Classic Listing Form to Be Retired

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

I think most experienced sellers realized this when ebay first launched the new listing form in beta, but on today's ebay for business podcast, Griff and Rebecca confirmed that the classic listing form will be retired at some point (no date set). 

My advice is the same as usual: There's always a learning curve with anything new (not to mention the ingrained resistance to change many of us have) , so.....either plan on using a third party listing tool or start getting used to the new form now, before the old one is gone.

But, of course, my advice and 25 cents will get you...actually, not much of anything these days. Certainly not a cup of coffee....

[tssullytacklebox]

I just tried it this morning on a trading card I was listing. Seems to be very "Mercari like". Photo uploader is a bit faster but with the number of item specifics and fields one has to enter the entire process takes much longer. Definitely much more of an app like feel to it. My guess is that they are looking to the future of buyers and sellers which will be Millennials, Zs and whoever comes next. Not going to be too user friendly for the big company that has hundreds of thousands of listings and will continue using desktops to list.

Mercari only has a half dozen fields to enter and you are done. If Ebay wants to go this route they may have to rethink their search algorithms to eliminate all of the fields (item specifics) that they just worked so hard to create.

[stephenmorgan]

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@norwegian_kt wrote:

Once you try it, does it force you to continue using it for all subsequent listings, and convert all your listings to the new format? I'm afraid to try it in case the 'test' is irreversible.

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You are not forced to continue with it. You can switch back.

[calntom]

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@popblox wrote:

Thank you for the info - I was just working on a post about this, so I’ll insert it here!

New Listing Tool - A Warning

Lag:
There is a significant lag when opening a listing/draft with the new listing tool, sometimes up to a minute or longer - the form is just solid white and blinks for a while. I thought it might be my internet connection, but I have zero issues with the classic tool.

Item Specifics:
If you thought they were a pain before, this will be excruciating. First of all, if when you ‘convert’ a draft or any single listing to the new listing tool, ALL of your active listings and drafts switch over to the new format. With that, you randomly lose item specifics from every single active listing and draft and have to enter then all over again.

In addition, each item specific is met with a pop-up window that has to be navigated. This is specifically troublesome because you cannot see any other portion of the listing when you’re making these changes.

I didn’t realize before, but sometimes I just forget what I’m working on and now I can’t even see the title - I have to close the pop-up, scroll up, scroll down, open pop-up again. Oh wait, what color was it again?…repeat entire process. I honestly cannot believe how long it takes to do this.

HTML:
If you’re like me and write your own code for your descriptions and/or have descriptive listings with different fonts, etc., that’s over. Attempting to even view the HTML prompts a pop-up warning that has to be clicked through, which discourages adding any “extra”.

Once you’re past the warning, attempting to simply change the font color creates another lag where you have to wait on a color box to appear. My intention was to include a picture here, but I just tried and gave up after waiting almost 2 minutes for it to come up.

Video:
This is probably minor, but video cannot be added to variation listings.

Loss of draft data:
This is the worst. Last night I left my computer for a few minutes, then came back to a draft. After entering all the data, the screen flashed white, then the draft reset to what it was before I opened it. I entered everything again, and it did it AGAIN.

I can only assume this happened because my session timed out, but I wasn’t gone more than 10 minutes. I’m in and out all day long, every single day - I’ve never had anything like this happen before. I strongly suggest everyone save their drafts before stepping away.

Since using the new listing tool, I’ve sent several “Tell us what you think” comments to eBay over the last month, but have seen zero improvements. I can’t even describe the amount of time I’ve wasted on this thing - something that used to take me 5 minutes now takes 30.

I’m not prone to doom and gloom, but I really can’t emphasize enough how many issues this is going to create for everyone who is actively selling.

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Sounds flat out ugly. Thanks for taking the time for the heads up. 

[calntom]

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@kensgiftshop wrote:

I received an email last week saying they were going to start moving accounts over to the new listing tool soon.

I wish they would leave the business tool and have it an option to use the new one.

I tried the new one when it come out and don't like it at all, to much clicking.

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Ohhhhh chittttt

[cstpos]

@wrong66You can switch back to classic view. Since they're going to make the new form permanent, I have been trying to use it as much as possible.

[boldfashioned]

It is not letting me switch back. I'm not sure why -- perhaps because I uploaded a video for one listing (which is the only reason why I opted to try it).

I'm stuck in popup hell.

[stephenmorgan]

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@boldfashioned wrote:

It is not letting me switch back. I'm not sure why -- perhaps because I uploaded a video for one listing (which is the only reason why I opted to try it).

I'm stuck in popup hell.

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Try logging off the Internet and maybe even restarting your computer.

[lindyslucky]

Thank you. Exactly.

The time being taken to navigate the seller Hub, added to the extra money eBay is picking up on shipping & taxes made it so it just  isn’t  worth the time anymore. Profits were always razor thin but there was profit. It became Less & less. 

I stopped selling last summer. I’m now selling my displays on Fbook marketplace. 

I still check back to see if EBay has gotten easier.

Apparently no. 
I still have things to sell, they will go somewhere else.

I really have quit.

[mrdutch1001]

oh yes, it takes much longer to complete a listing...a time-consuming effort which means spending a lot more time on getting items listed ...it's just not worth the time that it takes to make a listing ...so as per my earlier post in this thread...I will not take this route...my time is more valuable elsewhere and as a casual/infrequent/occasional seller( as labelled by eBay), I won't waste my time using this format...

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@fern*wood wrote:

This certainly doesn't give a warm fuzzy feeling.  Do drafts not auto save with the new form if you walk away? 

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@fern*wood  Sorry, I just saw this, but I think you replied to the wrong person.  Maybe meant for Popblox? 

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@a_c_green wrote:

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@popblox wrote:
That's what this feels like. Either eBay programmers went to Cornpone's Codin' Akademy, or they're being forced to implement something they know is horrendous and they're crying themselves to sleep at night.

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Ummm... I don't think they care that much about it... 😉

A lot of this dismal coding development goes unseen, and no one from eBay wants to talk about it, let alone take responsibility for whatever this new form is trying to do, but there are some clues from the past that suggest that it's either offshore programming (most likely from Europe), or it at least originated at other eBay websites elsewhere, followed by a later attempt to adapt it for U.S. use.  

I think you are right on the money here.  That was my original thinking too.  I used to work for the 3rd largest software company in the world (at that time) & my job involved going to client "Data Processing" shops, which were all Fortune 500 companies.  One of those was a US shop of a large Japanese automaker.   They followed Japanese culture & IT rules.   It was fascinating to experience, but what a nightmare when I looked at their code.  Their coding was in a language that was specifically designed to look like the English language.  So a typical paragraph in the code would tell you what was happening in that section, for example paragraph names read "Leap Year Processing" or "End of Month Date Calculation", etc.   The Japanese did not use descriptive paragraph names & the paragraph names became B1256-9078 as an example.   Just a combo of numbers & letters that meant nothing.  

It made all their code virtually unreadable to any American programmer.   Most of the programmers were American, as this shop was in a large US city.  Boy, did they need our products b/c maintaining & enhancing this code was an absolute nightmare for Americans, even though it was written in the same language they were used to.   The structure was so completely different & they didn't use the inherent benefit of the language being English-like, so it may as well have been written in Kanji.  It looked *that* foreign to US programmers.  

Reading about the new listing page struck me as the exact same kind of junk code you get, when you use overseas programmers.  Add a dash of "mobile friendly" & you wind up with a mess.  Luckily I have a 3rd party lister, so it won't be my nightmare.  

ETA:  On another note, I recently was on Reddit, reading about a retailer's nightmare of changes to their website & how much people hated it.  Complaint after complaint.  Finally, one of the developer's chimed in anonymously & said "we know, we hate it too".  Basically, was a 'we tried to tell mgmt situation', but mgmt wasn't having it & forced them to re-vamp it to a style they new was decades-old, ugly, non-functional & time wasting.  It happens 😞

[winterpalace25]

I'm still on the old form but lately if I take too long on a new listing or a draft, it won't upload. It just flashes but doesn't take. If I don't work really quickly, I have to copy my description to the clipboard in case I have to start over and make sure relevant item specific info is also in the description. Sometimes the unsuccessful listing will show up in drafts, but if so, is usually incomplete. I learned to not leave my work for 10 minutes, but this recent listing failure happens if I take too long with listing. Will it never stop???

[monica-sells]

I have been trying it out the last couple days....

I write my own css/html code to accomodate mobile/tablet and desktop with floating divs and all the goodies to make my descriptions stand out......

The 'new' description input box destroys the formatting of the underlying html code and seems to render css useless....my once nicely formatted pages turn into a bunch of gobbledygook.....(sp?)

One giant block of text instead of line breaks.....that's no good....

I can get used to the other stuff....(albeit seems slower and cumbersome, but maybe with some repitition it will go faster)

[patternsaver]

Our internet service is often intermittent.  Listing on the new form with all the pop-ups is a nightmare for me.  It takes way too long and several times just when I think I am done, the internet goes down and everything is lost so I have to begin all over.

I cannot seem to find a way to get back to the classic form and certainly did not opt into the new one.  Even to revise an existing listing is a nightmare.   And soon they will retire the classic form for everyone and force you into this one.

So disappointed.  

I do not think I will be adding many new items for awhile.  I simply do  not have that much time to spend and not worth the frustration level.  Maybe they will work out some bugs but I would not count on them eliminating the pop-ups.  Time to concentrate on other venues. 

[rustydalmatian]

The eBay way........if it ain't broke, get the sledgehammer.