Way back in 2017 eBay warned users that listings with insecure content would be flagged by Google Chrome and other browsers and so eBay would take steps to ensure the impact on buyers was minimal. eBay announced that their solution would simply be hidden eBay descriptions meaning an extra click from buyers if they wanted to read them.
In the latest seller release, eBay confirmed that from March 2018, eBay listings with HTTP content would feature a button reading “See full item description”, putting the complete description one click away. This is a similar experience that buyers will see on mobile, although on a desktop where there’s more screen space it’s less desirable to force a second click onto a buyer.
Hidden eBay descriptions are now live on the main eBay desktop experience so if you still have HTTP content in your listings you may be forcing buyers into that extra click and in the longer term this could impact your sales, impact potentially impact your products placing in Google rankings, and if buyers don’t bother to click could also impact your eBay feedback.
The solutions is tiresome but relatively easy, and that is to migrate all of your content to a secure server and then edit any links on eBay to HTTPS instead of HTTP. Your host should be easily able to migrate you to a secure server as any website they are hosting will doubtless be demanding this too.
If you don’t have bulk listing capabilities in your usual listing too, you can do this for 500 listings at a time with eBay’s bulk edit tool. Once all your content (including your images) is on a secure server, select ‘Edit listings in bulk’, then use find and replace to replace “HTTP” with “HTTPS”.
If your listings are hidden and you have a custom eBay template then speak to your designer to get them updated.
Don’t forget that eBay will be making all eBay shops fully HTTPS compliant and the advice now is not to invest further in eBay shop design as at some point in the future all shops will be migrated to the standard eBay shop design.
3 Responses
I had to call eBay support yesterday as it seems their system is a bit over zealous at checking and marked 150 of our listings as containing insecure content, of which they didn’t.
Resolved within 5 mins but just another annoyance with eBay’s systems
The so-called “insecure” content is actually coming from Ebay itself.
Loads of items which have no formatting or html whatsoever are coming up as insecure.
My own homepage is insecure and you still can’t view items buyers ask questions about, as this content is insecure as well.
if you use ebays syi form and enter basic no frills plain text in the description box ,then use the mobile friendly checker link on the same page
if flags an error
how daft is that?