: Should I set up an Ebay account besides my website I'm trying to increase the conversion rate for my website. Should I open an Ebay account and try to redirect customers from Ebay to my website?

@Kimberly868

My experience with a client who had a webstore and ebay selling none unique items (car parts)

Ebay was a race to the bottom, they were constantly being undercut by competitors products which were so cheap they simply had to be inferior - either that or they were operating with a profit margin close to zero.

When it came to feedback customers typically leave feedback between 48 and 72 hours, so you tend to find you are rated on how quickly the item turned up and in what condition it was in, whilst these are obviously important it doesn't always paint the full picture, in my case the client prides themselves with ongoing support - you buy a part from them and it breaks in 6-18 months, they will do their best to help you, this is rarely reflected in ebay feedback.

I guess I'm saying that customers on ebay can be different from customers on a website.

So to directly answer your question, setting up an ebay account did not directly result in increased website sales.

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@RJPawlick198

If you mean, sell items both on eBay AND your website, this is a great way to get the word out about your site. I did something similar bad in the day where I would include, in the eBay order, a coupon for like 5-10% off of a purchase on my website. There are a number of things you can include in an order to further get the word out about your site - magnets with your logo, etc. You can also ship with a box that has your logo printed on it.

While you cannot redirect people from an eBay listing by saying something like "This item isn't for sale on eBay, you can buy it on my online store," you CAN sell items on eBay in order to increase awareness about your company. It's also a great way for people to earn trust in your company if they stumble across your site without having knowledge of your eBay account. For example, you could have a link on your site to your eBay profile showing off your feedback % and number of sales. However, because of eBay's expensive fees (while I ultimately quit selling on eBay) I stopped selling there.

There are also a number of other ways to market your site including SEO. You don't have to get a massive amount of backlinks in order to do this, but there are a few things you could improve on your site in order to better your chances of a high ranking in the search engines. For example, passing a W3C validation means that search engine may crawl and rank your content more easily. Here is your current validation.

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@Kevin317

If that "redirect customers from Ebay" bit means what I think it does, they specifically do not allow contacting people through their system or using information obtained from within Ebay to offer outside sales. It will get you shut down.

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@Welton855

If you want more customers, yes you should!
But it's better to use it to get customers to your site only because Ebay is quite expensive.

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