Mobile View w/ HTML

[walnutts]

If I use the html tag

<div vocab=”http://schema.org/” typeof=”Product”><span property=”description”>
[whatever part of your description that you want seen on mobile goes here]
< /span></div>

to control what is seen on mobile, is there a character limit to what part of the description I choose to include - in other words - is it still limited to 800 characters or can I include my entire description (as long as it is text only and mobile friendly)?

[blackbird*singing · Accepted solution]

According to the seller update ithe text you tag has to be less than 800 characters (ie: 799 characters or less). But a "MORE" link will display underneath so buyers can click through to view full description.

And keep in mind that line breaks count as 50 characters (as that's about how many characters fit across a line of text in mobile view).

If your entire listing is 799 characters or less then no need to tag it with the html as the whole thing will display on mobile without having to click through to full desc.

[walnutts · Accepted solution]

It would be much easier to add this html to all of my listing templates in Turbo Lister and forget about it - what will happen if what is included in the html is more than 800 characters - woill only the first 800 characters show or will the mobile view revert to the 250 character "ebay choice" description?

[blackbird*singing]

That is something we don't have an answer from eBay on yet. If you tag more than 799 characters one would logically assume the text would be truncated to 799, but until an eBay "blue" advises we are just guessing on that point.

Also, the mobile descriptions are not necessarily 250 characters - the automated mobile view is LIMITED to 250 characters. If you look at the screenshot eBay provided in the seller update, the sentence on mobile was only 139 characters - it was chosen based on keywords. While the second sentence would have brought the total up to 240 characters (within the limit), it did not have the keywords that eBay used to generate the mobile description.

So don't assume the first 250 characters of your description will be displayed - it's up to 250 and it's based on keywords.

(That's why I'm glad we have the option to tag our own - for those of us versed in html)

[walnutts]

That is the issue - we sell high quality antiques and collectibles - eBays choice of keywords  would not always work. But having to "count characters" for every listing - we sell 50 unique items every week in our weekly eBay auction and often those descriptions are very detailed. EBay could pick out Keywords that do not necessarily relate to the most important aspect of the item. The html control is great but if we have to do this individually for each item and make sure what we do is le=ss than 800 characters, it will add a lot of time to our listing process (which is already very time consuming even when using templ;ates created in Turbo Lister. If we knew that the description text would be truncated at 799 words than the process would be easy.

[blackbird*singing]

If it will help, you can do what I'm considering doing which is tagging a single sentence to the effect of "If viewing on a mobile app, click the link below to see full item descriptionl" and putting that on every listing. Then there's no need to worry about character limits and tagging every listing with custom text - just tell users up front they need to click through to view the description. For your category doing something like this may make sense.

[walnutts]

Given that we have a 99% sell through rate and only 10% to 15% of those items are purchased on mobile I should not worry so much but actually I do want SOME of the original description displayed when viewed on mobile (just because winning bidders are not using mobile to win an auction does not mean that underbidders are not viewing and entering bids using mobile. Griff - is there any way we can get a clarification on what happens when you include more than 800 characters using the html?

[walnutts]

Do you have any way of taking off the "solved" notation so that maybee one of the blues might help here

[blackbird*singing]

I don't. One of the blues marked it as solved, I did not.

Why don't you ask Griff the above question in the weekly chat - I think it's going on now & I'm about to check it out.

[walnutts]

I think we just missed it. I got a third possible answer from someone monitoring the board at Tamebay - thay say that is the description is over 800 characters, eBay will use yet another algorithm to choose the most relevant 800 characters fro what you have included in the html tag - it would really be great to have an actual, official answer!!

[shipscript]

@walnutts

We can use @Anonymous or brian_burke@ebay  to hopefully call a staff member back to this thread and request clarification of the additional questions added to this thread about using the new description tags.

As to your question about "answered", I think you can click the "options" at the bottom left of the green box and undo "solved".  I know you can undo kudoes in the same location. However, I'm not sure that alone would get staff in here to answer. 

[blackbird*singing]

brian_burke@ebay Could you please advise how eBay will handle this? If a user tags their own text for mobile optimization, but they tag more than 800 characters, how will eBay handle it?

Show all the text? Truncate to 800? Truncate to 250 or less? Or something else?

Thanks!

[brian_burke@ebay]

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@prefontained wrote:

If it will help, you can do what I'm considering doing which is tagging a single sentence to the effect of "If viewing on a mobile app, click the link below to see full item descriptionl" and putting that on every listing. Then there's no need to worry about character limits and tagging every listing with custom text - just tell users up front they need to click through to view the description. For your category doing something like this may make sense.

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This is not a very good idea. Put yourself in the shoes of the buyer. They are already provided an arrow to click for the full description and we will make it even clearer to the buyer that more info is in the description, but we also know buyers are looking for the information without clicking. For the last year we have been pulling 250 characters - if you haven't had any issues, I wouldn't change a thing, If you have had issues, use the tagging, but to tag "view the complete description" is repetitive - and if there isn't any information to entice the buyer to click through, it's unlikely they will. 

For everyone - we will circle back with you on the impact if you tag more than 800 characters - the Product Manager is traveling and I don't think I'll get an answer before the board closes - email sellergtm@ebay.com and we will send a reply.

Thanks for selling

Brian

[walnutts]

After trying to figure this out all day i finally broke down and contated Hal Lawton about it. I hate to bother him but he is great about getting back on issues - will let you know what he says.

[brian_burke@ebay]

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@brianbse wrote:

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@prefontained wrote:

If it will help, you can do what I'm considering doing which is tagging a single sentence to the effect of "If viewing on a mobile app, click the link below to see full item descriptionl" and putting that on every listing. Then there's no need to worry about character limits and tagging every listing with custom text - just tell users up front they need to click through to view the description. For your category doing something like this may make sense.

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This is not a very good idea. Put yourself in the shoes of the buyer. They are already provided an arrow to click for the full description and we will make it even clearer to the buyer that more info is in the description, but we also know buyers are looking for the information without clicking. For the last year we have been pulling 250 characters - if you haven't had any issues, I wouldn't change a thing, If you have had issues, use the tagging, but to tag "view the complete description" is repetitive - and if there isn't any information to entice the buyer to click through, it's unlikely they will. 

For everyone - we will circle back with you on the impact if you tag more than 800 characters - the Product Manager is traveling and I don't think I'll get an answer before the board closes - email sellergtm@ebay.com and we will send a reply.

Thanks for selling

Brian

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Here is the answer from Product.  - If you select more than 800 charcters, we will truncate the selection to below 800 characters. We will remove whole words to get below 800 characters, not partial words. 

Thanks 

Brian