How to Find Deals with the eBay App

eBay is one of the oldest ecommerce platforms existing today, remaining as popular as ever regardless of the influx of the larger companies into the ecommerce scene. It remains so popular that over 1.7 billion listings are on it today. 

However, this comes with its issue. How do you get the best deal on eBay when there is a barrage of sellers seemingly selling the same item at the same range of prices. To get the best deals, you need to understand the ecommerce platform. This article helps you with this, as you get information on the following aspects. 

• About eBay 
• How to Download eBay
• Features of eBay
• The eBay Advanced Search Bar
• How to Find Deals on eBay
• eBay Shortcomings

About eBay

eBay is one of the well-known leaders in the worldwide C2C industry, serving as a secured ecommerce platform that connects small-scale sellers and buyers for the exchange of products and services over the internet. The platform is the first-ever of its kind, created by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and currently headquartered in San Jose, California. 

eBay does not sell its own products. Instead, it serves as an online marketplace for anyone worldwide to list an item and immediately get connected with a buyer. This ecommerce environment offers both advantages and disadvantages to buyers and sellers.

For buyers, you get an environment with different sellers offering the same product at very competitive prices. Both used and new items are listed on the marketplace, so these prices go as low as they can and give you deals you may not see anywhere else.

In addition to quickly getting buyers for their products, sellers enjoy a peculiar advantage. This is the option to auction out an item rather than list it at a fixed price, introducing a lot of possibilities to how high the item may sell.  

Is eBay Secure Enough? 

As an online marketplace, security on eBay is majorly determined by the parties to the transaction, and the ecommerce platform can only do its best to keep the buyer and seller safe. Nonetheless, there are a lot of measures implemented, with buyers enjoying the most out of these. 

Alongside secured payment portals that safeguard details of credit and debit cards, a money-back guarantee option is available to you. This helps you eliminate the fear of sending out money without getting a product that matches its description or not getting the product.

Sellers enjoy safe remittance of payments through the platform, as well as protection from abusive buyer behavior. In addition, eBay takes care of unjustified reviews automatically when a buyer violates its abusive buyer policy or upon appeal when the seller directly reports a buyer.

How to Download eBay

Although you have full access to eBay through your internet browsers, it also has mobile applications that make the shopping experience faster and a lot easier.

The mobile application has enjoyed over 100 million downloads and has an average of 4.6 rating from over 7 million reviews. This shows you how reliable it is when shopping in the marketplace.

Before downloading the app on your mobile device, make sure you have at least 50MB of space on your Android device or 150MB of space on your Apple device. Once you have confirmed this, you simply make your way to the app's Google Play Store or Apple Store and click on the install button. The app automatically gets downloaded to your phone, and you start shopping right away. 

eBay App Requirements

Alongside adequate storage space, the eBay app has a few more requirements before you get to download it.

It is only available for the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac for Apple devices. Looking at these, you ensure that your Apple device is either iOS 14.0 or later, iPadOS 14.0 or later, or macOS 11.0 or later.

The app's Android version only requires you to have Android 8.0 or higher.

Features of eBay

eBay has remained relevant for 27 years since its creation, and this is thanks to its ecosystem of secured payment solutions, unique service proposition, and how it has adapted to changing technologies. The platform proffers several features, and while some are common with other top eCcmmerce platforms out there, a few remain rare and highly valuable.  

The first we'll mention here is the feedback and reviews accompanying product catalogs. With eBay's ecosystem built around trust between the buyer and the seller, reviews, and feedback help guide and rank both parties appropriately. They are an indispensable element of the platform.

Through the eBay Shop feature, sellers can create personal websites within the marketplace to display all the items they have for sale. As for buyers, you have access to a "Bill Me Later" feature that enables you to make purchases through the platform's credit line.

Other common features you get from eBay include carts, wish lists, integrations with social communication channels, barcode scanning and image search options through the mobile application, and order tracking options, among others.

eBay Payment Options

eBay presents buyers with six different channels and methods for purchasing products. These include payment through credits and debit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, PayPal Credit, and eBay gift cards. 

Alongside payment options, buyers enjoy even more through the eBay Bucks solution. This is a feature that gives you cashback on every purchase and reduces your total expenses, even if it is by a little.

Nexr, we tell you that the most important feature eBay has to offer hasn't been mentioned yet. This is the eBay Advanced Search.

The eBay Advanced Search Bar

The eBay search bar is a feature that is quite relevant to the purpose of our review. It doesn't just let you search for words, but the advanced search bar allows you to make results as specific as possible. You simply do a search and choose the type of purchase you want to make based on auctions, direct purchases, sorting options, and filters. 

Your options for sorting include sorting by distance, the price of the purchase, or the time the seller has set the deal to end. You may additionally choose to see results in either ascending or descending order.

Buying categories and sorting options are great for organizing search results, but they don't help you eliminate irrelevant results from your feed. This is where filters come in.

Filters on eBay

Filters prove to be the most influential factor in the Advanced search bar. You have the option of specifying results by requiring the fulfillment of up to 25 characteristics.

These characteristics are also dynamic, meaning they change depending on the type of product you want to buy. For example, if you want to purchase a phone, the filters additionally help you eliminate results based on RAM or storage capacity. However, if you wish to buy a Birkin bag, you may eliminate results based on the model or pattern.

eBay's multitudes of filter options give you a lot of control and serve the tools you need to find the best deals on the platform.

How to Find Deals on eBay

eBay presents you with the best deals in the marketplace immediately after you arrive on its homepage. Although these are personalized based on your search history, and you may additionally check deals with various categories of products, the deals you see may not be on the exact product you are looking for. Therefore, you need to dig deeper.

To find relevant deals on eBay, you make your way to the search bar and input the appropriate keyword for the product or service you want to buy. Once results are shown, filter them out based on two variables: Sales and Free Shipping.

"Sales" is a filter that allows you to find the best deal on your product based on its relative price. Once selected, the filter presents you with all the products with a discount on them.

Under "Shipping Options", free shipping is another filter that helps you eliminate additional costs on purchasing the product. You activate this and get presented with all the products that don't require you to pay extra for delivery. 

Taking Advantage of Direct Seller Contact

If the sales and free shipping filters are activated, you greatly reduce the cost of purchasing the product. However, what if you don't find a reliable seller that fits these filters?

Resorting to the "Contact Seller" option becomes your solution. Located close to the seller's name, the contact seller call to action allows you to have direct discussions with the seller. 

With this, you easily propose your own deal to the seller and find a favorable stable ground for both parties. For instance, you may request a discount when you are purchasing products in bulk.

eBay Shortcomings

Just like any other platform, eBay has a few shortcomings of its own, with both buyers and sellers having their share of these. 

The more common shortcomings are related to the possibility of scams to both buyers and sellers. For instance, sellers face the possibility of a buyer returning a product for no just cause, while buyers face the possibility of sellers misrepresenting products.

Additionally, for buyers, proper customer service is not guaranteed. This is because the seller is responsible for replying to any issues you have with a transaction. Some sellers may be bad at customer service, so looking at reviews helps you avoid a situation like this. 

The time it takes for sellers to close low-profile deals may also be better spent on other business activities, especially when the customer is unsure of the deal.

Costs and Fees

eBay has a scale of fees with different features for sellers to choose from. These fees differ based on the shop themes, item listing options, subtitles, and gallery sizes available to sellers. 

Although these fees may be lower than what other ecommerce platforms charge, they build up over time. As a seller, they can overshadow all the profits you have made on the platform if your sales aren't moving well.

Conclusion

eBay is one of the most reliable ecommerce platforms out there that holds promise for both buyers and sellers. So naturally, you want to take full advantage of it, so find the lowest prices on products with the help of filters and reduce your expenses on shopping by a great margin.