Catch-All
   >> Everything Else
Thread views: 3521 Previous threadView all threadsNext thread*Threaded Mode

Tradeguy
(enthusiast)
04/02/12 06:33 AM
Some Needed Revisions  

A lot of upcoming changes to ebay and the online marker is bringing a few AW2K limitations to a head. The 2 areas are how pictures are handled, and the multi-option fixed price setup. These 2 areas haven't been a big deal, but I think they will be critical over the next year.

1 - Pictures - right now AW2K handles self-hosted pics by using the first pic for the gallery, which also becomes the primary pic for the listing (in the upper left corner). The remaining pics can be used in the description portion of the listing. While this worked great for many years, it won't work in the future.

Some of this has to do mobile shoppers - who may outnumber "pc based" shoppers in just a few years. When a buyer on a mobile device accesses a listing using the ebay app (iphone or android), the ebay pic section is turned into a gallery that the buyer can easily flip through. When the buyer accesses the description section, they see a nicely formatted "item specifics" section, followed by the description. The less formatting the description contains the better - and pcitures within the description make reading it VERY difficult.

I personally believe it is very likely that the description section of an ebay listings will become nothing but plain text in the future. Tables and other fancy formatting is "mobile unfriendly" and will probably be eliminated. Consider also the new search page designs in waiting - they pull up a "snapshot" of the listing on the right side of the screen - and its all based on the same data elements as the mobile app. If you want to see ebay's vision of the "future", use the ebay app and you'll understand that the description is no place for the pics.

2 - Multi-variation fixed price listings. Ebay is planning on opening up this to most, if not all, categories in the near future. They have also cracked down on all forms of duplicate listings - auctions or fixed. A recent conversation I had with an ebay rep made it very clear that if you are offering an item with multiple options (size, color, styles) that can be put into a single listings with multi-options, then you need to start doing it now. This is all about buyer experience. When someone is searching for new sheets, they don't want to see 100 listings for the same sheet, but in different sizes and colors. Multi-option listings are also extremely cost effective for the seller since it's 1 listing fee for all the variations.

So I hope Thom is thinking about the future of ebay and these options.

- We need to be able to incorporate 12 pics into every listings - ebay allows for self-hosting for this too - so AW2K needs to integrate it's pictures into the ebay picture array and NOT into the description. Realize also that in just a couple of months pics will need to be at least 1000 pixels large on the longest side to meet the new "standards" - that size is not conducive to "inline" pics in the description.

- AW2K needs to address the multi-variation. I know this is a monumental task, but it's a critical one if AW2K is to survive.

Thanks for listening and your consideration!





Jump to

www.AuctionWizard2000.com | Contact Us Forums powered by WWWThreads