eBay: What to Do Before Listing

Learning Objective

After reading this guide you should have a better understanding of:

• What you will need to do before listing items on eBay

• Understand how to complete these tasks before you start listing in eBay

Contents

Overview

The eBay feature allows you to list products on your eBay account directly from your Visualsoft admin.  Any orders placed on eBay for products which are mapped to VS products are automatically imported into your admin system so that all orders can be conveniently managed in one location.  Any orders you have for any products that are not mapped to the Website, will not import into the orders section.

eBay and Visualsoft synchronise with each other regularly updating product information including stock and pricing. If a product runs out of stock, the listing will be removed from eBay and can be set to automatically re-list once you have updated the stock values on the Website.

The feature also supports the functionality of setting different prices and descriptions to the Website whilst our advanced data mapping can be used to set all listing templates for all products and departments so when you come to send something to eBay, there is very little (if anything) left to do.

What is in your admin?

There will be two areas of your admin with eBay menus. 

The first area is where you would map/align your eBay couriers and listing defaults for efficiency and is found by going to Channels on the left-hand side, followed by eBay.

This has 3 menu tabs:

• Manage eBay Stores

• Bulk eBay Product Manage 

• eBay Product Mapping

The second area is where you would actually send the product to eBay and can be found when you are editing a product by accessing the following…  Catalogue Menu > Manage Products > Browse Products.  You would then choose which product to access by clicking on the edit button, and then clicking on the eBay tab on the left-hand side.

What do I need to do within eBay?

Shop/Store Categories

These are not pulled through from your Visualsoft Website departments/categories. eBay store categories (displayed on your eBay Storefront) are created and managed on eBay and are pulled through via Visualsoft so that you can assign products to each category when listing. For details on how to do this click here

Promotional Shipping Profiles

If you want to apply a flat promotional rule (E.g. To offer shipping discounts for buying multiple items), you need to set this up within eBay and then the Visualsoft system can use this when listing and revising products.

Excluded Shipping Locations

If you wish to exclude a country or region from where you ship to, you need to set this up in eBay and then the Visualsoft system can apply these exclusions when listing products.

Feedback & Messages

This is all managed on eBay directly and the Visualsoft system does not notify of new feedback or new customer contact requests. We advise you to check your eBay account regularly to keep up to date with this and ensure if any customer opens a query through the resolution centre, you resolve it or this can impact your seller rating and product visibility.

Returns and Refunds

If refunding an eBay order, the order needs to be refunded within eBay itself. Visualsoft will then pick up on this and amend the order within your ‘orders’ section appropriately. Please do not refund using Visualsoft as the order update will not mark the order appropriately on eBay and they will assume it was your error and it will affect your stats and seller rating and ultimately visibility. Please make sure the customer has done a Returns Request prior to refunding the customer or eBay may view the refund as a cancellation. 

Buyer Requirements

If you want buyers to prove certain criteria before they purchase anything (such as a minimum of 5 feedback) then these requirements need to be created in eBay and then selected in the Visualsoft platform to be activated.

What do I need to do in the VS Admin?

It is very important to set up your eBay listing preferences before you begin sending products from your admin to eBay as this will save you lots of time, especially if you are planning on using the bulk eBay feature.

Task 1 - Set up your ‘eBay defaults’ which will automatically set your criteria against every product in every category, which pre-populates the eBay form. Find out more about this here. 

Task 2 - Align your Website couriers to ‘eBay couriers’ (below)

Task 3 - Review your eBay settings within Manage eBay Stores. The key things to look out for are: 

1. Check that the 'Out of Stock Control' setting is turned on. This will ensure that your listings will not end when they go out of stock, in order to maintain their sales history. 

2. Check which price eBay is going to use in the Store Price Sale Field setting

eBay Couriers

This section allows your website couriers to be mapped to the couriers that you have on your eBay listings. When an eBay order is taken, it is sent to your admin, the courier name displayed on the order will then be consistent with your other web orders after mapping. eBay only allow you to display their courier options so the system puts this right in your admin when bringing the order in.

In order to access the courier mapping you will need to click the Channels dropdown, and then the eBay menu followed by Manage eBay Store's

You will now see a screen that has your eBay store name, and on the right-hand side, you will see a manage button that you will need to click.

To begin mapping your couriers, click on ‘Courier Mapping’ on the left-hand menu.

Open

You will now see the above screen.

Before you start... eBay have several couriers that you must choose from when listing on eBay.  You must map/align their couriers to your own website couriers. You can not map an eBay courier option twice.

Example - If you have DPD Next Day as an option on your eBay listings, select this from the dropdown on the left-hand side. Then choose the corresponding VS courier on the right-hand side that you would want us to show on the order within VS.

From the left-hand dropdown menu where it will say Please Select a Courier, you need to choose the eBay courier you wish to map -  you only need to do this for couriers that you have, or will have, on your eBay listings.

On the right-hand dropdown courier menu, you would select which of your website couriers you wish to map that eBay courier to.

Open

The middle dropdown box where it says ‘Please Select’ will display your website's country groups as set in your shipping management section. You can leave this option set to ‘Please Select’, or you can select a country group if your VS courier varies dependant on the country group of the delivery address. This is not mandatory.  This option is used when a particular eBay courier would be applicable to more than one website courier. 

Once all selections have been made, click the ‘Save’ button at the bottom to save changes.

Orders

All orders you receive on eBay will be automatically imported into your VS admin and will appear in the orders menu alongside your normal website orders. We can identify these as orders the eBay logo next to the order.

The Order Process

When an order is placed on eBay it should reach the site within 10-15 minutes and will appear in your ‘Orders’ section. Any updates after that will be fed in from eBay every 15 minutes including any tracking information you may have added to the order.

If payment for the eBay order has been cleared, the order will be imported to the VS admin as Payment Received.  If the payment has not cleared when the order is imported, the order will be marked as Pending Payment From eBay and when payment is finally cleared on eBay the order will be updated to Payment Received, within 15 minutes.

Editing Orders

Only certain information can be modified for eBay orders as most order information is overwritten when the next order update is received from eBay. See below for what you can edit.

Delivery Address

If you want to edit the delivery address of an order you will need to edit the delivery address on the eBay order within eBay as the VS admin will continue to pull through the data on eBay every fifteen minutes for all orders on the system which are pending action.

Dispatching an order

When you change the status of an order to Order Dispatched in the VS admin system, the order on eBay will also be marked as Dispatched.  The same is true when setting the order status in eBay, as it will send that to the VS admin.

If you use features such as Royal Mail DMO Integration, the system will attempt to send tracking information across to eBay.

Frequently Asked Questions

Further Reading