We all know that ticking all the boxes on your eBay listing template and filling in Item Specifics and Product Identifiers is tedious. It takes time, it’s sometimes a pain to find the relevant information. When you’ve got hundreds (or thousands) of listings to complete it’s going to become tiresome.
Still however we also know that if eBay is to grow and prosper we need to do the donkey work, especially if it’s our own listings we want to attract the sales.
I’ve been looking at light switches and electrical sockets and whilst it’s in some ways understandable sellers aren’t getting every last bit of structured data correct, it’s dismaying to see just how appalling the situation is.
Having checked dozens of listings I’m only going to highlight the first three that I looked at for a basic MK Electric light switch. It’s typical of the endemic failure of sellers to complete the structured data across a whole raft of products and this would be a very long article if I detailed all the listings I looked at. Trust me, the first three were pretty typical of the others though.
I’m going to start with a great example of a listing. The title has the part number, manufacture and is descriptive enough for me to know I’m about to buy 5 MK K4871WHI Light Switches. The product data confirms they are manufactured by MK, that they are the K4871 part and has the EAN 5017490243188. The seller has completed what should be the basic requirements.
The next listing I looked at is a car crash as far as product identifiers go. It may be laziness, it may be too much workload to get hundreds of listings completed with product identifiers included, it may be an old listing hurriedly edited to meet eBay’s new requirements. Either way it has the brand “MK” in the title but specifies the product as “Unbranded” and has the Manufacturer’s Part Number (MPN) specified as “K4871WHI” in the title but specifies the MPN as “Does Not Apply”.
The third listing was even worse, although I didn’t think that could be possible. Unbranded (MK in the title), MPN Does Not Apply (K4871WHI in the title) and the seller specified both the GTIN and EAN as Does Not Apply.
What makes this listing the worst of the three in my opinion is that within the description the seller has added “Manufacturer: MK (ELECTRIC)” and “Manufacturer Part No: K4871WHI”.
It’s worth noting that MK are not some virtually unknown manufacturer – MK invented the modern light switch and a safety socket with a three-pin shutter system and if you have a look at the plug sockets in your home and the chances are that you’ll have an MK switch or plug socket. MK will have part numbers and EANs for everything, it’s just that sellers aren’t entering them on eBay.
This is an interesting situation. eBay have requested sellers enter product identifiers but it seems many sellers simply aren’t, or if it’s mandatory they’re simply added Does Not Apply as a short term stop gap. What eBay will do remains to be seen – will they live with the current situation or will they impose more stringent controls.
Perhaps it’s time for eBay to start scanning listings for manufacturers who they know have GTINs in place and enforcing compliance?
15 Responses
“if eBay is to grow and prosper we need to do the donkey work” ???????
Flippin’ eck!!!
Ebay has been growing and prospering whilst sellers have been doing the donkey work for 20 years !!!
You don’t mention the unstable market Ebay have caused with their constant changes!
wedo ebay to make money not to sit for hours ticking boxes,
if ebay cant make it easier to list and find items thats their hard luck we will sell elsewhere
I think eBay is doing the right thing because when I just checked the top listings were the ones with the most Product Identifiers in place. As margins get tighter it will become uneconomical to produce listings that don’t sell.
Let’s face it, most products have that many features but look very similar if not exactly the same it’s easy to purchase the wrong item making Product identifiers very important for the consumer to purchase the exact item they require and to make comparisons for price and quality of service.
I agree with Tony – I don’t think eBay will need to punish non compliant sellers because eventually the listings without the product identifiers will drop down the search results, due to lack of visibility with Google as well as eBay.
It also will mean less duplicates, as the “Does not Apply” loophole for identical listings will be less attractive.
A little more carrot and a little less stick. (PS sorry, we’re out of carrots).
Frankly, I don’t believe eBay’s claims about this helping sales in every category they are trying to shoe-horn it into, and it’s all just a desperate knee-jerk reaction to the Google penalties they got last year for doing some frankly dodgy SEO. Someone screws up, sellers have to do all the work relisting all their inventory.
“Come and put all your inventory on eBay! – You’ll regret it later”. Good grief. This is not how you build the world’s most vibrant marketplace by grinding down sellers, one tedium at a time.
Once again it is the sellers who have to do the work and tidy up the catalogue. The implementation has been frantic, poorly thought-through, unsupported and a general shambles. The releases have been issued at extremely short notice and no technical support has been provided to sellers to help update this information — for example tools to see where listings aren’t compliant or bulk upload or suggested values.
The whole thing is “work today, jam tomorrow” and it’s no surprise that all that’s happening is that sellers are making a complete mess of the structured data that eBay holds.
If “Does Not Apply” becomes banned, all that sellers will do is purchase new bar codes from GSI for a dime a thousand and create more mess and incorrect data in the structured database.
It will be literally decades before eBay’s catalogue is tidied up from this shambolic implementation.
Unfortunately the MPN option doesn’t work well for us as a clothing seller – For example a bra can come in 30 sizes but all have the same MPN – as ebay requires a different MPN for each variation we need to select “Does Not Apply” even though we have (in our eyes but not ebay’s) a valid MPN for the product.
Some smaller sellers also wont have the time to check the part number of ever nut bolt and widget that they sell as they are a small team that’s (hopefully) rushed off their feet just fulfilling customers and answering questions. so mass editing their listings and selecting “Does not apply” is a quicker option and stops them from loosing listings and revenue. Whether or not they will enter MPN’s in the future (either as an ongoing “I’ll do 5 items today” project or on new items) is another question as it can be a time consuming process.
I have a friend who puts ‘does not apply’ to stop customers searching for a cheaper seller, and were doing very nicely thank you by not following eBay’s instructions.
They sell clothing brand new all with numbers which could be entered, but their theory is that as they are not the cheapest, why make it easier for the customer to buy elsewhere, when they have attracted customers by taking time to do nice photos and presentation, spent time discovering which key words improve sales etc.
Should they ‘help’ the seller who is cheaper and has entered all the details, but has blurred photos, no measurements and so on. ?
Interesting that your search found exactly what you needed without all the EAn and such nonsense isnt it?
There’s so much wrong with this post I don’t really know where to start. It’s easy to sit back and say what sellers should be doing, but Chris, correct me if I’m wrong, you haven’t been a serious seller on eBay for some years have you?
eBay constantly introduce hoops for sellers to jump through with promises of extra sales and/or visibility but that never actually happens. They’re constantly ‘improving’ category structures that require constant revisions as well as other ‘improvements’ that again require constant revisions.
It’s not practical for serious sellers to waste hours on end making minor changes with no tangible benefit.
And as for compliance, eBay do very little to enforce anything. They brought in rules for duplicate listings which are not enforced in any serious way. They brought in rules for photos not having text etc but there are still 1000s of listings that breach the policy, but eBay don’t enforce them.
eBay are the masters of introducing silly rules and rarely enforcing them, probably because some university graduate with zero experience of retail thought it was a good idea.