eBay

dougsue123b · ‎04-10-2018

Is it much of a big deal if I dont have a meta tag (whatever that is) on my listing?

m60driver · ‎04-10-2018

All I can say is that since I finally bit the bullet and spent the time to optimize my listings to make them "mobile friendly" my sales have definitely improved. I always thought that Ebay photos sucked and had html links to my photos in the description. But now I just upload photos to Ebay and only include text in my decsription and include the magic line <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> at the top of the Ebay html listing window option . I have no idea what it means as it does not appear on my 2003 html editor. But it seems to work.

As for the Ebay mobile checker, it has been belly up for a long time, working only on the rare occasion.

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m60driver · ‎04-10-2018

All I can say is that since I finally bit the bullet and spent the time to optimize my listings to make them "mobile friendly" my sales have definitely improved. I always thought that Ebay photos sucked and had html links to my photos in the description. But now I just upload photos to Ebay and only include text in my decsription and include the magic line <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> at the top of the Ebay html listing window option . I have no idea what it means as it does not appear on my 2003 html editor. But it seems to work.

As for the Ebay mobile checker, it has been belly up for a long time, working only on the rare occasion.

reallynicestamps · ‎04-10-2018

It does make a difference.

Here's my workaround.

Find a listing that has the meta tag. You'll have to look at your Revise and then HTML.

Copy the coding before the first word in your description.

Now, paste that into a text document on your desktop.

When you can't get the mobile friendly checker to work for you, close it, go to the HTML tab, open that and paste the meta code before your first word. (Over whatever was there first. That has to go away.)

There may be a better system, but this does work.

dougsue123b · ‎04-10-2018

Thanks, that did it.

dougsue123b · ‎04-10-2018

thank you, both of you know your stuff

kds99 · ‎04-10-2018

Yes, the mobile checker is pretty sporadic lately. I know little about HTML but I see my html on my listings looks strange. I see it does include the text you refer too, but what looks like garbage too. Will this cause any future problem for me? Ken:

reallynicestamps · ‎04-12-2018

Well that can't be good.

I'd delete everything before

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">

everything from

 to  Frankie

and then after store delete everything.

Then upload (you can go back and revise again and again) and look at it on your screen.

Then look at it again on a smartphone.

Toes crossed, because it is hard to type with fingers crossed.

kds99 · ‎04-12-2018

Well, I was able to fix it as you suggested. The mobile and PC display is OK both before and after the change, so I won't be fixing the hundreds of listings affected. but will only use "good" listings before selling similar from now on! Thanks for your help!

berserkerplanet · ‎04-13-2018

Deeply nested font tags like those shown in post 6 above will cause the listing description to partially and then completely disappear.

At what nesting level that happens is dependent on the browser, and it is a browser issue - what resources the browser developers compiled into a particular brand and version of a browser. Has nothing to do with eBay (other than that they are the ones adding and piling up the tags)

See these threads (particularly my examples and tests):
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Firefox-fails/m-p/27698764
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Technical-Issues/No-descriptions-on-items/m-p/27708560/highlight/true#...

kds99 · ‎04-13-2018

Excellent help - thanks. My habit has been to grab a listing to list similar and replicating geneerations of new oistings, thereby creating this huge nesting problem. Now I know what to do!

berserkerplanet · ‎04-13-2018

Your welcome.

I've just gotten in the habit of deleting them all every time I sell similar or revise. A pain, but I almost have to because I do all my editing in the HTML tab manually (never use the rich text function), and it would get really visually cluttered if I didn't.

Still pondering the possibility of coding some sort of tool - a GreaseMonkey script (automatic), a bookmarklet (manual click), external Autohotkey script (automatic or hotkey) to take care of it, but since I'm probably the only one that would use it, pretty much can't be bothered

buyselljack2016 · ‎04-13-2018

I have found that sometimes when it just sits there spinning, and spinning, and spinning, that I can click on close, then check again, and it works.

ncplantationantiques · ‎04-15-2018

Well it's still not working and I really get the feeling eBay doesn't intend to fix it. I have called several times and all I get is "maybe it will be fixed by 4/24"!!! You would think with the high fees they ask they would work n this. Kind of tells you where Ebay's priorities are!