eBay

itccosmetics · ‎07-22-2017

Hi Everyone,

Does adding the UPC to listings, change your sales at all?

Or....I even read where listings aren't visible in Google searches if the UPC isn't included.

I appreciate any and all advise and/or answers.

Brenda Sue

d-k_treasures · ‎08-09-2017

@timemachine777 wrote:
@d-k_treasures wrote:
@timemachine777 wrote:
@syedmhaq wrote:
@bubbleman2010 wrote:
What a dull life someone must lead to search ebay for a item by the bar code...
Scanning a barcode using a mobile phone is a very quick and convenient way of finding the exact product you're looking for. Doing a keyword search might return a number of similar products that you may not be interested in.
eBay is becoming the filter king. So, lets see...Most people I know, say hey...check out this new product I've been using. You have to get one. So, I go on line and do a keyword search, and I get a hit from everyone except eBay. Huh...Nobody on eBay must sell this great product everyone is raving about?

But, wait eBay sellers do carry the product. Your friend should have told you the product bar code, and not the product name. eBay...now the new experience. Home of the visual and bar code search. Can't-see-me on Steroids. Just one word...Brilliant.
And your friend needs to save the box so he can give you the barcode ....... yep - brilliant!

Hey honey, I need to buy some things on eBay today. I going to get 174980018443, 394826600001, 439700337155, and I need 3 333672999013, and a couple of those 933878701100's, and didn't you say you needed a couple of 777119303036's? Oh, BTW...What else do you need? I think 878786200015 would look great on you.

_____________________________
"Nothing is obvious to the oblivious"

bubbleman2010 · ‎08-09-2017

southern they aren't chasing the hot can't keep on shelf items they are chasing the mostly always there mundane merchandise. Next time you go to the grocery store when you return home shop for your groceries on ebay its all here except beer,milk and cigarettes...

bubbleman2010 · ‎08-09-2017

People used to shop ebay for the WOW factor now mostly shopping for the mundane. It was fun and exciting during the wild west days,but once the squatters started showing up you knew the only place left was the toliet....

garmentvarmint2004 · ‎08-09-2017

BUBBLE..

The harder Ebay makes it for me to find the items I want to buy here---the more frequently I will go to other Sites to buy. Right now, Ebay is usually my first choice to look for things I want. BUT as time goes by--I do keep finding other Sites that have what I want----when Ebay does not.

For instance in order to find some good quality white cotton socks recently, I definetly needed to go elsewhere.

Fo

bubbleman2010 · ‎08-09-2017

Most folks just don't relize how bad the Chinese invasion has become on ebay. They are here only to sell they have no intentions of completing the ecomerce circle they are here to syphon funds out and not put back in the pot. 5,714,706 sterling items USA only 1,584,836 ebays falling over themselves picking up pennies nickels and dimes and not noticing the dollars floating off elsewhere....

timemachine777 · ‎08-09-2017

@syedmhaq wrote:
@itccosmetics I would highly recommend that you include the UPC whenever available.
eBay is building rich new buying experiences that depend on sellers providing UPCs and as many aspects as possible.
When you provide this information your listings will show up in these new experiences.
e.g. your listing for Clinique Foaming Soap :
http://www.ebay.com/itm/172809013167
currently doesn't show up on the Clinique Foaming Soap product page:
https://www.ebay.com/p/clinique-foaming-sonic-facial-soap/691132882

But if you provide the UPC, then your listing will show up in these new experiences.

Did you know that almost all people can only remember 5 to 7 digits, and their ability to remember multiple sets of large numbers that they commonly use is extremely limited. Due to this reason, phone numbers are broken into 3 sets. The common area code for your state, central office prefix for your area in your town, and line number which is unique to your home.

The reason I point this out is because even though bar codes are broken down also. They contain 12 digits, and people would not be able to store these numbers in memory. Maybe a few that are used a lot will take hold, but not a lot. Most people can not tell you their bank account number, which is also 12 digits. An CC numbers are 16. These would be seen a lot, and repeated a lot over the phone, yet people struggle to remember them.

So with that said. How does eBay and it's brilliant team of innovators expect people to memorize the thousands of product numbers to match the thousands of products that they are familiar with by name and use from time to time?

When it comes to Linguistics our brains treat words totally different then number symbols. Everyone would have to be trained as an infant to recognize a string of digits as a specific object. In other words...037000003120 would be - Cavity Protection Liquid Gel Toothpaste- Cool Mint, forever.

So you would need to memorize every UPC for every single tube of tooth paste out there to know them apart. This way you would be able to just look at a string of 12 digits, and without really thinking about it, know what it means, like a 12 letter word. How many different shirts are out in the world?

timemachine777 · ‎08-09-2017

@garmentvarmint2004 wrote:
BUBBLE..

The harder Ebay makes it for me to find the items I want to buy here---the more frequently I will go to other Sites to buy. Right now, Ebay is usually my first choice to look for things I want. BUT as time goes by--I do keep finding other Sites that have what I want----when Ebay does not.
For instance in order to find some good quality white cotton socks recently, I definetly needed to go elsewhere.

Fo

Sounds like an issue I have with my local Walmart. I use to do almost all my grocery shopping there except for my meats. I rarely used our other supermarket because it's more expensive for the same items and size. So, Walmart has this really bad habit of always changing the mod (Product line and placement within the store), so I would have to go to the other supermarket to get my item that was changed out for a cheaper item or hiddden, to the point that I would get tried of looking for it.

Well, over about a ten year period, I went from doing no shopping at the other supermarket, to almost all my shopping at the other supermarket. That supermarket use to be dead shortly after Walmart came to town 15 yrs ago. Now they are busy again, and Walmart's dead. Something eBay should think about.

palmbeachclosets · ‎08-09-2017

Perfect when you run out of toner for your printer or your favorite cosmetics or even Mike & Ikes...just scan and boom there's your product.

However, when it comes to my handbag shopping, i can browse ebay by keyword search all day because im not sure what i want til i see it.

chapeau-noir · ‎08-09-2017

@palmbeachclosets wrote:
Perfect when you run out of toner for your printer or your favorite cosmetics or even Mike & Ikes...just scan and boom there's your product.

However, when it comes to my handbag shopping, i can browse ebay by keyword search all day because im not sure what i want til i see it.

That's it in a nutshell! It's good on commodity areas like that. If you sell one-off stuff, used items, collectibles and the like, it won't make much difference because compatible products also won't have UPCs. If you can add a proper UPC, I would do it for just what @palmbeachclosets says. It brings the product up faster for the shopper, if they're using a barcode scanner (I have one on my phone).

I always add it when I can - but no worries if I can't. It just sieves out the really crowded categories.

Hell is empty. And all the devils are here.

timemachine777 · ‎08-09-2017

@palmbeachclosets wrote:
Perfect when you run out of toner for your printer or your favorite cosmetics or even Mike & Ikes...just scan and boom there's your product.

However, when it comes to my handbag shopping, i can browse ebay by keyword search all day because im not sure what i want til i see it.

But that's only if you already have that product to scan, right.

1786davycrockett · ‎08-09-2017

How many times do we have to hear the expression "new richer buying experiences," before it begins to sound like the "Great South-East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" or the "Second Five-Year Plan"? (History majors will get my drift!) "New richer buying experiences" sounds particularly Orwellian, especially when the eBay apologists regularly mouth it off, as if it were some kind of holy mantra. The phrase itself sounds particularly foreign, as if it were coined (dare I say it?) in CHINA!?!

syedmhaq · ‎08-10-2017

@bubbleman2010 wrote:

dk near as I can figure the only ones being shown by bar code search are the ones they've paid the promotion grease money the rest are in a link at the bottom of the page....

@bubbleman2010 UPC has nothing to do with sellers giving any promotion money. It's just a way for eBay and Google to understand which exact product you're selling.

syedmhaq · ‎08-10-2017

@sharingtheland wrote:

However in most cases they will not show up in the new richer buying experiences being developed by eBay.

Over time more and more buyers will be using these new richer experiences and you wouldn't want your items to be missing from there.

I'm confused; remind me again, please: What exactly is the new richer buying experience?

As far as I know, and my knowledge does not include facebook ebay talk, no one has ever said what happens when a UPC that has been reissued to another item is entered (as has been mentioned here a zillion times) and/or what happens when the seller purchases her/his own UPCs? How does ebay use these in this rich experience?

Does ebay have a richer experience planned for those buyers who are seeking items that have "Does Not Apply" in the UPC field? I know I sell a lot of those dna items so the buyers are finding them. Somehow. Currently.

You are right that there are some bogus or recycled UPCs out there so UPC is not a 100% reliable way to identify a unique product. But the relative percentage of those bogus UPCs is really small.

We are also creating richer experiences for non UPC based products as well. What kind of products are you interested in? I can point you to the new experiences for those products.

d-k_treasures · ‎08-10-2017

@syedmhaq wrote:
@sharingtheland wrote:
However in most cases they will not show up in the new richer buying experiences being developed by eBay.
Over time more and more buyers will be using these new richer experiences and you wouldn't want your items to be missing from there.

I'm confused; remind me again, please: What exactly is the new richer buying experience?

As far as I know, and my knowledge does not include facebook ebay talk, no one has ever said what happens when a UPC that has been reissued to another item is entered (as has been mentioned here a zillion times) and/or what happens when the seller purchases her/his own UPCs? How does ebay use these in this rich experience?

Does ebay have a richer experience planned for those buyers who are seeking items that have "Does Not Apply" in the UPC field? I know I sell a lot of those dna items so the buyers are finding them. Somehow. Currently.
You are right that there are some bogus or recycled UPCs out there so UPC is not a 100% reliable way to identify a unique product. But the relative percentage of those bogus UPCs is really small.
We are also creating richer experiences for non UPC based products as well. What kind of products are you interested in? I can point you to the new experiences for those products.

Seriously? After 3 years of the last use, a UPC can be recycled. So how can you say it's a relatively small percentage?

_____________________________
"Nothing is obvious to the oblivious"

syedmhaq · ‎08-10-2017

@d-k_treasures wrote:

@syedmhaq wrote:

@d-k_treasures wrote:

@syedmhaq wrote:

@bubbleman2010 wrote:

syedmhaq so you're saying if a seller doesn't enter the bar code the listings will not be shown to buyers? By title 237 items,by bar code 33 items so 204 listings are being paid for to be advertised,but aren't being shown to the buying public?

@bubbleman2010 buyers can still get to listings without UPCs through regular search on ebay.com. However in most cases they will not show up in the new richer buying experiences being developed by eBay.

Over time more and more buyers will be using these new richer experiences and you wouldn't want your items to be missing from there.

You meant to say "forced into these new experiences'", right?

@d-k_treasures we feel confident that users will love these new experiences a lot more than doing a regular search.

e.g. compare the following two experiences and let me know which one you like better.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=Handbags

https://www.ebay.com/b/Handbags-Purses/63852/bn_739474

@syedmhaq

Neither. But I wouldn't buy a handbag, either. And they both look the same. Bunch of photos. No seller info. At least the first one defaults to ending soonest, the other is probably BM(literally and figurativly)

Let's pick one of my categories to try - pre-war trains or antique toys, auctions only.

Oh - and in some cases, you ARE forced into the pages of photos. You have to search for something like 'a', then you get the normal list, then you can remove 'a' and go on about your business.