R.O.EYE Develop International eBay Category Tree Resource

Here at R.O.EYE we have been listening to publisher feedback and requests for additional assistance and resources. One of the most popular requests has been a downloadable resource for international eBay category IDs and I’ll explain why…

One of the best ways to optimise your custom banner or API integration is to apply category ID filters. This helps to ensure that only the most relevant results are returned.

Pretty straightforward if you are only receiving traffic from one country, however if you are geo-targeting to multiple countries, you will find that the category IDs are not the same in each country. This makes optimising your custom banner or API integration using category filters more time intensive, especially when you add in the complexities of different languages.

So to help we have developed a downloadable resource that contains all the up-to-date category IDs by country. This automatically updates with any new IDs and we have even included the English translation for anyone targeting the US and European markets! Here is an example of the category IDs for the German programme showing 4 levels of sub-categories with English translations:

Each programme is shown in a separate tab within the excel file so you will be able to find and match pretty precise categories with relative ease.

Finally, make sure that you’re signed up to the relevant eBay Partner Network programmes for the territories you want to promote, otherwise you won’t get paid for the traffic you drive to these sites.

Alex Harvey, Technical Solutions Executive at R.O.EYE

category id · downloadable resource · ebay categories excel · ebay category tree · internation ebay categories

After putting a roof over your head and food on the table, what does your next hard earned pound need to do to keep you and your family safe and well? Maslow put shelter, warmth, sleep and sex as the other primary needs, but with this being a family show we’ll focus on shelter and warmth for this blog!

Clothing is one of the most immediate things we as humans require to keep warm, but what we choose to adorn ourselves with goes way beyond than that of course. Higher up Maslow’s hierarchy goes esteem and aesthetic needs which are where the need for basic clothing becomes a passion for fashion.

But enough of my technical mumbo jumbo…!

The fashion and clothing sector in the UK is apparently worth around £40bn annually and InternetRetailing reported a few months ago that online fashion sales were “exceptionally buoyant” as the economy entered the spring/summer. Comments from ASOS in the same publication further backs up the assertion that shoppers are increasingly willing to shop for clothes online, citing their improved returns policy as critical to this trend.

Regular readers of the R.O.EYE blog will know that we manage the eBay Partner Network programme, but you may be surprised to learn that the clothing, shoes and accessories category has represented the most popular category on eBay.co.uk for the past two years. For an e-commerce site that has over 18m unique users every month you can imagine that this represents a huge number of online fashion sales!

To support eBay.co.uk’s major push into the fashion vertical with their Fashion Outlet, as well as managing a major online fashion retailer, Boohoo, we have been on the serious look-out for fashion affiliates of late. I have to report that in comparison to other retail (e.g. electronics) and travel verticals there are relatively few “super” affiliates in the fashion and clothing sector and it seems baffling to me why this is.

While there are a lot of fashion blogs out there, these tend not to be commercially driven ventures and often run by passionate, yet hobbyist fashionistas. This is all fine of course and we’d love to hear from you if you fit this description! But what I’m talking about are large-scale, shopping comparison, product feed/API driven sites with some serious promotion behind them. There are some very good fashion sites around that I am speaking to of course (wouldn’t be doing my job if I wasn’t!), but relative to the size of the market I think there are way too few.

So in view of the scale of the opportunity here – what’s putting affiliates off?

Un-apologetically pointing to stereotypes now, but it’s easier to see how a ‘typical affiliate’/web developer/tecchie type would be much more comfortable building a site around gadgets and gizmos as opposed to dresses, shoes and handbags. (Cue angry letters from fashion-conscious affiliates with an electronics website!)

Or is it something else? Perhaps affiliates have weighed up getting into the fashion vertical and are put off for other, perhaps commercial reasons? Are search volumes too low and too competitive? Average order values and commission levels too low? Promotional methods and tools insufficient? Just a few top level thoughts but I’d really love to hear from affiliates who are seriously considering fashion as a vertical.

affiliates · boohoo · eBay · fashion · fashion outlet · online clothing · online fashion

R.O.EYE, are proud to announce that we now manage the boohoo affiliate programme, alongside Affiliate Window. The team at R.O.EYE are delighted to be working with such a flourishing brand and are excited to be managing the programme with all the current and prospective affiliates.

Why Promote boohoo?

This is an exciting time to be promoting the boohoo brand as it grows in popularity as the first choice for women’s and girls’ affordable fashion, with their products having the ability to appeal to a broad customer base.

Offering a generous 8% commission on all valid sales, fantastic new offers and an AOV in the region of £40, boohoo is not only a consistent merchant but an exciting brand with an equally supportive affiliate programme.

We’ll be continuing to send out updates on prices, offers, best sellers, creative, along with all other aspects of boohoo. Other special deals are often announced at short notice and we’ll also ensure that this information will be sent out in good timing for you to get your links live.

R.O.EYE are more than happy to discuss this programme in more detail.

Daniel Austin Senior Programme Executive
daniel@ro-eye.co.uk

Sarah Gilchrist Programme Assistant
sarahg@ro-eye.co.uk

boohoo

Yesterday eBay rolled out a range of new features for Custom banner and a couple of enhancements to the reporting. The full details of the changes are listed below.

Custom Banner Enhancements

• Custom Banner will continue to offer Flash integration but will now provide new HTML templates with the following options:
• Show the badges for Top-Rated Seller, Free Shipping, PayPal, Buy It Now
• The image-and-text format you are used to will be available but we will also introduce a text-only version
• Contextual targeting available for eBay DE, eBay AT, and eBay CH programs.
• Ability to filter for Free Shipping and Top-Rated Seller
• Multiple keyword and category search : you can now search across several keywords and eBay categories, or select the “Use Popular Search” option.
• Store custom themes : once you’ve chosen the ideal colour and font for your Custom Banner you’ll be able to save them and reuse in future banners.
• Improved performance for a quicker display of the Flash version of Custom Banner.

Enhancements to the EPN reports:

• A new EPC Download Report: The EPC Download Report allows all publishers who are on Quality Click Pricing to download their daily EPC at a campaign level for each program. This report will only include information for campaigns that had click activity for the date(s) selected.
• Transaction Download Report: The format of the transaction download report will not change, but we will modify how we populate two columns. For eBay programs, the “eBay Quantity Sold”, and “eBay Total Sale Amount” columns will be blank when an adjustment is being reported to a transaction. These columns will not be impacted when the transaction is included in the transaction download report for the first time

If you would like to discuss the opportunities available to promote eBay then please get in touch.

eBay Partner Network