Optimising Your Listings

Starting now:

• You can use the new Seller Hub features to update your active listings with required and recommended item specifics

May 2020:

• ​​​​​​​We’re updating our category and classification structure and we’ll automatically move affected listings to new categories

Item specifics such as brand, make, size, colour and style are key to helping shoppers find your items on eBay. The more data you give us about what you’re selling, the better we can match your item with buyers in search.

 Item Specifics Requirements 

Over the past year, we’ve been introducing item specifics requirements in a number of categories on eBay. You'll only be able to publish your new or revised listings in these categories, once you’ve filled out the required information.

We’re continuing to make it easier for buyers to find your listings on and off eBay, by providing you with targeted guidance about item specifics that matter most. We’ve launched new features in Seller Hub to help you identify and update listings with missing item specifics. These features can be accessed on:

Option 1: Overview tab – if any required item specifics are missing from your active listings, you’ll see a task prompting you to add them.

Option 2: Listings tab – on your Active listings page, you’ll see a quick filter that shows how many of your active listings are missing required item specifics.

After you’ve clicked on the task or on the quick filter, you’ll see an Add item specifics link next to each listing in the Actions column. You can use that link to add all required and recommended item specifics. 

We periodically review and improve our category structure to create a more intuitive buying, selling and search experience. This year's changes - including adding, removing and renaming categories - will take effect starting in May 2020. The main categories affected are: 

• Business & Industrial
• Watches
• Home & Garden
• Sporting Goods

As a result of the changes to the category structure, you may experience a change in your fees (either an increase or decrease). We’ll share the list of changes with you closer to the launch date.

Why We’re Making This Change

Improving our category structure, and the item specifics that buyers can use to search, creates a better experience on eBay. It also is more in-line with industry-standards, and can help more international buyers see your listings.

• Get started by adding item specifics today, and give your listings the best chance to sell
• Keep an eye out for upcoming category changes
  • If you have items listed in any of the affected categories, you don’t need to do anything - we’ll automatically move any impacted listings to the most relevant category
• We recommend you periodically review your listings and make sure they’re in the most relevant category