According to eBay Chief Financial Officer Scott Schenkel, 44% of eBay’s volume is navigated by mobile. Take a minute to consider the ramifications of that — chances are, roughly half of the people looking for your product are doing so on a mobile device. Are your eBay listings optimized to meet the needs of those shoppers? Ensuring that your listings are easy to read for those shopping on mobile can lead to an immediate and noticeable jump in sales.
No Active Content
One of the easiest ways to optimize your eBay listings for mobile is to get rid of any active content. This includes ‘my other items’ image galleries, web forms, and just about anything that you might consider a ‘widget’. If it is part of your listing and uses Javascript, Flash, or forms, it needs to go. This isn’t just a matter of optimizing your listings, either — soon, it will be a matter of the site’s rules. As of early 2017, eBay will be banning active content on listing and seller pages, ensuring the best experience possible for mobile shoppers. By getting ahead of the curve and eliminating your active content now, you can enjoy that sales bump a little early.
Upload Images Properly
While it is important to include numerous photos of the items you hope to sell, it is also important to not overwhelm your customer — especially when that customer is on mobile and will have to scroll past any extra photos you add to the item description. Upload your images to eBay picture services, which allows up to 12 images per item. Avoid adding extra photos to the item description, as those usually will not render correctly on mobile.
Categorize Items
Over half of all searches on Google are now being done on mobile, so it is more important than ever for eBay listings to be optimized for search engines. For categories that have Product Identifiers such as ISBNs, UPCs, and EANs enabled, eBay makes this easy by automatically populating most of the listing. If your product does not have one of these identifiers, make Google’s job easier by filling out as many as possible, including color, size, and type. Depending on the category, these identifier options will change, so be as familiar with your product as possible and completely truthful to avoid poor feedback.
Use Listing Frame and Fields
Much of what many sellers try to make visible with active content, eBay actually has fields for. Listing frames allow buyers to search your store’s products from within listings. While this may not seem as eye-catching as a scrolling gallery, it is much more mobile-friendly. Likewise, much of the information that you might want to convey to customers through fancy HTML in your product’s description, such as payment methods, shipping options, and return policy, can all be filled out in Listing Fields so that they are easily visible to computer and mobile customers alike. With widgets and active content on the way out, these fields will be the best way to convey this information to your customers, while making mobile customers feel more welcome in your digital space.
