eBay PartnerNetwork Blog

Tips for improving the quality of your traffic

August 19th, 2009

Hi all,

A question that we expect to come up a lot following the announcement of Quality Click Pricing is how can I improve the quality of my traffic?  As a publisher you have a huge influence on the quality of the traffic you direct to eBay.  The business model you choose, the user experience on your site, how you drive traffic to your websites, and the landing page to which you direct your visitors, all have an impact.  However at its most basic it comes down to two things: always put the shopper first and test, test and test again.  If you do both of these, you should start to see the quality of your traffic improve and therefore maximise your commissions.

Here are some of our top tips:

Pick the right business model
• The sites which work best are those that get people interested in buying and they tend to be sites which are part of the shopping process or product oriented.  Examples of types of sites that work well are those where you can read reviews, compare prices, discover great deals and niche content sites.
• The sources of traffic to your site should be of high quality, whether you pay for it or it is organic.  If you have good quality traffic coming to your own site, this is likely to result in high quality traffic to eBay, but the reverse is also true.  Therefore, if you buy traffic to your site, ensure that is well targeted and try to optimise your site for SEO.  (Wil Reynolds has written a series of great guest blog posts on SEO, which we recommend you check out.) 

Create a good user experience
• Develop relevant copy and regularly update it to keep your users interested.
• Encourage user-generated content, such as product reviews – this keeps people coming back.
• Integrate eBay listings into your site, as this generally performs better than static creatives or text links by themselves, unless text links are embedded into relevant content.
• Use the data you have about your visitors’ demographics and interests to showcase the most relevant listings.
• Always inform a user they are going to eBay.
• Do not offer your visitors an incentive to click on an eBay link.

Landing page optimization
• Use the geo-targeting functionality to ensure your traffic is directed to the most relevant eBay site.
• Consider which landing page on eBay you direct your traffic to carefully, as the eBay homepage is not always the best option.  For example:
o If you are showing products using one of our tools, such as Custom Banner, try deep linking to the View Item Page.
o If your content is about model cars, try linking to a model car search result page.
o Use Advanced Search options to further target your landing pages.
• Also, look out for more information on landing page optimization coming soon, where the eBay Partner Network will be helping you to further improve your traffic’s conversion.

Continually optimize and test, test, test!
• Try to give each placement or site a different campaign id, so you can monitor the metrics for each.
• The EPC at campaign level will be a great indicator of your traffic’s quality, so use it to focus on campaigns that are performing well and optimize those that are of lower quality.
• When testing new approaches, remember to set up a new campaign and start with a small volume of traffic, so you can check that the quality of the traffic is of a high enough level.  Only when you know a new approach works, should you roll the changes to the rest of your site(s).

If you have any top tips of your own, please let us know by commenting on this post.

The eBay Partner Network team