How To Optimize Store Performance At Sears.com
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Sears has set benchmarks for store performance, and corresponding seller matrix. It is one of largest marketplaces in US and has set guidelines to match the standards.
Sellers are expected to provide an accurate order prep time (SOPT) when listing items and ship on or before the Ship by Date (Expected Ship Date).
Sellers are expected to list inventory that they have a possession of, and are able to ship it immediately within order processing time (SOPT).
Sellers performance is evaluated on number of metrics, and they should maintain the value at or above the target. Some of the metrics are as below:-
| Metric | Definition | Target |
| Seller Initiated Cancellation Rate | % of Orders cancelled with codes designated as Seller Initiated Cancellations divided by the total items orders in a 30 day period. | <2.5% |
| Late Ship Rate | % of orders shipped after Expected Ship Date in a 30 day period | <4% |
CUSTOMER SERVICE:
Sellers are required to provide customer service for all orders placed on Sears.com. Sellers must respond to Member and Sears Support questions, inquiries and requests submitted through phone, message center or email. Responses must be made to all inquiries within 1 business day of being contacted.
Failure to respond within specified Time frames may result in:
- Orders being refunded to satisfy the customer deducting the Seller’s payables
- Seller becoming responsible to arrange, coordinate and complete return shipping.
- Items being banned, blocked, lowered in search results and/or group ranking.
- Account being placed on payment hold with temporary or permanent loss of selling privileges
- Chargebacks initiated by Members will automatically result in the Member Services Organization resolving the Members’ concerns and debiting the Seller’s payables
CUSTOMER SERVICE PHONE NUMBER
Sellers are required to provide a phone support. A verifiable customer service phone number must be provided to sears, with an assigned authority to answer calls during customer service hours. In case if you use the voicemail, it should contain following information.
- Name of the company as in sears
- Turn around time for a call back.
CUSTOMER SERVICE EMAIL ADDRESS
It is the email address where buyers are redirected when they click on “Contact Seller”. It is the mode of communication to handle order cancellation and return authorization. The customer service email must be verified every 90 days, or sellers loose some of the privileges till the mail is verified.
PRICE
- The pricing of product has to be competitive with other sellers on the site. Price will be a crucial parameter to attract buyers on your product page.
- Use the sale pricing field to be as promotional as possible
CATEGORY MAPPING
To get listed on Sears.com the products have to mapped to their relevant category. Items without a category will not be uploaded. Sellers must also ensure the category mapped is right and relevant, for their items to sell well. Items mapped wrong, will never get right audience leading to plummeting of sales, and loss of connection with buyers. For example, a Shirt mapped in Home decor category will be found by buyers who are predominantly housewives looking to decorate or furnish their houses. That will be a mismatch.
If vendor is not sure about the right category for their products then they can search their product on Sears.com.
The vendor can see Sears.com like this
IMAGE: When the product image is not proper that is not according to the products upload on Sears.com.
When you set the image of any products you have to mention all the important features given below:
- You must have perfect image formatting and size recommendation according to the requirement.
- Resolution of main image and swatch image.
- Quality of image is in standard format.
- You can also use additional image.
PRODUCT CONTENT
The product description and other fields are crucial and need to be optimized for performance.
- Product titles must be relevant with keywords infused in it.
- The short description of product must be robust, and least include key highlights. Sellers can also add Dimension information too.
- High quality images with 1900*1900 resolution.
META KEYWORD
Meta keywords come in handy while selling your products. These keywords help buyers to land on your product pages, when their query finds a match.
Meta keywords are designed exclusively for search engines, where they find visibility if search queries matches the keywords.
Example- Suppose a buyer want to search a dress of blue color so he searches for queries like this-
- Blue Dress
- Dress of blue color
- Blue color dress etc.
Your products must contain meta keywords like ‘blue’ and ‘dress’ and the buyer will find your page with relevant product he has been trying to find. If you can add more meta keywords, more variety of buyers will find you, increasing the chances of seller landing a sale.
Thanks for your interest!