How to Customize and Configure Your eBay Store

You've made yourself eligible and opened an eBay Stores subscription, and you've even listed a few items for sale in your store. But does it feel like a "home" for your small business yet?

If not, it may be time to think about configuring and/or customizing the appearance and organization of your eBay store. Here are some general tips and guidelines to help you to get started.

Customizing Your eBay Store

To access the tools for configuring and customizing your eBay store, visit the Manage My Store "Store Design" Page. Once you're at the Store Design page, it's time to get down to the easy and fun business of customizing your eBay store.

Changing Display Settings

The Display Settings area is where you change the basic way in which your store is presented to visitors. It includes things like the color scheme and the layout as well as more fundamental things like the name of your store and its description. 

Take some time to browse through the choices offered to you and find a theme that matches your tastes, then edit the theme to select colors and fonts to match the style of your business. You can always change again later, but since this is a prominent aspect of your website, it pays to get it right the first time.

In most cases, the name of your store is similar or identical to the name of your business. You can always change your store name and description, but you should be aware that changing your store's name will also change its address on eBay, so if you're using a redirected domain name like your-business.com to point to your eBay store, you'll also have to change the redirect settings once you've changed your store's name.

Your display settings section is also prime territory for adding your own store logo. To ensure the best quality image, make sure the logo image is at the prescribed size before you upload it. Your eBay store's logo will be the first thing most shoppers see and one of the things that they remember most clearly once they've gone. eBay also gives you the option to use a predesigned logo, so if you're pressed for time, you can always select one of these as a temporary measure.

Making Your Store More User-Friendly

You can choose a variety of user-friendly feature for your eBay storefront. Do you want a search box for buyers to search through your items? What about clickable departments or categories that you've used to sort your goods? Don't forget links to any custom pages that you create.

Decide how you want the array of items for sale on any given page to be presented to your customers—in a grid of item images and names (gallery view) or in a list of items (list view), as well as how you want these sorted by default (by price, by date, or other choices).

Changing Store Categories

The categories options give you the ability to organize your items into categories or departments, or even subcategories/departments. Note that your categories and subcategories are not the same "categories" that you see when browsing through eBay itself as a shopper.

Custom Pages

The custom pages tool is used to create special pages for your website that aren't just grids or lists of your inventory. These custom pages can provide dedicated space to talk about your business or creatively highlight and describe a few special items for promotional purposes. It's like having multiple About Me pages available to you, each of them with much more powerful features than a standard About Me page.

Selecting a layout will take you to a tool specifically designed to help you to fill in the details of that layout, including things like what you'd like to do with promotional space (promote items, link to other parts of your store, including other custom content, etc.).

Custom pages are commonly used to create pages that include your business' contact details, history, and other details about your business from manufacturing to sourcing. 

Promotion Boxes and Search Engine Keywords

These additional customization tools help you to create promotional space and item lists in the left-sidebar navigation on your eBay store and to promote your eBay store to search engines with keywords directly related to your business, your selling, and your stock.

Once your store is up and running, don't forget to return to customization now and then to keep things fresh and try out new ideas. After all, the more alive your store seems to your buyers (and to search engines), the most likely you are to get traffic from potential buyers.