Page Mage Lets Sellers Get Creative with eBay Listings

Page Mage, a third-party developed tool that can help eBay sellers list items in a more interactive and engaging way for buyers, officially launched today in beta. Using the Page Mage service, eBay sellers can create interactive and eye-catching advertisements, rather than using the standard eBay item page format on the eBay site.

Page Mage, which is a Flash-based Web service, also lets sellers embed video, image galleries and animated text to their auction or fixed-price item listings. The platform offers drag-and-drop tools, making it easy for anyone—even people without HTML and coding knowledge—to create an appealing listing.

Page Mage lets you turn eBay listing pages into interactive eBay ads. You can also post the ads to your blog or MySpace profile. (Click for larger image).

Using a service like Page Mage can potentially help you improve your sales by creating visually appealing and interactive eBay listing pages that will better engage interested buyers, more so than the standard eBay listing pages—and the same style item pages your competitors are probably using.

With the Page Mage platform, sellers also have access to an easy and affordable way to leverage their own interactive branding on eBay.  You can even add separate pages for ‘About Me’, Policies, and other information that is linked from your item listing to help distinguish you from other eBay sellers in your category.

How It Works

After creating a Page Mage account, you simply connect you eBay account in you Page Mage account. Going forward, any listing that you create and publish using Page Mage will be published on eBay.

The next step is to use Page Mage to create a design for your eBay auction and item listings. Page Mage lets you start with a blank page or choose one of more than 100 pre-designed templates; in a variety of themes, colors and styles. The templates visually match a number of popular selling categories on eBay.

Each template includes editable areas where you can add media, such as images, video and scrolling text, to make the ad more engaging and interactive for buyers. You simply upload or reference the assets you want to include in your design using Page Mage’s easy drag-and-drop design interface and tools.

The platform provides step-by-step design links on the left-hand side of the dashboard—you click each section; pictures, text, clip art gallery, interactive features, YouTube videos, Picture frames, shapes and pages—and then set your own options to customize the overall look and feel of the listing template you have created.

One rather interesting feature of the Page Mage platform is that it lets you create multiple linked pages from your eBay listing. If you have a lot of information to give to buyers, things like a shipping FAQ, return policies, or if you want to include typical “About Me” details but not interfere with your main page sales copy—you can move this information to secondary pages. 

When prospective buyers view your listings, they’ll see page-turn arrows located on the top and bottom of the ad, and also in the center of the page, along the edge. These let customers quickly scroll through your pages at any time using the Flash controls.

When you’re happy with the pages you have designed, you then provide the basic eBay listing details, such as the listing title, price, category, start date, shipping information, payment details, and so on.

After designing your interactive ad, it’s as easy as filling in the eBay item listing details and then publishing your listing to eBay. (Click for larger image).

While you’re working in Page Mage, you can save your creative ad in a draft until you’re ready to publish the listing to eBay. When you have a look and feel that best matches your eBay selling style and business, you can use the customized template for future listings—saving you editing and design time.

Of course, you can use new designs for each item if you choose to do so, and you can also go directly to eBay to list an item if you decide not to use a Page Mage design for a specific listing. Once you connect your eBay account to your Page Mage account, you can view items from your Page Mage dashboard — even items you list via eBay’s own listing platform.

Page Mage, while still in beta, also offers some basic social networking and blog integration. After you have created your ad and published it to eBay, you then have the opportunity to copy-and-paste basic JavaScript code into your own blog or MySpace profile to promote your own eBay listings.

Pricing and Availability

Page Mage is available for $34.95 per month, which includes unlimited listings, photos, rich-media upgrades and clipart galleries. For people who sell items less frequently on eBay, Page Mage is also available on a pay-as-you-go plan. Currently Page Mage offers a free 60-day trial.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.