Hacks 1917 Industrial.. Strength Tips and Tools [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 48 Make Good Use of the About Me Page

Set up a static page on eBay for all the stuff
that would otherwise clutter up your auction pages.

Many sellers make the mistake of including
pages and pages of payment and shipping terms, only to supplement it
with a single sentence about the item itself. No wonder bidders never
read descriptions!

I hate clutter, whether it's on one of my own
auctions or someone else's. I like to reserve the
space in my auction descriptions for information about the item being
sold, mostly because bidders have a limited attention span, and I, as
a seller, have a limited amount of time to prepare my auctions.

eBay allows any user to build a static page right on the eBay web
site separate from their auctions with whatever
content he or she wants to make public. Although anyone can put
together an About Me page by going to Site Map About Me,
it's sellers who will benefit most from this
feature.

Since the About Me page is separate from auctions, its content can be modified at any time, even after your auctions have received bids. See [Hack #50] and [Hack #51] for more information.

Although you can maintain your own web page on any off-eBay site,
there are significant advantages to using the About Me feature. For
one, the information on the page will appear more trustworthy to your
bidders because it looks like part of the eBay site, complete with
the eBay logo and menu bar. Second, a link to your About Me page will
appear next to your user ID whenever your ID appears on eBay. And
finally, you'll be able to insert dynamic,
eBay-specific content in your page, as follows.

4.17.1 Just Say No to Templates

When you
use the About Me feature for the first time, eBay presents a
selection of different templates that you can choose from to frame
your page. The next step involves filling in about a dozen fields
with your personalized information (see Figure 4-13), such as a title, welcome message, something
called "another paragraph," and
some of your favorite links. You can also choose to display recent
feedback and a list of your items for sale, right on the page.

Figure 4-13. The About Me setup page is the first thing you see when you build an About Me page, but it doesn't afford the flexibility of the optional HTML editor interface

If you want to have full control over the look of your page, you can
skip the setup page by clicking Preview at the bottom of the page.
Then, on the next page, click "Edit using
HTML." You'll then be shown a
single edit box, prefilled with the HTML code from your current About
Me page. You can proceed to modify or replace this code as you see
fit. See [Hack #40] for assistance in
this area, as well as information on using a WYSIWYG web page editor
to create pages like this.

Once you leave the template interface, you won't be able to go back without "starting over," which effectively deletes your page and returns you to the blank slate provided when you first started. For this reason, you should always keep a copy of your custom About Me page in a text file on your computer. Just highlight all the text in the edit box (Ctrl-A), copy to the clipboard (Ctrl-C), and paste into your favorite text editor (Ctrl-V). Do this every time you modify your page.

Since the page is hosted on the eBay site, you'll
have access to features not otherwise available if you were to host
the page yourself. Using specialized HTML tags, you can insert
eBay-specific content, such as recent feedback and a list of your
running auctions. In all, five tags are available, each with a
selection of options to further customize your page.

Instead of putting your email address in your About Me page, you can
take advantage of eBay's privacy features. Having
your bidders contact you through the Contact an eBay Member form will
reduce the spam and other nuisance emails you might otherwise get.
For example:

<ebayuserid nofeedback nomask>

The nofeedback and nomask
options remove the feedback in parentheses and the icons that would
normally appear after your user ID. If you want more flexibility, you
can include a hard-coded link to the same page, like this:

<a href="http://cgi3.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ReturnUserEmail&requested=user_ID">contact me</a>

Use this tag to include a table with some recent feedback
you've received; specify size=15
to show the last 15 comments. You can further customize the table
with the following additional options:

alternatecolor=red (the color of the
upper line of each comment; see [Hack #41] for a list of supported colors)

color=white (the color of the
lower line of each comment)

border=1 (the width, in pixels, of the table
border)

tablewidth=100% (the width of the table, as a
percentage of the width of the browser window)

This tag places a table with a list of your running auctions right in
your text, similar to the "View
seller's other items" page. You can
customize the table with these options:

sort=n (where
n can be 8 to show
newly listed auctions first, 2 to show the oldest
auctions first, 3 to show the auctions ending
first, or 4 to show the lowest-price items first)

since=n (include a
positive number for n to show completed
items, up to 30 days old)

category=n (restrict
the listing to items in a single category; see [Hack #12] for more information on the
category number to include here)

border, tablewidth, and
cellpadding (see
<eBayFeedback>, above)

These two tags display the date you first registered and the current
date in eBay time, respectively.

You might use <eBayMemberSince> like this:

eBay member since <ebaymembersince format="%B %d, %Y">

and you'd see something like "eBay
member since May 31st, 2003" in your About Me page.
The idea is to imply a certain level of trustworthiness,
corresponding to the length of time you've been
buying and selling on eBay. But since this date never changes,
there's no reason you can't simply
type it directly onto your page.

Since <eBayTime> doesn't
necessarily show either the seller's local time or
the bidder's local time, but rather only the current
time in eBay's time zone (Pacific time, GMT-8:00),
its usefulness on this page is limited.

The codes used in the format string are as
follows. To format the date, include %A for the
day of the week (%a to abbreviate),
%m for the month number, %B for
the month name (%b to abbreviate),
%d for the day of the month, and
%Y for the year (%y for only
two digits). Likewise, to format the time, type %I
for the hour (%H for 24-hour clock),
%M for the minute, %S for the
second, and %p for the appropriate
"AM" or
"PM" text. (Note that the codes are
case-sensitive; %Y is different from
%y.)

4.17.2 Referencing the About Me Page

Once you've built an About Me
page, a little "me" icon will
appear next to your user ID (right after the feedback rating)
wherever your ID appears on the eBay site. Another user can simply
click the icon to view your About Me page. But you can also link
directly to your About Me page in your auctions using this simple
URL:

http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/user_ID/

If you want eBay's little
"me" icon to appear in your link,
use this code:

See <a href="http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/user_ID/" target=_blank><img 
src="/image/library/english/10062_aboutme-small.gif" border=0></a> for 
payment and shipping terms.

If your About Me page is complicated or lengthy, you may want to
divide it up with named anchors. For instance:

<a name="shipping"></a>
My Shipping Terms . . . 
<p>
<a name="payment"></a>
My Payment Terms . . .

You can then jump to any anchor on the page by placing a
# sign at the end of the URL, followed by the
anchor name. For example, you may want to place this code in your
auction description:

Please read my <a href="http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/user_ID/#shipping">
shipping terms</a> and my <a href="http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/user_ID/
#payment">payment terms</a> before you bid.

This would create two links, each to a different part of your About
Me page.