How To Rebrand Your eBay Shop for FREE!

By now you’re probably already aware that I recommend signing up for a shop on eBay, unless it’s a very particular situation. I’ve covered this is in a few different Q&A posts as well as in a post dedicated solely to the question of whether or not you need an eBay shop when just starting out?

Ideally, this shop subscription should be paired with a custom design to really make the most out of it and properly brand yourself on eBay. However, the fact of the matter is while the £20 a month subscription fee is manageable, a custom design is just too expensive for most newbie sellers.

BUT that doesn’t mean you have to use that plain old blue & grey default setting!

I’m really shocked at the amount of sellers on eBay who don’t customise their store at all – many of who are experienced sellers who have been using eBay for years.

And the only explanation for this is that they’re scared off by the myth that you need thousands to get a decent shop design, which is just not true! Simply customising your shop with a logo and matching colour scheme will make it look 100 times better than the default design.

Today I’ll show you exactly how to do this!

Before we get started – the method I’m going to show you will only work with the old shop design (with new shops you can only upload a banner, and that’s all). So you need to revert back, which will also give you access to custom pages. I’ve explained how to do this in detail here: Simple Custom Pages for Your eBay Shop

Okay let’s get to it then!

First you need to head to My Account > Manage My Shop > Display Settings – this is where you will be doing all of the customisation covered in this guide:

You very first job is to choose a suitable theme for your shop. eBay offers a number of different options and I’ve tried most of them! My opinion is that Classic Left looks and works the best so if you’d like to keep things simple you can just choose that.

So click on Change to another theme and select Classic Left (or whichever theme you like, if you’ve opted to try another one).

Next up we start with the customisation/branding, and the face of your business – your logo! If you already have a logo then you don’t have to worry about this step; if not then I highly recommend you get one – even a basic logo from Fiverr will still look a lot better than nothing and the cost is negligible.

*Important, before I get emails saying “I followed your guide using a logo I made myself…” – please, DON’T do that! Unless you’re a graphic designer, you should not be creating the logo or any other branding for your business. Pay someone who knows what they’re doing – even a $5 logo will destroy anything you make!

Once you have a logo, you need to make sure it’s the right size for eBay, which is 310 pixels x 90 pixels exactly. Any other size won’t look right at all so if you have an old logo and can’t just ask your designer to send one in this size, you need to re-size it using Photoshop Elements, GIMP, or whatever other picture editing tool you use (it can be online or desktop based, that doesn’t matter).

Wider/longer logos will of course look better when re-sized to 310 x 90, as the proportions fit better than a square logo, which will look too small. You can of course make some small alterations here (like moving the text part of the logo from below the graphical element to the right hand side of it) so that your logo looks better:

Another important point to remember when preparing your logo for use on eBay – make sure it is always the top layer in your program and is transparent (a PNG or vector file). That way you will be able to easily change the background colour, which is needed during the next step when we’re going to be picking colour codes.

Alright, so you should now have a saved file with your 310 x 90 pixels logo as the top layer. Simply keep it to one side for now, as it’s not quite time to upload it to eBay.

The next step is to choose the 3 colours to use to customise your shop’s colour scheme. This is a good example of a time where simple is best – the three colours you choose should complement each other and match your logo and template design (if you have one) for the best look possible.

You just head to Edit Current Theme Settings where you’ll find space to enter the colour codes for your Primary colour, Secondary colour and Accent colour:

Primary colour – this is the background colour for your shop title and left hand navigation bar headings.

Secondary colour – this is the background colour for your header and left hand navigation bar (behind the links and text).

Accent colour – these are just small blocks of colour, usually placed right before the primary colour blocks start (so they should go well together!).

There are two ways to set the colour codes for these three options:

• You simply use eBay’s colour selection palette to choose the colour you want and it will fill in the code for you.

OR

• If you have the hexadecimal code for the colour you want, you can just enter that into the box.

From the two options, I actually recommend using no.2, though it may initially seem more difficult. The reason for this is that I like to make sure the colours I use match my logo/template perfectly.

To ensure that this is the case, you have to get the hexadecimal colour code using your editing program. Simply select colour picker tool and click on the colour in your logo/template that you want – you will be given the colour code, and all you have to do is copy and paste it to eBay for the perfect colour match!

Just repeat this procedure for the primary, secondary and accent colours. Easy!

Please note – depending on the colour scheme you choose, you may have to make some alterations to the text colour so that it’s still readable.

I usually suggest sticking with a light-ish colour scheme so that your text can stay black, as it’s been proven is the easiest for people to read (just look at any book or newspaper for evidence of this!).

But if you do need to make any changes, you can set the font, font Size and font colour for your Shop name, Section title and Shop description – all of this can be done on the same page, just below the Change Colour options:

Okay, once you have set all your colour codes, hit Save and let’s move on to the last step – uploading your logo.

We already have a logo file prepared from step one, so all we need to do at this point is change the background colour to match your Secondary colour code.

Again, this is an incredibly simple process. All you have to do is use the same hexadecimal colour code (copy and paste from eBay or use the colour picker tool again, whichever you prefer) and set your logo background to that colour:

Next save your logo as a JPEG file and upload it to eBay!

YOU’RE DONE! That’s all there is to it and you’ve now got an eBay shop that’s customised with your logo and a matching colour scheme.

Thankfully this is a very visual process, so you should be able to easily spot any mistakes you’ve made (such as using wrong colour codes or choosing a bad combination) when you visit your shop. If anything is wrong then just make any changes needed, following the steps outlined here.

Overall the whole task shouldn’t take you any more than 15-20 mins, from beginning to end, and with practically zero cost, it’s a terrific investment for your eBay business and will really help you stand out from the crowd and most importantly – make more sales!

And who can say no to that!? 🙂

Until next time!

All the best,
Andrew