eBay have yet again played around with item specifics causing more work for sellers, and this time in their flagship category Clothes Shoes and Accessories.
Up until now Mens Suit Item Specific sizes have been in the format “44 Regular” or “42 Long”. eBay have decided to split the chest size and length into two different item specifics. The first is “Chest Size” and the second is “Length”. The net result of this change is that out of 27,000 listings for mens suits on eBay 19,000 won’t ever be found by buyers.
If as a buyer you use the eBay product finder (the left side bar) to search for a suit you’ll miss out on 70% of the available listings that may have been of interest to you. More importantly it means that 70% of the suits sellers have paid to list on eBay are unlikely ever to be found by a buyer until they each individually edited.
Item specifics are great for highlighting item details and I appreciate them as a buyer because they enable me to find what I’m looking for. However eBay’s constant tinkering with them and needlessly changing them is not only a constant source of frustration but serves absolutely no one. It doesn’t benefit sellers, it doesn’t benefit buyers and ultimately it doesn’t benefit eBay who miss out on final value fees.
Another example of needless change this year in item specifics for Clothes Shoes and Accessories was the pattern of the garment. At the beginning of the year there was an option for “Plain”. Later in the year it was changed to “Solid” and now for no particularly apparent reason it’s yet again been changed to “No Pattern”. Buyers aren’t stupid, they’ll easily figure out that “Plain” means that the garment has “No Pattern” but it does mean that they won’t find even more items on eBay almost 21,000 of the 27,000 suits on eBay (77%) no longer have the Pattern Item specific correctly completed.
Changing item specifics is something that should be done rarely and not at all if possible. Sellers become accustomed to typing particular attributes and many won’t even realise that the options have changed. Specifics in listing tools like TurboLister should match those displayed on eBay’s product finders.
It’s hard enough to list when you have to pick a category, shop category and countless Item Specifics, it’s almost impossible when the attributes keep changing, which is why Item Specifics should not be changed at all unless absolutely necessary. eBay you need to give sellers some stability on your platform and at least give us a fair shot at getting our listings correct and able to be found by the buyers who would undoubtedly buy them if they could just find them.
12 Responses
Just found an even more bizarre item specific for Suit Jackets (i.e. a jacket with no trousers).
You have to specify the “Trouser Size” even though they don’t exist!
It has long been said that Mens Clothes are usually bought by the Women in their Lives(I don’t know where that leaves Single Men or like me Divorcees?). But when going to buy clothes either in a Shop or Online there are some basic bits of information that is required. Obviously in a Shop hopefully you have an Assistant who can help if you get something obviously wrong like quoting a Metric Measurement as Inches. But what can you do on ebay if the very system itself has mucked everything up? There are no assistants to help and the search throws up None Found Messages. There is only one thing to do and that is go elsewhere. Is that really what ebay wants? In my case it is probably more serious than for most. I have such a peculiar set of measurements that if I go to a Shop very few stock anything in my sizes. I am 6 foot 4 with a 52 inch chest, 42 inch waist and 33 inch legs. So there are likely to be at best a small number of items that would fit and if the majority have been excluded by ebay as a matter of policy it will mean that yet again I cannot find anything to buy. Please ebay give me and others who are looking for clothes a simple set of understandable rules that mean that we can find what we are looking for.
Great post Chris. Data Quality is a big issue on eBay and regular changes to “recommended” values for item specifics dont help. FYI, some more changes are coming into place on July 20th
https://announcements.ebay.com/page/3/
I don’t buy much on eay now – except my packaging which I buy all the time – but last week I tried to buy some tights… I gave up in the end as I could not find what I wanted. I went on to Amazon and found exactly what I wanted in about 2 mins flat.
Then yesterday when moaning to my sister about trying to find tights on eBay, she went and had a look and found 10 pairs of what I wanted, cheaper than Amazon too, but as I had already received my order I could not be bothered to send them back and order these instead. These tights HAD been there all the time, I just couldn’t find them. Good old best match had been showing me loads of other rubbish instead. I wonder how many sales I alone have lost from people not finding my items?
Also, is their sizing char WRONG??!
https://pages.ebay.co.uk/sell/sizechart.html
on their womens size chart they specify that a us size 0 is equivalent to a UK size 2. As far as I know, there are 4 sizes difference between the US and the UK. A size ZERO is a size FOUR. Not a size 2, its out by two.
item specifics are a nightmare
why not a title and subtitle search with around 200 characters
then buyer can find what ever they want without spending a week trawling thru the left hand side bar
suits them sir! phwarr suits you sir!
Not only are the suits item specifics causing problems, but ladies dresses are also not working properly.
You have to choose an occassion, but then some are not available in the drop down list when being searched. ‘Party’ is a category that I have been using, but this is not visible to buyers to narrow down the options.
I blame ebays casual dress culture.
I blame some geek with a degree in IT or business studies thats sold nowt in their life or have sold a few things on ebay and think their Alan Sugar
Online shopping sites such as eBay may be liable for trademark infringements if they play an “active role” in promoting counterfeit goods, Europe’s top court ruled today.