If you have opened an eBay store recently, chances are your storefront is pretty bland. You probably wanted to get all set up and running as quickly as possible and start making sales. This is all well and good, but once you have some of your products in place and start to draw customers, you will want your store to have a more professional look and feel.

Think about it. When you go to any store, whether online or a brick and mortar store, you will develop a first impression. Often, this impression is invisible. In other words, you don't think about the color and design of the store, not unless it is something outlandish that catches your attention (which is not always a good business decision, as it can draw customers' eyes away from merchandise). You want your customers to focus on products while at the same time giving them an appropriate atmosphere in which to shop. This atmosphere will depend on your store, products and tastes.

The first thing to think about is color. Color creates certain moods. For instance, red is associated with anger or even sexual innuendo. Pink makes people think about girls and all things frilly. And so on and so forth. In the eBay store Casual Razzle Dazzle, for example, the owner chose muted browns to display a warm atmosphere. The store sells casual clothing as well as fancy jewelry, gifts and home products. Since a wide array of "feeling" is involved in the store ("from the casual to the dazzling"), focusing on a darker tone or a wilder tone would be inappropriate. Hence, the muted browns bring us somewhere in the middle, not distracting from the casual attire nor the fancier jewelry.

Once you have your color in place (you can set colors and templates by going into the "Manage My Store" page and choosing the link to Display Settings), it's time to think about design. If you can't afford to hire a professional designer, you can make some nice designs yourself using a Paint program such as Paint Shop Pro, a Photoshop-type design that is quite user-friendly, and can create beautiful multi-layered designs (such as the one on the Casual Razzle Dazzle home page). Your design doesn't have to be complex, but it should look professional. Search around at other stores, on eBay and off, that deal in similar products and look at their designs to get ideas. Don't copy them directly, but you can get a generalization and work from that. Not only your home page, but your individual product pages as well should have something promoting your brand (you might not yet have a brand in place, but as you grow your products and business, your brand is something you will want to think about). A graphic title is nice, as is some pictures of your products set to text and a short description of your business.