offers are innovative, and focused at helping sellers encash more sales during the holidays. It is upto you how much you can make best use of the offers.

Recently, there was an announcement by Todd Lutwak, Vice President of Seller Experience recently  “One day only! On November 29, list up to 1,000 items Auction-style for free. Add Buy It Now for free, too!  This one-day only promotion applies to all sellers. If you have missed out this offer, you missed out something, but remember to stay tuned for more upcoming offers. If you really want to make the most of this holiday season , you have to stay tuned to the latest news and updates so that you can make the most out of this holiday offers. Here are some useful  Holiday Selling Tips That No Seller Will Share With You!

 

To start with, you should be prepared for more offers to come. How to get started?

Track your listing time:

You can create your listings at your convenience and control the time they start and end. eBay gives sellers the option of listing items for 1,3 or other days as per your choice. Any auction listing will end the same time the day it is supposed to end. When you list your items,  remember to apply the best listing ending time as per visitors traffic.

Optimize your listing endings smartly:

Your BIN listings and auction listings must end during a time when there are more visitors at eBay.  There is a general assumption that auctions that end on Sunday will have more bids. You can read “How to make your ebay auctions more effective” to know more on auction timings. Also, if your auction listings live for longer, you will get more bids. So, more chances of getting a good selling price for your product.

Your listing must be properly optimized for look, feel and SEO:

Start thinking as a potential customer and try and figure out how they are going to be searching for your item or your store. If you want your store or listing to show up when the customers search for it, make it keyword optimized. The right keyword can earn you first page in search and if you want it to be done in a professional way give the task to internet research experts who can give you good results. eBay tool  “eBay Research Labs BayEstimator” can be used here or the perfectly optimized eBay title. Here is a post  by eBay virtual assistants which gives “The Steps To Get High Search Engine Ranking Optimization For Your eBay Listings“.

Distribute the listing well using Social Media:

Recently Facebook introduced Tagging of photos for Fanpage. This means that you can create a listing, add your product image on your fan page and then tag those pictures with your fan page. You can use social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin to promote your listings. Here are some of posts that can guide you. ‘Use of Facebook for eBay/Amazon’, ‘Use of LinkedIn for eBay/Amazon, and ‘Use of Twitter for eBay/Amazon.’ And also there are some of the applications that can be used to promote your eBay business such as 6 Facebook Applications Which Can Be Used for eBay/Amazon Business and 5 Twitter Applications That Can Be Used for eBay/Amazon Business. If you choose to automate your listings, then “Turbo Lister – Top eBay Marketing Tool “is a good tool to start with. However, it is always wise to have a person look through the listings done automatically, to review any errors, etc.

To create an effective listing you may need professionals help so delegate it to eBay virtual assistants who are experts in creating it for you. You should  have a team in place for all regular activities so that customers are taken care of in the busy season. A few negative feedbacks may spoil your chances of faring well during holiday season. So, why take a chance? Delegate your routine store tasks to professionals who can work with minimum supervision, so that you can focus on more sales this year end. Happy Holiday Selling to you!

 

Part II – Holiday Selling Tips That No Seller Will Share With You! Sell All The More Stuff On Amazon This Holiday Season

In my previous post Holiday Selling Tips That No Seller Will Share With You, I discussed on how we can attract more customers to the store during holiday season.  In this post we will discuss on  how to keep your customers happy this busy season with great customer service, how to handle post order problems and also how to keep your seller account secure.

Keep your customers smiling by great customer service

You have a attractive offer for your product listing that makes a potential buyer click on your listing. Good. But then, the buyer  checks your feedback and immediately leaves your store. All your hard work is gone for a toss now. As you know, customer feedback is very important for any business, and all the more important for online stores like Amazon where it is transparent for anyone to see. While we can work on getting the feedbacks removed , it is best to follow the rules to avoid feedback at the first place. Therefore, it is critical for sellers to pay close attention to their ratings everyday.  .  .

Amazon does automatically send buyers a feedback request after 30 days . Still, you can use creative ways to attract more positive feedback. For example, you can add a note with shipped products thanking customers for their purchases and requesting a feedback. This simple trick can boost seller feedback ratings. You can avoid 7 customer mistakes that can get you a negative feedback. Speedy shipping during busy season is very important for buyers as they purchase for gifts and they want the gifts to show up on time. Offering expedited shipping on your orders shows you care about customer satisfaction. Also, late shipping will impact your performance metrics in Amazon. Always try to ship the item as soon as you receive the payment so that you do your best to ensure the product reaches quick. When we print labels for our clients during our day, which is USA night, the products are shipped within 12-24 hours, as we make use of time difference. Most of our feedback says, ‘Fast Shipping’, ‘reached earlier than expected, and so on.’

Take care of your customers all through – post order  customer service

There is a higher probability of lost rate during holiday season due to large amount of volume the shipping companies get. In order to avoid any negative or neutral feedback after shipping the item make sure that you follow certain rules so that you keep your customers happy and make them your long term buyer.

Customer Serivce tips for Holiday selling on Amazon

a) Cancellations-

If a buyer has made a mistake with an order and wants to fix it by cancelling then you can cancel the order at your end and refund to the customer and make sure that the order is not shipped again which will cause unnecessary feedback. If the order is already shipped then ask the customer to send back the item and you can inform the customer that you will refund once you receive the item. This will make the buyer think that you are reasonable and are trying to help him and this will make him a happy customer.

b) Product not received-

As I mentioned earlier the lost rate during holiday season is high. And if a customer sends you an email that he has not received it give them full detail of shipment and also try to track the item at your end. If the item is not received by the buyer in the stipulated time then send a replacement or refund depending upon the customer’s choice.

There are cases when the tracking shows delivered but the customer did not receive the item. In those cases try to make communicate to the buyer in a polite way look for the item  and if still not received you can send a replacement to keep him/her as a repeat customer. In case of returning the item make sure to write your own return policy. Read these “5 tips on how to write return policy” to make sure that you write effective and transparent policy. The point is don’t keep the buyer in dark .

c) Item reached damaged –

It helps to have a clearly defined return policy which states under which cases, you will offer full refund, or part refund and which cases won’t be covered for refund. When your customer gets back to you for a return request, try to be reasonable. While answering customer emails, we try to put ourselves in customers’ shoes so that we can offer a best possible solution.

Keeping your seller account secure

During this holiday season there is will be higher volume which can make any account disrupt. Many internet software spammy mails and phishes can disrupt your computer or seller account. You need to avoid these in order to keep your account secure. Start updating your software which you use for security on a regular basis. Since internet hackers can get your password and other security questions keep your malware scanning programs on your computer up to date.

You can also restrict your internet usage to only those sites you know and trust so that any unknown person or kids cannot use your computer. Update whatever software or operating system you are using and also download their security patches.  Be careful in opening email which do not end with “@amazon.com”. And also make sure go directly to the Amazon.com website to make any changes to your seller account. You do not want to be stuck with a fraud and loose money when your goal is to make more money on Amazon.

I hope my previous post and this one would have given you some ideas on how to sell stuff on Amazon in coming holiday season. If you do not have time to manage these tasks, delegate to dedicated professionals who would keep your customers happy and satisfied. I would really appreciate if you comment and grab our RSS feed. You can also like our Facebook fan page and follow us on Twitter.

Holiday Selling Tips That No Seller Will Share With You! Sell All The More Stuff On Amazon This Holiday Season

As you know, all malls are overcrowded during these months for Thanksgiving and then Christmas shopping. The big online mall, Amazon is no exception to this. Do you want to learn tips on how to sell all the more this holiday season? If yes, read on while we discuss what works! You can trust our tips because Amazon Virtual Assistants at OBVA have been working on client Amazon stores for years and we love to share what we learn while doing what we love to do, managing online stores.

Holiday Selling Tips That No Seller Will Share With You!

Attract Customers By Offering Great Deals

Why should customers choose you over your competition? This is the question that should pop up in your head every time you plan to write a new listing this holiday season.. Offering your customers  freebies (like a free sample or a free gift coupon, etc.) is a great way to make them open your listing page and then press the BUY Button. Also, if you can publish your best offers on Social Media sites, you can make the offer spread through the network. If you are not using Social Media for promoting your listings, then you may read “ List Of 7 Killer Posts – ‘eBay And Amazon Social Media Marketing“. Also, I am adding a whole list of posts on Social Media Marketing for eBay  at the bottom of this post. Do not forget to read through them before you market your next listings.

Before you market, make sure that your offer is very attractive for prospective buyers. Apart from Social Media, you can also get the word out through e-mails, blog posts, and tweets. If you have a Fanpage for your store, you can post your offer listings on the wall.  You can post updates on your fan page that create anticipation for an upcoming offer. If you follow Facebook announcements recently for free advertisement for small businesses in 2012. Here is a post from Under30CEO  “ Will Free Facebook Ads Help Your Business?” which analyzes the free ads of Facebook. You will notice how effectively they have created anticipation already.

You can also make use of One Day, One Deal sites like Woot which  has been acquired by Amazon. This sites offer a new item offer every single day. So make use of sites like these to attract more customers

Read the recent announcements(if any) from Amazon

Okay. You have a great product to sell. You are ready with the price and everything and then suddenly you get a bad surprise. Amazon doesn’t allow you sell that product. After all the hard work and preparation, this news won’t be pleasant for you, I guarantee and then you would so much wish you read the recent announcements before putting in so much of efforts and hardwork. For example, if you are a toy seller, it will be wise to read through “Holiday Selling Guidelines in Toys & Games” before anything else. There are some categories requiring approval. So it is wise to do a good quality Internet Amazon Market Research before diving into the market.

Focus on writing an attractive yet genuine ad

The most important step in writing an ad is to get reader’s attention with a strong opening which should make your customers read the entire ad and get to know about the offers which you are going to give them.  You have to create desire for your product by stating a problem and showing your product to be the solution. You can work on the images and write your offer in an attractive way to encourage visitors click on your listings. For example, FREE SHIPPING,BUY 1 GET 1, and so on. Nowadays, listings consist of demo videos where the product features are nicely showcased. A simple video too can make your listing more useful for the buyers. You can create a few images and listings for the same product and experiment. Stick with the ones that do the best. Daily deals and lightning deals are game-changers during this period because they create a sense of urgency and everyone is particularly price sensitive during the holidays. So make sure you offer a great price for the items and attract as many customers to your webstore as possible. Give them value for money and they will leave you a positive feedback for sure.

In this post, we discussed on listing part, in my upcoming posts, I will share with you more on next post will discuss on how to keep  your seller account secure, how to do great customer service during holidays, and how to handle post order problems. Grab our RSS feed for more information on Holiday Sales. Follow us on Twitter and Like us on our Fanpage to get more updates regarding Amazon business.

As per per promise, here is a list of Social Media Marketing related training posts:-

Post 1 – How eBay and Amazon Businesses can use Facebook for promoting their online stores.

Post 2 – How Linkedin can be effectively used for eBay and Amazon Businesses

Post 3 – How eBay and Amazon Businesses can use Twitter for promoting eBay and Amazon Businesses

Post 4 – 6 Facebook applications that can be used for eBay and Amazon Businesses

Post 5 – Avoid these 7 Customer mistakes that can result in negative feedback

Post 6 – Top 5 Effective Twitter applications that can be used for eBay and Amazon Businesses

Post 7 – 5 Linkedin Applications that can be used for eBay and Amazon Businesses

Do not forget to share your comments.

 

 

 

Part 2: Little Known Smart Ways To Revise Negative/Neutral Feedback – eBay Feedback Revision Tip Series By EBay Virtual Assistants

If you notice common selling tactics of  top eBay sellers or power sellers, you will  notice that they have a flawless feedback score.  How do they manage to get 100% feedback or 99% feedback? Their customers never face issues? Packages don’t get delayed? They never come across customer emails who are unhappy with their product/service?  Well, as you know, it is impossible to answer all questions as YES.

The truth is  even the best sellers have to face unhappy customers once in a while, like other newbies. But what they do differently is, they work on the feedback left by their dissatisfied customers immediately and work to offer them a feasible solution. So, if you want to become a successful seller on eBay with a 100% feedback, you will have to simply follow the eBay feedback revision tips shared by eBay expert Virtual Assistants at OBVA Inc. We have experience in helping many eBay client stores maintain a successful track record all the way to 100% feedback ratings and high sales month after month. In our last post, we wrote about the most common reasons “Why Customers Leave Negative Feedback Or Neutral Feedback on eBay.” Now we are going to write how to get them removed to get back to your 100% feedback score.

 

eBay Feedback Revision Tip 1 – Work On A Solution Immediately – Preferably Within 24 hours

Whenever your customer leaves negative or neutral feedback, respond to them immediately saying that you are working on their feedback to solve their issue. This would make them feel confident about your store that you are there to take care of their issues. Try to offer them immediate solution. Let us take an example of item not received in time. In this situation request your customer to wait for stipulated time frame to receive the item.  After the time frame is over, do email them asking if they have received their item. They will surely respond you to let you know the fact. If they didn’t receive it, confirm their mailing address once again which may be reason for lost and promptly send the replacement.

Now if you request them to remove the feedback, they will surely revise the feedback. Work out on a solution that is feasible for both the parties. Customers are nice to you if you are nice to them. After all, they are very much like you and me, humans!

 eBay Feedback Revision Tip 2 -Send Regular Reminders

In this busy world, your customers are busy with their day to day life, just like you and me. Therefore, they may not have the time to bother about the ebay feedback revision. So, it is important that you send regular reminders.

Send friendly reminder emails to your customers for the feedback to be revised. Do not harass them by sending too many emails. Good customer service will half way solve the problem of unwanted feedbacks. So make sure you avoid 7 customer service mistakes that can result in a negative feedback. You can also follow the 4 Rules That OBVA eBay Virtual Assistants Follow To Maintain Positive Feedback.

eBay Revision Tip 3 – Deliver What You Promised

Once your customer has revised the feedback, do deliver what you promised them. If they left a feedback commenting that they did not receive the product and then you promised a replacement, send that replacement immediately. However, in cases where feedback was revised by a simple humble request, do not forget to sincerely thank the customer for being nice to you. In simple words, acknowledge their help!

We all know the saying “Prevention is better than Cure”. Hence it is wise to avoid unwanted feedback that may arise due to poor customer service, over exaggerating the item quality when it is not actually met, delay in product delivery, unclear return policy, unclear item description etc.. Make sure you do your best to be transparent while writing your listings, title, description and also have clearly arranged return policy, refund/replacement policy, shipping policy to ensure that customers have access to information that matters. If you do not have time to do all that is required, then hire eBay virtual assistants who can work with dedication for your eBay store and help you make it a success!

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If you need assistance to manage your eBay/Amazon store, please contact us.

 

Part 1: Who Else Wants To Know The Reasons Why Customers Leave Negative Feedback On eBay – eBay Feedback Revision Series By eBay Virtual Assistants

We are approaching holiday season, and now it is time for lot of eBay business. Do you want to be prepared with 100% feedback score for better sales? If yes, please read on while we discuss the most common reasons why customers leave a feedback on you. Are you thinking how we know the reasons? Well, because we are a team of eBay virtual assistants working on client stores for years now. We work regularly on feedback management and we therefore know, what can lead your store to a unwanted feedback. Once you know the reasons, you can work on how to avoid these at the first place. If you have already got lot of negative feedbacks, our next post will discuss ways how you can get the feedback removed.

Now let us see the Top 4 reasons that may lead to negative/neutral feedback for your eBay store. If you check any eBay store, mostly negative feedback would be left due to unclear return policy procedures, shipping issues, unclear item descriptions, and poor communication with customers. Here are the reasons in details -

Reason #1: Unclear Return Policy

Customers prefer to buy from an online store that accept return if the product is not satisfying. Therefore, you must have a return policy in place. If you do not have a return policy in place, here is our article on “5 tips on how to write return policy.” If you need help, contact us.

Reason #2: Issues in Shipping

When there is a delay in shipping, it would be good if your customers are pre informed about the reasons and issues in delays. This would certainly build a healthy business relationship with your customers. You can also send emails to customers with the shipping information as soon as the item is shipped with a clear expected delivery date.

Also do not forget to mention where you ship from. When customers do not get necessary information, they may get irritated or upset when items dont arrive by their expected date. So, let them know what will be the expected date approximately.

Make sure that you have a clearly defined “DO NOT SHIP COUNTRY LIST” in case you do not ship to certain countries for shipping difficulties. If you do not have clear information on this, you might get orders from these countries and then end up getting a feedback for unexpected order cancellation. Shipping information NEEDS to be clearly defined as maximum feedback are due to ‘Still not received”, “received very late”, etc. If you are busy with other things and do not have to ship the same day, hire experts who can print the labels for you on time and then you can just put the products in packages and ship out.

Shipping on time is very important.

Reason #3: Unclear Item Description

We can say from our experience, 25% of feedback result due to product not clearly or honestly described in Item Description. Here is a useful post by us on “ How eBay Topsellers write listing descriptions that sell” So make sure you describe everything about the item clearly, shortly and honestly. If something is not mentioned due to reasons like color or size or warranty and if customers come back due to that particular issue admit the mistake and offer her an immediate solution for her problem. Simple efforts can make a big difference. By following “3 Tips To Convert Your New Customers To Repeat Customers” you can ensure that your customers stick to your store for long.

Reason #4: Poor Communication With Your Customers

Friendly and polite emails can make your customers feel better immediately. Whenever you respond, write pleasing and polite emails to comfort your customers. Respond to your customers promptly. Maintain a TAT or time frame to respond every query. Also, avoid 7 customer service mistakes that can result in a negative feedback. This way, your buyers won’t get disappointed as their queries and issues are promptly solved. Remember there is no big advertisement than your customer’s satisfaction. So do your best to solve customer’s queries.

Our next post will be on “Little Known Smart Ways To Remove Negative/Neutral Feedback”. Make sure you grab our RSS feed for updates. We would love to be connected with you on Facebook and Twitter and share more news and updates with you regularly. If you are too busy managing your store, it is wise to delegate to eBay Virtual Assistants for better business.If you need assistance in managing your store, please contact us. We never work for your competitors.