If you are interest in any of these services, or require any other help with your eBid selling, you can get in touch using
the Build an Order form, or via the Contact page. Thank you!
On eBid shops, and those of most other selling sites, you can include your own picture to show the name and promote the image of your shop. This can be a simple
picture of the type of things you sell, a plain text statement of the shop name, or many varieties on those themes. You can use your banner to establish a brand.
If you have more than one shop, you can reinforce the brand across multiple shops, while highlighting the particular nature of each shop with clever use of
names, colours, fonts etc. Here are some sample banners built for previous Widgets customers.
Banners can be produced in a variety of styles to suit your own "look and feel".
Listing Template
A template is a pre-formatted bit of web page into which you put your item description and details. You can use mutliple templates to represent different ranges of
items or to fit your various online shops. They can include standard text, such as your Terms and Conditions, decorative images, fancy headings and boxes - all
sorts of features to make your auction (or buy now) stand-out from the pack. They can reinforce your brand, and make your listings easier to read, thus easier to buy.
You can include links to your other pages on the site (e.g. your eBid About Me page), or other locations permitted by the site rules. You can use a template to
include extra "Ask Seller a Question" buttons, put in your Buddy Link, or many other marketing ploys.
You can buy many standard templates, but why not go that step further and have a custom template made using your own logos, with your standard conditions already
in place?
On the right you can see a custom-built template in use. This was part of a customer order for a set of banners and templates. The banners repeated the basic
logo, then highlighted each store name in a different colour (e.g. red for emergency). This colour was then repeated as the template edging to reinforce
the brand, and shop image.
A signature is a piece of standard text that is included in forum posts or emails. Signatures have to be formatted in the manner dictated by the forum owners,
and have to comply with the forum's rules and limitations. For example, at eBid forum signatures may have only one image, and must be formatted using BB (bulletin
board) code rather than html. The total length of the signature, including all formatting commands, may not be more than 1,000 characters. There are also
various rules about what links may and may not be included.
Signatures used elsewhere will need to comply with different sets of rules. Signatures in your own emails will be more freely formatted, and need only work
without annoying your correspondents!
The following signature shows one of my own sigs, both the resulting display and the code that produced it.
More properly called "All About Me" page, these are eBid's profile pages for sellers. About Me pages are a central place to inform your buyers of any
important information, such as posting schedules, returns policies etc, and a place where you can put a human face on your online existence. About Me pages
are considered especially important on eBid, where users are less likely to be fully aware of the site and its reputation, and may well be looking for
extra reasurrance before entering into a deal. After all, they have to send you the money for their item without ever meeting you, so who can blame them
for wanting a little information up-front!
About Me pages can be formatted to match your brand image, and can provide links (within the site's rules) to other locations where potential buyers can
find out you, your products, and how you like to do business. Have a look at
my own About Me page for some ideas on the sort of thing that can be done.
An Avatar is a small image that represents you when posting, blogging etc. On eBid your avatar appears to the left of your posts, under your user
ID. It can be used to reinforce your brand, perhaps by using a standard logo that appears in your banners, or by giving you a particular "image"
that you wish to portray: fun, sensible, clever, young, gorgeous, silly... whatever! You can also buy a custom avatar as a variation on your
standard image, to support a particular event or promotion.
My own basic avatar is my racing head - a self-portrait with crash-helmet and flame-proof overalls, that can be seen to identify me all over the 'net.
I often use variations on this to highlight particular events, such as the poppy avatar for Remembrance Sunday. I also have a wonderful animated version
that was a gift from a friend, and that I love to bits, so if you see me turn into SuperTed, don't blame me! ;o)
Some samples of my avatar customised for events:
An animated avatar is simply an avatar (see above) that moves, glitters, transforms or is animated in any way. There are strict size constraints for
avatars on eBid, and this means the file size (i.e. how much storage size it requires) not just the visible dimensions, so you probably can't have a
caterpillar changing into a butterfly and landing on a flower... or otherwise take up too much space and time on the eBid servers, but a little
bit of flash and zing is not impossible!
A rolling banner is simply a way of presenting all of your shop banners, plus any other graphical text or images, in one neat image - useful for something
like an eBid signature where only one image is permitted. Each of your banners is contained within the image, and the graphic shows each in turn - rolling
between them. Since size matters (no, really) it is usually not practical to include clever transformations, so your banners will probably simply appear
one after the other. Depending on the variation between your banners, so the number of colours and details included, the final rolling banner might need to be smaller
than the original components in order to keep the storage size within limits.
For example...
If you are interest in any of these services, or require any other help with your eBid selling, you can get in touch using
the Build an Order form, or via the Contact page. Thank you!
