Listing Optimisation

Why listings stall, and what actually moves them.

A listing that does not sell is failing at one of three distinct stages, and the fix for each is different. Treating them as one problem — 'improve the listing' — is why most optimisation work produces nothing measurable.

Not indexed: the listing is not in the race

If the search terms a buyer uses do not appear anywhere the marketplace reads, the listing cannot rank for them at any price. Backend keywords, attributes and category placement decide this, and none of it is visible on the page a customer sees.

Indexed but not clicked: impressions without interest

High impressions and a low click rate is a thumbnail and title problem, almost always. The main image is competing in a grid against nine others at postage-stamp size, and the first forty characters of the title are doing the rest of the work.

Clicked but not converting: the page loses the argument

Traffic arriving and leaving points at the detail page — thin bullets, missing sizing or compatibility information, images that do not answer the obvious question, or a price that no longer makes sense against what else the results page is showing.

Compliance problems masquerading as performance problems

Suppressed listings, failed image standards and missing mandatory attributes look identical to poor demand from the sales chart. They are not a marketing problem and no amount of advertising fixes them.

We diagnose which stage a listing is failing at before changing anything, because the four fixes have almost nothing in common and doing all of them at once tells you nothing about what worked.