For many years, sellers subscribed to an eBay
Store because of the savings on listing fees when
they had a certain number of listings. Since eBay
instituted a plan in which a number of listings
can be made at no additional charge, that consideration
has become moot for the most part.
(However, if you want to see what your eBay fees
would be for a typical month without or with one
of the 3 levels of eBay Stores, plug your numbers
into the
Fee
Illustrator.)
Regardless of any fee savings, much more important
to me are the Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
benefits! Your store name, the store category
names, your store description and store page/store
category keywords as well as custom pages all
will help your SEO!
"Jane's Clothing and Fine Jewelry" with categories
such as "Women's Shirts", "Women's Dresses"
and "Gold Rings" are much better than "Jane's
Store" with categories such as "Clothing", "Rings"
and "Necklaces".
If you use one of eBay's standard store headers,
make sure you include the "store description"!
"Thank you for visiting my store" is NOT what
you should write! List your typical items and
brands - keywords - to be found by search engines.
(A quick thank you is nice, but that section's
for the search engines, not shoppers.)
Store page and store category keywords is something
to take the time to do! In your Manage My Store,
click on the "Search Engine Keywords" section
under "Store Design". That'll take you to a
page at which you can enter keywords to boost
your SEO. One seller I know sells postcards.
She spent the time to fill out state and city
names for her category pages to increase the
possibilities for internet shoppers to find
her eBay offerings.
Custom store pages are great for SEO! I do recommend
having a FAQ as a custom page for your shoppers'
convenience, but it's the informative custom
pages which'll do you much good! Tell about
the history of your items. Tell shoppers how
to use those items. Include size and measuring
charts if appropriate. When someone googles,
for example, "how to plant prickly pear cactus
pads", over time, an eBay store page with that
info will appear higher in the results. (I don't
currently find any good eBay results for that
phrase, by the way...) Such pages will not appear
in google results soon, but over time, with
your cross-linking to that page wherever you
can, your results will improve - and you'll
benefit from the SEO.