What Are Item Specifics?
Item specifics are descriptive terms that tell a buyer about your item. They may include the brand, size, type, colour or style and many more, and vary depending on what you’re selling. They sit at the top of your item description in a standardised format, giving buyers a clear overview of what they’re looking at.
Adding item specifics on your listing have important benefits, including:
- Greater visibility on eBay: Buyers use item specifics to filter their search results. Your item will only appear in those filtered search results if you have added the matching item specific information to your listing.
- Improved search rankings: Item specifics make your listings more likely to appear in Google Shopping results.
- Enhanced shopping experience: Providing item specifics and more accurate product information help make it simpler, easier, and faster for the buyer to find exactly what they’re looking for.
By not including item specifics on your listing you are missing out on buyers looking for the products you are selling.
It also means that in the future we’ll be able to use item specifics to identify products and showcase similar items together in many of the new buyer experiences on our platform.
Did You Know?
- Listings in the Dresses category that included the “Style” and “Dress length” item specifics sold 81% better on average than those without.*
- Listings in the Dresses category that included the “Dress length” item specific sold 76% better than those without.*
*Measured over 8 months from December 2017 - July 2018, eBay UK data
Item Specifics in 2019
We knew building the eBay catalogue would take different adaptations and versions to get it right. We wanted to include your feedback and make it work for everyone on eBay.
With this in mind, we’ve adjusted our approach to ensure we can better help maximise your conversion and improve the shopping experience. It also means you’ll no longer need to actively associate your items with the eBay catalogue; saving you time and valuable resources that you can invest back into your business.
A Focus on Item Specifics
Our new approach requires you to use item specifics to help identify products. Item specifics include brand and physical details about the item you are selling, such as the make, model, size, colour, and style.
We’ve identified which item specifics can drive the most conversion and are the most useful to buyers when they’re looking for products. We’ve aligned with the way they search, including changing the names of some item specifics to reflect this.
While you’ll no longer have to match your listing against the eBay catalogue, we still recommend that where they exist you match your products to take advantage of the increased exposure and features such as product reviews.
What You Need to Do
With our new approach, we’re focusing on the most important item specifics that help drive conversion.
The requirements will apply to all new and revised listings. Any Good ‘Til Cancelled listings will remain the same until they are revised, however, we encourage you to add the relevant item specifics to those listings to see the benefits of our changed approach.
We’ve identified the first set of categories with the biggest sales potential and we strongly encourage you include key item specifics in your listings for the categories below:
- PC Laptops & Netbooks (177):
- RAM size
- Processor
- Screen Size
- Graphics Processing Type
- Type
- Tablets & eBook Readers (171485)
- Storage Capacity
- Model
- Screen Size
- Graphics/Video Cards (27386)
- Memory Size
- Chipset/GPU Model
- Dishwashers (116023)
- Type
- Width
- Installation
- String Lights (116022)
- ColourLED String/Strip Type
- Type
- Video Games (139973)
- Game Name
- Platform
Please be aware that some item specifics may have new names now that we’re aligning more which what buyers search for.
We’ll continue to monitor which elements that matter most to buyers and we’ll highlight them in My eBay and Seller Hub. Over time, we’ll require you to include key item specifics when you list.
We’ll be updating this page regularly, so please bookmark this page and keep an eye on your inbox to be kept in the loop!
How to Add or Update Item Specifics
There are a number of methods in which you can add or update item specifics. Please see below for an option that suits you best.
Step 1
Within Seller Hub, under the Listings tab, please click the ‘Active’ under the listings tab.
Step 2.
From here you can revise your listings one by one. To edit in bulk, use the filters to narrow your search to a relevant category and select those items.
Click ‘Edit’, then ‘Edit selected’. This takes you to the bulk edit page.
Step 3.
On the bulk edit page, select the listings you wish to edit and click ‘Edit fields’ then ‘Edit Item Specifics’.
When you’ve made your edits, make sure you click ‘Save and close’, then ‘Submit changes’.
Please guidance on add how to add or update your item specifics through an API Integration, please review our developer playbooks:
Please note, if you’ve already provided item specifics for a given listing and you’d like to add more (e.g. you’ve provided ‘material’ and ‘colour’, but not ‘style’), you’ll need to supply both the new and existing item specifics in your CSV upload.
FAQs