In November 2018 eBay are expanding their item specific requirements in women’s fashion categories. Spotted by Laura Mathieson from Selling On eBay UK, the changes will be critical for fashion retailers as listings will be blocked from renewing and relisting if they’re not updated.
eBay say that Buyers in fashion categories from July to September 2018 were found to be 65% more likely to use filters to narrow down their search results so they can more easily find what they’re looking for. Your item will only appear in those filtered search results if you’ve added the information for key item specifics to your listing, using one of eBay’s recommended values. Completing item specifics also increases your visibility in eBay Best Match search results.
“A large seller who completed the key item specifics in these categories saw a 40% increase in traffic to their listings and 35% increase in conversion.”
(Data collected between May-July 2018. Individual results may vary)
– eBay
Actions to take re item specifics in fashion categories on eBay
Women’s Tops & Shirts category
From the 8th of November 2018, you’ll be required to fill in two additional item specifics on all listings in eBay’s Women’s Tops & Shirts category:
- Colour
- Sleeve Length.
Also starting on the 8th of November 2018, existing Good til cancelled listings without these item specifics will be blocked after revision or renewal. Non-compliant listings may be charged the applicable listing upgrade fees and this may contribute towards your eBay Shop’s free listing cap.
Women’s Dresses category
eBay also recommend you add three item specifics to your listings in the Women’s Dresses category
- Colour
- Dress Length
- Style
eBay have published a pdf listing the full Item Specific minimum requirements for all listings in the fashion category.
Two strategies for updating listings
There are two courses of action that you can now take. One is to go through your listings and check and update each and every one to ensure that the item specifics are in place. The other is to wait until the 8th of November and take a view on listings on an individual basis as they fail to relist and use eBay’s blocks as guidance to update the minimum number of listings. The first option will require considerably more work, but the second option could result in loss of recent sales and sales history on some of your top performing listings. A balanced approach could be to update your best sellers before November and worry about the rest later.
8 Responses
A pdf! Should I retype it into my database?
Don’t forget to optimise your code for rotational drum speed and head transfer velocity!
This is a crazy requirement. What I fail to understand here is how eBay benefits (or the customer for that matter) by blocking listings that don’t comply with this requirement?
Also, I’m thinking the 8th November is a “tad bit” short notice given this only popped up on Seller Hub a few days. No email nor official announcement though??? It’s one of them “let’s sneak it in the back door” so nobody notices type of update. Too many of them recently that’s for sure!
This has been extended by eBay further. Had a phone call last week. It’s now to include all women’s Coats & Jackets, which must be updated by 15th November to avoid listing revision/renewal blocking.
So this restriction is live today, 8 weeks before Christmas and we have 442 listings that are set to fail on Sunday. We can either get all of those items and relist them manually, or we can leave them unlisted and spend that time listing new stock. Or we can just guess at the answers and hope. All the data is captured in the listing so buyers will be able to tell what the colour and sleeve lengths are.
Perhaps I can just pop onto the seller hub and use a handy tool that’s been developed to help sellers identify update the listings. Oh wait — when I go to Seller Hub, I can’t even find the announcement about this in the list.
Does anyone know why this category requires “Colour” rather than “Main Colour” like most of the other fashion categories? Is “Main Colour” now dropped as an Item Specific?
Where is the list of item specifics by category number with required and “refine your search” options, together with the main search values?