ShipScript has been an eBay Community volunteer since 2003, specializing in HTML, CSS, Scripts, Photos, Active Content, Technical Solutions, and online Seller Tools.
This new tool will scan all listings and return eBay's mobile summary text for each listing. That will make it easier for sellers to see at a glance what text eBay has extracted to display to other shopping venues or to display for the one-click-away ebay listing pages.
http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/MobileSummaryReader.htm
A spreadsheet summary can be exported from the results.
The tool doesn't do anything more than show what eBay has selected, so it would be up to the seller to add proper mobile summary tags if the eBay-selected summary is undesirable. Sample eBay summary tags are displayed on the tool page.
Sellers who have long or complex descriptions, or who use a template with a lot of HTML, should use eBay's tags.
If you don't use eBay's mobile summary tags to select a block of text for eBay, eBay's bots will search for popular keywords and pull sentences containing those words. Thus, the text can come from anywhere on the page.
If the report shows that eBay is selecting nonsensical phrases, then you should probably be using eBay's tags to tell the bots exactly what you want them to use. As described by eBay and on the tool, the source text should be wrapped with these codes within the HTML tab of eBay's description editor:
<div vocab="https://schema.org/" typeof="Product"> <span property="description"> ...selected description summary... </span></div>
...the remaining description goes here...
http://pages.ebay.com/sell/itemdescription/customizeyoursummary.html
When starting new listings, a handy method would be to create an "Insert" on eBay's advanced listing form. The "Insert" option is on the description editor, and once created, will be available for other listings. Copy the above code into an "Insert" and then click the insert when starting a new listing (or add one to a revision). Type your quick summary where the "Insert" says "...selected description summary..."
I don't think there is any quick way to select and mark existing text yourself on existing listings. I've tried to think of a way for a tool to do that, but came up short. Perhaps I need more heads thinking about it.
One problem is that the selected text should not contain any HTML or formatting codes. eBay does allow a few, but testing has shown that those can too easily corrupt eBay's special tags, so I generally tell users to stick with plain text, no formatting, for a paragraph of text within the summary tags.
When I looked at this listing, there is no description. Only boilerplate. So there is nothing for eBay to use. The bots decided to use the item title instead of using anything in the description.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/182938310021
Lego Bionicle Mask 43614 56153 57575 61788 61814 64259pb01 Jutlin Hau Nuva Malum | Toys & Hobbies, Building Toys, LEGO
This listing has a description above the boilerplate, which eBay did use.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/182976956150
Duplo Horse Foal with Small Dark Bluish Gray Spots - Item No horse03c01pb03. Duplo Cow Baby (Calf) Front Leg Forward with White Blaze Pattern - Item No dupcalf1c01pb01. Duplo Dog Large Paws with Black Ears, Tail and Spots - Item No 1396pb03.
Why eBay chose to ignore the boilerplate in one listing and then snag it in this listing is a mystery.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/182937437835
Our home is smoke-free and pet-free.
Keep in mind that the mobile summary is not just the quick text shown on listings where the description is one-click-away — it is also the short description that eBay offers to Google shopping, Facebook, and other venues. To optimize exposure, sellers should write a short and meaty summary that succinctly describes the item.
While adding more features to the Mobile Summary Reader, it seemed a simple Mobile Summary Helper tool might be useful to some.
http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/MobileSummaryHelper.htm
This tool will help a seller build a mobile summary for eBay. It carries the wrapper tags and a counter, so the seller can just paste or type a paragraph of plain text, make sure it does not exceed the character limits, and then copy and paste the whole block of code to the top of their eBay description in HTML view.
There are two types of summary that can be added this way:
1) The summary can be hidden so that the plain text formatting does not clash with the appearance of a formatted template or text. When hidden, it won't appear in the description, but will still be extracted by eBay for the summary.
2) The summary can be visible within the description with a surrounding border. This gives it the appearance of a quick-glance summary or abstract seen at the top of many articles. It may duplicate some of the formatted details in the description, but the blocked format and border make it appear to be the summary that it is.
I tried to keep the tool as condensed and lightweight as possible so that it can be copied to the desktop to use offline. But first I want to make sure it works correctly and has the features most needed. So feedback is welcome before I open it as a take-away tool.
Here is what my experimentation shows:
1) When a listing contains multiple summary tags, the first one in the code is used and the others are ignored. So add any new summaries to the top of the code and you wont need to remove the extras.
2) eBay does not include leading or trailing spaces in the summary it extracts. So I use white space to set the text apart from the tags. However, I do need to check whether those discarded spaces still count against the 800 limit. More testing there....although a paragraph of 800 characters might be a bit overwhelming to read and a seller may not want to go that high anyway.
3) eBay allows a small number of HTML tags (<br>,<li>, ) and I still need to test whether inner tag attributes are included in the initial 800 limit and whether they affect the usability of those few tags. The tool makes an effort to match eBay's count on the allowed tags, as long as they have no attributes, thus the count will jump around a lot if you try to use any allowed tags. However, my recommendation is to avoid using any tags at all and just go with a concise paragraph.
Thank you @dollybeauty for offering useful suggestions!
The Bulk Mobile Summary Reader now has the ability to edit the summary so that it can be manually put back into the description. The tool includes a popup EDIT function that will add eBay's mobile tags and count plain text characters. The summary can be hidden ( if the user does not want it to disrupt the page appearance), or it can be added as a visible boxed element, or the user can add custom styling.
The summary code must be added to the HTML view of eBay's description editor, typically to the top of the description code. The popup editor has a button to open the eBay listing for editing.
Alternatively, a File Exchange spreadsheet of revision items can be produced that can pull in the original item description and prepend the revised summary to the top. The resulting CSV can be pushed back through File Exchange for bulk edits. The caveat is that if the description contains special characters, extra work would be needed to convert those special characters from UTF-8 to the ISO-8859-1 encoding required by File Exchange. Another option is to use an API-based tool to upload the UTF-8 descriptions directly.
