interesting. ebay app hides seller description but shows AI generated description w/o clicking

[siamjane8]

I just noticed that when viewing a listing on my phone android), the pages shows the complete item description without any extra clicks- BUT ONLY IF YOU HAD USED THE AI GENERATED DESCRIPTION TOOL.

     If you view a listing that the seller put time and effort into an accurate description themselves- the view as you scroll down still hides the description behind a "see full description" button, requiring extra click to see the most important part of the listing.

    Why the hypocrisy? - So a sellers description clutters the view and needs to be hidden, requiring an action to see but the Ebay generated AI description is shown on main page, in plain site??

    And i am confused- for 20 years ( and as recent as last week) ebay has been telling sellers that clean simple descriptive bullet points and not repeating any info from the title.   Even the listing tool chastises you and makes you click 3x to add a color font or change the size of the print! A simple listing is betterit warns you...........

    Enter new AI description generator-   Makes a 8 sentence paragraphs to describe simple attributes. It uses flowery descriptions that are more fluff and poetry than anything.  9x out of 10 it is completely wrong and needs to be corrected anyway.   It is long form and artsy.  And that is shown to buyers without extra clicks???

    I just don't get the logic here.   Exactly opposite of what ebay tells us to do.

Not even to mention the user fatigue of seeing the exact same written format for every listing whether it is a shoe or a pool light , or an antique vase, or 10 pack of #2 pencils.    The result will be - buyers quickly skimming over to run-on sentence of a description looking for the actually details of the item, possibly missing the details that are buried in "a story." 

     Push comes to shove i could not care less about the AI story teller BUT ebay should show the rest of our descriptions ALSO instead of forcing extra clicks to see it.

[valueaddedresource]

Also devon@ebay  here's another example which includes emojis in the description - I'm not 100% sure, but I would think if the issue was with non-standard formatting, additional html, special characters, or anything that isn't just standard plain text that it would have hidden this due to those emojis.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

devon@ebay  I'm not sure what to make of the emoji example above, but I played around a little with this and it looks like what the team is actually saying is (at least if you are using the ebay listing form):

Use the default box to provide the description. This will then show up as the full description in the app.

If you use the "show all options" HTML feature, your description will end up with the "see full description" link only. So, stick with what the listing calls "simple formatting" (the default) and you get the benefit of a full description in the app.

Can you check with the team and see if I'm interpreting this correctly?

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

devon@ebay  

Another question for the team: Just listed this item. I used the default description box, no HTML, no "show all options" (although I might have opened the "show all options" box, I didn't use it)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/386019397269

Looking at this on the app (Android), I'm seeing only "See full description", no actual description, and no truncated description either.

However, this is an unusually long description for me, and now I'm wondering if there is a character limit? If my description exceeds a certain number of characters, does the app default to "see full description", even if it is non-HTML?

And if so, what is the limit?

Hoping to hear from you soon. 

[siamjane8]

devon@ebay   

       Any thoughts on what ebay is doing here guys-anyone at ebay?

     Just a bunch of sellers trying to figure out what we need to do to use this platform and all we are getting is tests and changes without any information or explanation from the very teams that we pay their salaries....

    Do we use simple description box to have our descriptions show up without the extra click or does that not matter?

    Do we have any control

    Is this just a test or is it a new better design (obviously showing the description is a better design)

    Why are we the customers left totally in the dark?

    All we want to do is optimize our listings to have the best chance of making sales- please stop playing games with us- we want to be professional and only ask the same of ebay.

[valueaddedresource]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@valueaddedresource devon@ebay 

Given that many sellers believe it is important to show the full description rather than have the buyer click to get to it, isn't this precisely the sort of information ebay should share , say, in the listing process? And in the Help pages? And perhaps an Announcement?

Could you maybe suggest to the listing form team that they add one of those little pop up "Information" things in the description area?

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques not sure if this is new but thought I'd point it out because you asked for it - I am seeing an info pop up about this *after* you switch to the HTML editor.

However, I think it would be even better to put that "warning" in this box that pops up when you select the "show all options" link to switch - it would be much more noticable and helpful to give sellers that warning at this point so they can back out and continue with the simple editor if they don't want to risk having their description not shown on mobile.

devon@ebay 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@valueaddedresource  Thanks for catching that. I don't recall every seeing that before, and agree, it would be better to have it in the original pop-up. However, I'm just glad to see they added this. (assuming it is new, which I think it is)

[a_c_green]

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques not sure if this is new but thought I'd point it out because you asked for it - I am seeing an info pop up about this *after* you switch to the HTML editor.

[...]

devon@ebay 

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I'm not sure that's really the whole story, because even if you type the whole description directly into the editing window, it's still getting HTML added by the interface itself. You can see it by opening that HTML checkbox and viewing the description that you just typed in. You're always going to have some HTML behind the scenes; its presence does not mean Something Nefarious needs to be dealt with.

I'm often in there doing cleanup, because the listing form coding is pretty bad when it comes to the hidden HTML markup that is added around new content but never removed from text that's deleted. You can wind up with eight-zillion redundant or empty tags surrounding material that is no longer there, and it can often confuse or badly represent the content that is still there in terms of font sizes or text positioning.

It would be good to have some sort of HTML cleanup algorithm go to work on the description text when saving the listing, but I suspect that would require a higher level of coding ability beyond what is seen there now.

[devon@ebay]

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@siamjane8 wrote:

devon@ebay   

       Any thoughts on what ebay is doing here guys-anyone at ebay?

     Just a bunch of sellers trying to figure out what we need to do to use this platform and all we are getting is tests and changes without any information or explanation from the very teams that we pay their salaries....

    Do we use simple description box to have our descriptions show up without the extra click or does that not matter?

    Do we have any control

    Is this just a test or is it a new better design (obviously showing the description is a better design)

    Why are we the customers left totally in the dark?

    All we want to do is optimize our listings to have the best chance of making sales- please stop playing games with us- we want to be professional and only ask the same of ebay.

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Hey @siamjane8! I have this thread shared with the product team in charge of this. Once I can get some more clarification on this I will be sure to share with everyone here. 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@a_c_green From what I've seen (and I haven't made a real study of this) , yes, some basic html is added if you use the default listing form description box. An example: paragraph breaks. However, the breaks don't show up in your initial description in mobile....if the buyer wants to read the description as formatted,(with the breaks) he needs to click "see full description".

I think the basic advice seems to be:

If you want to increase the odds that your description will show up on your phone, do not use anything but the simple default box.

If you believe it is more important to have html in your description (even if its just a matter of increasing the font size or color), then the trade off is: ebay will show it, but the buyer won't see the description at all unless he clicks "see full description".

Since I was really only changing the font size and font, it was easy for me to decide that I'd rather have the whole description show up in mobile, so I no longer make those changes (which also save me a little time). I think having the description show up is more valuable than having my preferred font and size.

For a seller who has invested a lot into html , different colors etc, the decision might be different.  

[stacy_1971]

I've been using the AI, and then pasting my own description and stuff below it...?   I wonder if that works the same?

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

If by your own "stuff" you mean the multi colored stuff that takes up most of the description box? That pretty much ensures that your listing on a phone will show the  "see full description" link instead of your description.

You need to decide whether it's more important to have your description show instead of just "see full description", or whether it's more important to keep all that stuff.

[melmurdock]

 

I don't know if this helps but . . .

I create all my listings on a desktop using the Description field. 
I don't use the "Show All Options" HTML feature.

But sometimes I use the Ebay app on my iPhone to edit my listings Descriptions.

When I edit the Descriptions field I get an "Unsupported Formatting" message.

To continue editing the Description I have to click on "Remove formatting and continue" 

Listings that I do this to end up with just a link to the Description instead of showing the full Description.

I have not found a workaround.

[iamonourside]

devon@ebay 

Thank you for your help.  I really appreciate your use of quotes. The team's response was clearly a blow off (of the seller, not you) rather than a thoughtful, helpful answer.  

Along these lines, what happened to the "condition summary" aka "seller notes".  Is it ever displayed? When was it ever announced that it was no longer shown. Imagine, the condition description, if not repeated in the actual description, could never be displayed for app users. And eBay is okay with that.

The team's answer belies the reason given for eBay's present crusade to eliminate formatting (i.e.  "consumer trust"). What is the real reason? Reducing the computing resources needed to save descriptions with formatting tags? Why not do away with descriptions all together? Why not just generate AI descriptions on the fly?

I always doubt eBay reasons. No formatting is degrading the product. Bland descriptions make items less attractive. That is NOT what the consumer wants.

[iamonourside]

Since devon@ebay @ shared with the responsible eBay team, the condition description has begun appearing on the eBay app.

(Thank you Devon and team!)

It appears as the item description on the first view item page without additional clicks.

FYI, ac-green, value added, and others: Html of any kind - even paragraph breaks- is stripped from this part of the descrption.

Now, if only I knew whether it is being shown on purpose rather than as part of a test, I'd know whether to invest the time to use it again.

[22bluebricks]

Unfortunately, the description still comes up intermittently regardless if how it's listed. It's probably something the developer can adjust.