If you’re a shoe seller you can now start listing Multi-Variation listings on eBay UK using the Sell Your Item form.
If you create a new listing in a relevant category (currently shoes) the option to change to a Multi-Variation listing will appear and you can start the listing flow. The first thing you’ll need to do is decide on the attributes you wish to use – for shoes suggested options are size and colour. Then after adding item specifics as normal you’ll need to create a SKU code (Stock Keeping Unit) for each variation.
The SKU that you choose will appear as a custom label which isn’t normally visible on eBay listings. You can however view them, while listings are live and post sale, in TurboLister, Selling Manager Pro, and some third party management tools.
Once you have created the variations you’ll then need add pictures and enter the available quantity and price for each option. Once you’ve done this you’ll be returned to the normal listing flow to complete the description and launch your first Multi-Variation listing on eBay.
Creating a Multi-Variation listings isn’t much different to creating a new listing, but you’ll want to know exactly what quantities you have of each variation and images of different colour options before you start listing. It also makes sense to have a gallery image showing all colour options to ensure buyers know they have a choice.
Think carefully about your Multi-Variation listing titles. Don’t include colours or sizes as if you run out of stock of one variation you still want search results to be relevant. Use the variations and item specifics to ensure the different attributes are picked up in search results and keep the title generic to the particular product on sale.
If now you don’t need to include colours and sizes in your titles consider using spare characters to call out services such as “Free post” or “Next day delivery”. It’s a good opportunity to differentiate yourselves from your competition.
It will be interesting to see how quickly sellers start migrating listings to Multi-Variant listings. It should in the long term cut down on inventory management and the number of active listings sellers have to monitor, although it’s yet to be seen how easy it is to pick and pack orders and how the post sales information is presented to sellers.
If you launch any Multi-Variation listings and have any more tips please do add them in comments below.
25 Responses
As a big shoe seller, this is a massively important step forward. I saw the preview at CA Catalyst, and was very impressed. I am doing my first listing today to trial it!!
ChannelAdvisor UK will be co-hosting a webinar with eBay on this topic on Thursday, June 25th, at 3pm – where we will be discussing best practices and strategies for new multi-variant listings. There will be ample time to ask questions at the end of the session – to register please visit: https://www.channeladvisor.co.uk/webinars/701000000009Alo.html
Chris, it is just adult shoes that have variations, not kids yet??
Up to now, ebay do not have half sizes for kids footwear in their categories which is a real pain in the bum as at least 50% of our kids footwear is half sizes, I hope they sort this problem out before variations comes in.
do they have a dropdown box for size variations or can you input your own size?
Kate
Hey Kate, it doesn’t appear to be in kids shoes yet, I don’t know the full roll out schedule so try your account manager for that. Half sizes you can add in by selecting “other” in item specifics, difficulty is do people search for size “6 1/2”, “6.5” or “6½ “.
Again for multi-variation listings you can either use the set sizes and you can even add in your own classes and attributes, however like specifics what buyers search for may be something different 🙁
Am eagerly anticipating when this will be rolled out across all CS&A listings.
I don’t have the luxury of an account manager so would be grateful if some darling person could post here any proposed dates for further categories please. 😀
I’ve just looked at one of our Shoe lines on Turbo Lister (having just updated it), and i can’t see any way of doing a multi-variation listing…
anyone got any ideas? I’m not bothered at the moment, as we really don’t sell any shoes, but it may be useful for the future.
eqixx TurboLister will be updated at some point in the near future so until then you’ll have to use the Sell Your Item form
haha sod that! 😛 listing using the Sell Your Item form messes with the HTML in our listing description (we use a ‘code generator’ to generate all the HTML for each item description), so we always use Turbo Lister
i think we only have 2 or 3 shoe items listed at the moment, so i’m really not that bothered atm. Thanks anyway! 🙂
If you want to use TurboLister it’s now available for Multi-Variation listings. You’ll need to check for program updates (and if you’ve not updated recently you might need to update twice!).
Much easier than using the SYI form so if you want to use Multi-Variation listings get TurboLister updated now 😀
Bunchy.. latest info is mid July to roll out to Clothing Shoes and Accessory category and some Home and Garden categories.
No timescale for other categories that I’ve seen but obviously there are loads of good ones e.g. hard drive/memory options on computers etc so I’d expect them to let the initial roll out settle down and then start adding more categories
Have just found the Help page for Multi-Variation listings if anyone needs it
Do you know if you have to use this, or if you can still have individual listings.
You can still have individual listings,
10# Thanks Chris 😎
You can still have individual listings but in the long term it will play to the advantage of multi-variant listings. This is because for a particular search term the highest recent sales of a multi-variant listing will come into play.
For instance if you search for “Kickers boots” you might actually be thinking of black boots, but a seller who has sold a large quantity of “brown kickers boots” may be top in search results. If you narrow your search to “Black Kickers boots” it’ll then be reliant on how many black boots the seller has sold, but chances are buyers won’t include the colour in their initial search term.
Not sure if this is old news or not but I had it confirmed from eBay that free post is a ranking option of best match. Although the ratio wasn’t disclosed.
Hey Pete, I can tell you for nothing that if you have a free post item at £9.99 against an identical £4.99 item with £5.00 postage that the £4.99 item will appear first in Best Match.
Quite frankly if it’s a reasonably heavy item (thus with a high postage cost compared to the item cost) Best Match will do you no favours whatsoever in offering free post. The only way it will even out is in categories where eBay now insist on free post for all thus removing the issue.
Free post might have a weighting, but the weighting is NOT high enough to offset including the actual postage cost into the item price and anyone that thinks “free post” really is “free” is living in cloud cuckoo land 🙁
Fair point Chris and you may be right. I think eBay have had some recent issues with the way best match works, as you already know. However, there are occassions where free post is just that.
For example on one of our websites, we are running 20% off everything and free delivery with no minimum order. The prices are genuine, in fact we are already cheaper than most without the 20%.
I won’t post a link here but if you want to take a look, check my email address.
The downside on the multi-varient is that on a non colour specified search term I have 5 items in the top 25 (first page of search) but with multi-varient I would only have one.
Hi, I’m confused these days that some of our items listed in “Home and Garden” are not showed in the way of “feature plus” even we have paid for it (They are showed before). I don’t known if it is the result of change of ebay policy. I just know if we change our listing to Multi-Variation listings our record of best match will change . But we haven’t changed the listing yet . So I want your advice .
#20 Featured plus appears at the top of the page the listing appears on in search results. In the past this would naturally climb to page one as the listing was about to end, but with Best Match many listings will never appear on the first page.
It does open up the question as to how much value there is in paying to be at the top of the page if your listing happens to be buried on page 32 or 57 of search results 😯
#21 I use featured first at £39.99 a pop for 7 days, bloody marvelous. Still not sure what the dif is between first and plus though, both cost £39.99 for my items?
Hey Whirly, Featured Plus gets you to the top of the page your listing naturally falls on. If under best match that happens to be page 1 it’s great – you’ll be there for the duration of your listing. If it happens to be the back end of search results on page 57 then your listing will be at the top of page 57 which is higher visibility than the bottom of page 57 (but only just 😀 )
Featured First will drag your listing from page 57 and bang it up on the top of page 1 of search results. However there are only two positions at the top of page 1 available, so you’ll have to share the slot in rotation with everyone else who’s paid for the feature. Tis a lot better than being at the top of page 57 though.
Chris , thank you . I just check eaby page , our item is showed as feature plused item again . ( last week it was in page 1 but not be showed this way .)
Ebay just sent me an email confirming the start date for rollout across CS&H and SOME H&G as 15th July.