eBay Store Information Page

The eBay store Admin Page is where you will manage the settings for your store - creating or changing your store categories, updating your store support pages text, putting the store on vacation hold, etc., are all done here.

Accessing the Admin Panel

• Navigate to your eBay store homepage > scroll to the bottom of the page > click "Seller Manage Store" from bottom right corner

Q: Can I change my eBay store name after the design is installed?

A: No, you should not change your eBay store name after a custom design is installed. Many of the links on your store design are directly tied to the eBay store name, and will no longer work if it is changed. You should make sure that your store settings are correct BEFORE we begin installation.

If you change the store name after installation of the design is complete, there will be an additional charge to revise the code and reinstall the storefront into the new store name. If you have a custom listing template, this will also be affected, and will therefore need to be recoded and reinstalled to match the new store name, at an additional charge.

Q: Can I change my eBay user ID after the design is installed?

A: No, you should not change your eBay user ID after a custom design is installed. Many of the links in your store design are directly tied to the eBay user ID, and will no longer work if it is changed. You should make sure that your store settings are correct BEFORE we begin installation.

If you change the user ID name after installation of the design is complete, there will be an additional charge to revise the code and reinstall the storefront into the new user ID. If you have a custom listing template, this will also be affected, and will therefore need to be recoded and reinstalled to match the new user ID, at an additional charge.

Q: Why would my eBay user ID name change affect the custom storefront?

A: Many of the features and functions in eBay are directly tied to your user ID name, including links to your "contact the seller" page, your "bookmark/add to favorites" page, your newsletter signup page, your "me" member page, and your seller profile/feedback page. Any links in your storefront pointing to any of these pages will break if the user ID name is changed.

The header and footer of your website, including store logo, menus, and navigation links, are hard-coded into your design, and are global (that is, they appear on all pages of your eBay store).

Because of the global nature of these site elements, they are not immediately accessible for manual updates; therefore, please contact us if you need to make revisions to these sections of your store design.

If you have a matching custom listing template, please note that the storefront and the listing template share the same header and footer for consistent branding. Any changes made within the storefront header or footer will also apply to your listing template pages.

In almost all cases, your store's left navigation category menu is set up as dynamically auto-populating; this means that you control the categories setup in your eBay store admin page and the storefront nav menu will update to reflect any changes you make.

Exceptions are those menus that need to be hard-coded: horizontal nav menus in the site header and/or footer, special JavaScript menus such as dropdowns, select boxes, and flyouts, or categories lists with custom icons/graphics built in.

Category setup is part of your content management, and not part of your design installation, so this is something you will want to do right away when you open a new eBay store.

Setting Up Store Categories

To add new store categories:
Manage My Store > Store Categories > Add Category button

You can move, rename, or delete any existing store categories on this page, also.

Assigning Category Display Order

You can assign the display order of your categories menu:
Manage My Store > Store Categories > Reorder Categories

If Your Store Categories Are Not Appearing

1. eBay auto-hides empty/unused categories from the left nav, so if you create a new store category you will need to list at least one item in that new category before it appears in your left navigation categories menu.
2. If you do not assign your items to a specific eBay store category, they will appear in the default "Other" category.

If you have a custom navigation menu, such as "Shop by Brands", this will usually be hard-coded into your design as a keyword search menu, with each link searching for all products with that brand/manufacturer name, regardless of which store categories they are assigned to.

Revisions to these custom menus must be made manually within the store's back-end coding; therefore, please contact us if you need to make revisions to these sections of your store design.

Types of custom navigation menus available include: individual dropdown selection boxes, multi-field search/navigation menus, button menus such as "shop by size" buttons or "shop by color" buttons, header dropdown menus, etc. For a complete list of custom navigation add-ons available, see our Advanced Search Menu add-ons page.

The homepage content is a critical part of your custom website design and will be fully installed for you. This section may include: welcome/about us text, promotion banner(s), featured categories graphics, and featured items display.

Modifying Your Store Homepage

Revisions to the homepage text, links, or graphics must be made within the homepage HTML:
Manage My Store > Custom Pages > Home > Edit

Keep in mind that you will need to be comfortable enough with advanced HTML to replace existing text, links, or images within the homepage code. Important: eBay does NOT have a "revert" function, so please MAKE A BACKUP of your existing homepage HTML before you edit it.

We can also make adjustments to your store as needed at a per-item rate, please contact us for details.

Welcome / About Us Text

Your store welcome text is in the homepage HTML code. Replace existing text with your updates. Do not use any HTML tags, or change any HTML in the homepage code. Your welcome text is placed within paragraph tags (<p>your welcome text here</p>); leave these in place, your text alignment requires them.

Promotion Banners

You may have a promotional banner (or multiple promotion banners) in your store design. These graphics are custom designed and hard-coded into your homepage HTML. You can revise these if desired: (1) create a new banner image in the same dimensions as the one you wish to replace, (2) upload that new image to your server, (3) log into your eBay store admin and go to your homepage HTML (see above), (4), update the image link and mapping link for that promotion banner.

Shop by Categories Thumbnails

Many store designs include a "Shop by Categories" feature. These are hard-coded promotion boxes that include your chosen category name, a representative thumbnail image, and a link to view the category content. These promo boxes are a permanent part of your design and will not auto-update if you make revisions to your store categories from within your eBay admin page. If you wish to change any of the categories, you will need to: (1) create a new thumbnail image to represent the new category, (2) upload that new image to your server, (3) log into your eBay store admin and go to your homepage HTML (see above), (4) update the image link, category title, and mapping link for that promotion box.

The functionality and layout of the internal store category pages is set by eBay, and is not generally customizable. However, there are a few display settings that you can control through your Admin panel:

Product View Layout

Display your products in list or grid/table view:
Store Homepage > Scroll to bottom right > Seller manage store > Display Settings - Item Display > Change

There are 2 options available - "list view" and "gallery view". Our research suggests that "gallery view" is optimal for sales; it also allows for a larger thumbnail picture of your product.

Custom Category Design

We can customize the visual appearance of your internal store pages by doing a custom category design to match your store graphics - contact us for pricing and to order.

Other than these display settings, the category page layout is standard to the eBay platform and cannot be modified.

Text support pages - such as "About Us", "Store Policies", etc. - are an important part of your store content. You have complete control over your support page content.

Modifying Support Page Text

• Log in to add/edit the text on any subpage:
  Store Homepage > Scroll to bottom right > Seller manage store > Custom Pages > (Choose Page) > Edit
• Your content goes into the text field.
• Click "Continue". You will be shown a preview before you publish the page. If it looks good, "Save and Publish", if not, click "Back" to revise.

Your text support pages may include text, links, images, and simple HTML. Click here for our HTML tags tutorial page.

Custom Designed Support Pages

We can create all kinds of custom support pages for you - including custom graphics, tables, etc. - at our per-page rate. This is a great way to incorporate features like size charts, about information, brands highlights, special promotions, and more! Custom pages are also great for SEO. Please contact us for details.

Customizing the Format / Display of Your Text Support Pages

Your store's support pages allow you to use standard HTML tags for formatting text, inserting links, images, or even videos.

Click here for our HTML tags tutorial page.

It is very important that buyers can easily find your newly designed store full of your great products!

We include some optimization steps free of charge with your store installation, including liberal use of alt tags with all design images, search-friendly text keywords wherever possible, proper validated formatting of back-end code for a clean web crawl, and strict avoidance of "black hat" techniques that could get your site blacklisted on eBay's "best match" or popular web search engines.

There are some additional steps you may wish to take to improve the ranking of your eBay store, including:

1. Fill in your store's description field with top keywords:
   Store Homepage > Scroll to bottom right > Seller manage store > Display Settings > Basic Info > Store description
2. Add category-specific keywords to your first-level category pages:
   Store Homepage > Scroll to bottom right > Seller manage store > Search Engine Keywords
3. Keep your top categories stocked with at least one item as often as possible. eBay auto-hides any empty store categories, which means those keywords won't be counting toward your store rankings. Remember - you can list each eBay item in up to 2 store categories, so we recommend doing this whenever applicable.

And remember, if you make changes to your store's keyword settings, it takes up to 30-60 days for the search engines to re-index your store, so give it some time before you assess the results of your updates.

Want more info? Check out our full eBay SEO Tutorial Page.

Now that your store is customized and optimized, you'll be ready to start promoting it for even better sales! We recommend the following:

1. Open a Facebook business page and start connecting with existing and potential buyers. Have a custom Facebook page design done to match your store!
2. Start collecting a list of the name and email address of every buyer. Open a mass mailing account with a company such as iContact, Constant Contact, or MailChimp, and have a custom email newsletter design created. Email advertising is one of the most affordable and cost-effective ways to build customer loyalty and repeat sales!
3. Depending on your market and product line, you may want to look into Google pay-per-click ads, paid banner placement, and link exchange with other complementary businesses.

Putting Your eBay Store on Vacation

If you are planning to be closed or out of town for more than a day or two, you may want to put your eBay store on "vacation hold".
My eBay > Manage My Store > Store Holiday Settings > Turn On

From the above page in your eBay admin, you can specify start date and end date of your vacation and include a personalized message that will appear at the top of your listings to let your buyers know what's going on.

Important note about using the eBay "Vacation Hold"

When you turn on eBay's "vacation hold", and you have a custom store homepage design installed, the homepage design will show a "break" - this "break" is caused by eBay's settings and it is intentional - eBay has opted to implement this break in the storefront so it is obvious to buyers that the store is not open. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do on our end to override these settings. The good news is, as soon as you remove the "vacation hold" from your eBay account, the store will automatically go back to its normal display.

If you would like to minimize the appearance of the eBay "vacation hold" break, you can temporarily remove the custom homepage content area:
My eBay > Manage My Store > Custom Pages
At the bottom of the screen there's a dropdown box to select the homepage, choose "all listings".
When you return, you can go back to this page and reset the homepage to be "Home".

Contacting eBay

If you have questions for eBay, you can contact them via their customer support page here: http://ocs.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ContactCS.