As an eBay seller, you know how you're doing on a day-to-day basis by looking at your balance sheet. When profits are up, you know you're doing well right now. When profits are down, you know you're not.
But what about tomorrow? How should you set your goals and measure their achievement in order to be sure that you continue to grow and perform? You're free to find your own way to answer this question, but before you do, take a look at the tools and standards that eBay has put in place to help you to understand how you're growing and performing.
Here are seven eBay metrics goals, visible to you as a seller (and in many cases, visible to your buyers), to help you to measure and understand not only how you're doing today as an eBay seller, but also how you're likely to fare tomorrow as both you and eBay continue to grow.
1. Shoot for an eBay Star
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Even the smallest of sellers can aspire to his or her own seller stars. Sellers stars are a small reward given by eBay to mark the simple seller milestones that come with experience. Your first ten eBay transactions get you your first seller star—a yellow one—and after that stars continue to come with increasing experience. The presence of a seller star and its color give you and your buyers an indication of the fact that you've an increasingly experienced eBay seller and that eBay is happy to have you to continue trade in its marketplace.
2. Reach and Maintain a 100% Feedback Percentage
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Sellers from the smallest to the biggest benefit from this metric, which is both one of the simplest and one of the most coveted and hardest to achieve: a full 100 percent feedback percentage. Because feedback percentages are calculated as a ratio of negative ratings to non-negative ratings, when the magic "100%" appears in your feedback profile, other eBayers know that no one has been dissatisfied after doing business with you in the past year. When combined with high sales volume, a 100% feedback percentage is amongst the strongest indicators of quality and customer service, though it also serves smaller sellers well.
3. Keep All Five Stars Yellow
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Though detailed seller ratings have been unpopular with many sellers since they were introduced by eBay in 2007, they're a reality and a fact of everyday eBay life today, so smart sellers have made peace with them and even see them as an opportunity to separate themselves from the competition. It's not just about persuading buyers that you deliver what you advertise, ship it quickly and inexpensively, and are available for buyers' concerns; it's also about your own position as an eBay seller, since detailed seller ratings play into many of the metrics to shoot for after this one, from your seller performance rating to your potential invitation into the PowerSeller club.
4. Stay at "Standard" or Higher Seller Performance
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Your Seller Performance rating is a critical component of your success on eBay, not least because it has a direct effect on your items' search placement and, if you're seller that does a high volume of business, on the fees that you'll pay to trade on eBay. Everyone, from the smallest sellers to the largest, should maintain a Standard rating at the very least, but larger sellers will soon find it difficult to compete unless they reach higher. Getting there, however, will require exceptional customer service and exceptional detailed seller ratings; just one or two slip-ups can mean a year wandering in the metaphorical eBay wilderness.
5. Keep Your Entire Seller Dashboard Full of Green
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Seller Performance ratings are important, but there's still more to eBay success, including things like eBay policy compliance and keeping your bills paid. All of these together go on to influence the seller goals and metrics that come next, so it's important to keep your Seller Dashboard full of the green rectangles that indicate that you're in good standing with eBay, and likely with your customers as well.
6. Get Invited to the PowerSeller Program
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It's one thing to have good feedback, decent volume, and a solid base of customers. It's another thing entirely to be eligible for fee discounts, more direct access to eBay customer service, discounted shipping rates, and many of the other perks that come with PowerSeller status. The program is by invitation. Volume is the primary qualifier, but it takes more than sheer volume to get invited and stay invited—to be a PowerSeller you'll need to maintain high customer service standards and policy compliance as well. It's a tough row to hoe, but if you get this far, you'll want to stay strong because Top-rated Seller status is just a step away.
7. Become a Top-Rated Seller
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eBay's Top-rated sellers, all PowerSellers that have gone the extra mile beyond even PowerSeller status, enjoy some serious perks. Big discounts on Final Value Fees. Privileged placement not just in search results, but on catalog pages for items as well. Prominent badgets and other marketing on their listings and profile that indicate that buyers can buy from and trust them, and more than the hint of a suggestion from eBay and others, when all is said and done, that most buyers will want to stick to Top-rated Sellers when making most of their eBay purchases. Seeing this status in your Seller Dashboard tells you that you are at the top of eBay's game; losing it can mean (for many) the difference between thriving and struggling as a business. Top-rated status is the culmination of each of the metrics before this one, and it shows in the results that Top-rated sellers get.
