Auction Picture Power

Recently an ex-neighbor gave me her new email address. She apologized for the length of it and said her 16 year old son had created it for her. I waited until she left before I chuckled. So much for kids knowing everything about computers!

With the ability to choose any name that wasn’t already taken, he had selected firstname/lastname/randomnumber@bigISP.com.

If you don’t get the joke, it’s simply this: AOL suggestively assigns screen names
such as yourname/randomnumber@aol.com (If I suffered brain damage
and signed up for an AOL account, I would be offered some variation on fluffy1234@aol.com).
There are so many of these name/number combos floating around now that people
like my ex-neighbor’s son simply assume that’s what an email address has to
look like.

So. Do you use templates and pretty borders in your auctions? Do you do it
because you assume that’s what an auction has to look like?

Let’s try an experiment. Odds are this time of year you have a stack of mail
order catalogs sitting around. Open the Coldwater Creek book to any page.
See how the designer works with a two-page layout to create harmony and balance
while showcasing five or six items? Some of the photos bleed off the page.
There is no wasted space. There are no borders. Just stunning photos of
gorgeous items.

In catalog selling, every square inch must pay for itself because the books
are so darn expensive to create, print and mail. Catalogers are obsessive
about evaluating the selling power of their book and are constantly trying to
boost it. You should be trying to increase the power of your auction layout,
too. You have even less space to work with. Don’t waste it on borders.

There is no rule that says you can’t use the same picture twice or more in an
auction. I put my photos inline using HTML. Then I use eBay’s one free
picture hosting to showcase the best picture. And finally, I put all the
pictures in eBay’s new Picture Show, which is FREE. Picture Show creates a
slide show on the left side near the top of the page. Anyone who lands on your
item page will see the picture first.

That’s power. Get some.