Well, I hope the weather is still sunny and hot back in England! I’m currently enjoying a lovely relaxing holiday with my family and today is also my youngest daughter’s 11th birthday, so I’ve got a very excited child running around the place…and a party to organize!
Not one to shirk on my responsibilities though, and to keep you updated, I thought I’d just write a short eletter this week on the subject of your ebay listing descriptions.
I gave you seven ‘super’ tools last week to help you make the most of your business and one of those tools was for templates to make your descriptions look nice and neat and tidy. As I said, your description is very important and your aim is to entice potential buyers to actually make a purchase!
Now, if you have been subscribing to my weekly eletter for a while you’ll know that along with your listing title, your description should be as comprehensive as possible and that includes filling in those fiddly ‘item specifics’ bits!
What are item specifics?
Item specifics refer to the brand, style, colour, material, size and other ‘specific’ details of the product you are listing. So, when you create a new listing, on the Sell Your Item form before you get to the long description part you’ll find a section called Item Specifics.
This is where you should provide the really important information about your item such as the brand (if there is one), type, size, colour, style and any other specifics relevant to your product. Once you’ve filled them in, these details appear at the top of your listing description when it’s live which makes it much easier for buyers to see all the facts about your item at a glance – and importantly these specifics can be used by ebay to determine where to show your product in the search results.
Depending on the category you’ll see a series of drop-down boxes where you can fill in the details specific to your product.
Here’s how to include item specifics in your listing:
- In the Item specifics section of the Sell your item form, enter the details for your item. For example, select your item’s brand from the Brand drop-down menu, size from the Size menu and colour from the Colour menu
- If any of the item specifics have been filled in for you already, simply confirm that they are correct. If they are not you can revise them.
- Add other item specifics that are relevant to your item by clicking the ‘+’ sign next to the item specific. Or to add your own custom details, just click the ‘+’ sign next to ‘Add your own item specific’.
- Remove any details that don’t apply to your item by clicking the Remove link next to any of the item specifics.
Why include item specifics if it’s all in my main title and description?
Many buyers search on ebay using very brief, simple details such as style, size, brand and condition when they are typing in their search words so by completing the item specifics sections for all your products will help you increase the visibility of your listings in search results, and potentially increase your sales.
Buyers will be able to find your item that matches their search terms much more quickly and easily.
The advantages to adding item specifics
Firstly it’s compulsory, so you have to do it in which case you might as well do it properly! By providing specific information you will make it far, far easier for buyers to find your listing and make a purchase and this can only be a good thing.
Item specifics help buyers FIND your item in the first place, so make sure you use them. For example, as a buyer, if I was looking for a Black Marks and Spencer Cardigan I might type these keywords into the search box: Black Marks and Spencer Cardigan 12. As the seller, if you have a black Marks and Spencer cardigan in a size 12 listed and you have filled in your item specifics correctly then your item will appear in front of me and there’s a good chance that I will consider purchasing! If however you have not filled in your item specifics correctly then I won’t even see your item, therefore I can’t buy it!
So by adding item specifics you are making your listing more relevant to the buyers’ search which will bring it closer to the top of the search results.
Remember…
Fill in as many item specifics as you possibly can. The more you complete the more chance you have of matching buyers’ searches and the higher you will go in the returned search results.
When you select certain item specifics such as the colour, size or style of your item and you are given a choice of options provided by eBay, always try and pick one from ebay’s selection rather than adding your own. For example, if the colour of your item is blue. Choose ‘Blues’ as the colour and then select from the next drop-down box for an exact colour match – for example ‘Navy’. Do this rather than providing your own. The simple reason being that ebay recognize their own options rather than custom options and you’ll end up confusing matters and possibly not appearing as high in the search results as you could have done.
So, if you’ve been a bit lax about your item specifics, please take this opportunity to update your listings. There are absolutely no disadvantages to doing so, only advantages, so please consider it now!
I’m off back to the pool now! Have a great weekend,