New Listing Tool is Too Frustrating & Time Consuming To Use

[siamjane8]

I tried again yesterday and after 5 hours and 4 calls to customer service- I got a total of 6 listings actually done and live.  By 1pm- I just quit for the day- i could not stand it anymore. Today i did not even bother to try.  This new tool is just not working- the design is distracting and riddled with jarring popups and submenus everywhere and nothing is any sort of logical order.   Maybe it makes sense from a programmer's perspective but as an actual User Interface- its a complete failure for use on a computer desktop or laptop.  ANd then there is the fact that its just simply not even working lately.

    Please ebay- help us to help you!- if the listings dry up- so do the fvf's, then the GMV continues to spiral , then the advertising and managed payments fees decline.......... See the trend- WE NEED A LISTING TOOL THAT IS FAST AND EFFICIENT LIKE THE CLASSIC.

[buyologist-3]

Wow!  It looks like it's working as they announced and planned.  'Bay wants to go high-end and slowing or depressing the small sellers by making obstacles along the way is a method, for sure.  This new listing format sounds horrible! Only 6 listings in 5 hours?!? I'm pooped just hearing that! Many are voicing their opinions and experiences and any other venue would be doing something about it, so let's see what happens.  My sympathies to all. I wish I could think of a good solution.  🤔 

[iart]

I hear you and I don't mean to sound patronizing, but the first step is to realize that the old tool is gone and not coming back. The new tool might be tweaked, but we are stuck with it.

Adjust your tactics to fit the new system. Do what eBay is making you do, not what you are used to doing, not what is better, not what is necessarily the correct way to do it.

Be ready to explain the situation to buyers if they complain.

Sometimes, ya gotta plow through instead of trying to go around.

[buyselljack2016]

I have not started from scratch with the new listing form, but have done some as "sell similar", and the process, although annoying, is very doable, and takes very little time for me to do a listing.

On a PC  using firefox

[buyologist-3]

I used Sell Similar and love it!  Nice to hear it works.  (I feel better, now. Ha!)

[dnasilver]

"Sometimes, ya gotta plow through instead of trying to go around" yep plow through that wall of fire or avalanche or tidal wave.....who would think going around makes sense?

[yuzuha]

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@buyselljack2016 wrote:

I have not started from scratch with the new listing form, but have done some as "sell similar", and the process, although annoying, is very doable, and takes very little time for me to do a listing.

On a PC  using firefox

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Same, also on a PC with Firefox. The other day I did 14 "Sell Similar" listings in under half an hour. It's not bad starting from scratch, either.  I've done several of those too and I don't find that it takes any more time than the old form.

[chapeau-noir]

I actually had 'USPS first class' finally pop up as a shipping when I was listing when it had been missing before because of some strange problem with my templates - it was bizarre but I'll take it.  So seems to be working OK - it feels a little unstable because periodically IS's don't 'stick' and once they all disappeared, but that could have been fat fingeritis. 

Some are citing, though, that they're having problems with the image upload. 

[reallynicestamps]

I'm using Firefox on a Mac and have been making templates since jasmen@ebay  told us on dotCA that those will not be impacted by the new form.

Which I did try.

It is worse than horrible, terrible, no good, and very bad.

It seems to have been designed for phone listing of mass manufactured merchandise, while many successful small sellers are featuring collectibles of many types.

This is the eBay that made eBay eBay.

[siamjane8]

I agree that it may be as fast for listing mass produced "in catalog", cookie cutter listings with all the item specifics pre populated and a couple of stock photos and generic one size fits all shipping for every listing....... but that s not what a huge portion of the platform sells.    I know the classic will not come back because of back end coding but that does not mean that the new tool has to be so bad and so mobile.   I can all but guarantee that there is not one person at ebay that uses there phone as a a primary work device. Why is ebay forcing me to do that in my business now?

Again- if the tool would even work - thats one thing, but i cant even get a listing to stick right now.  it will only send the listing back to drafts instead of listing it.

[luckythewinner]

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@buyselljack2016 wrote:

I have not started from scratch with the new listing form, but have done some as "sell similar", and the process, although annoying, is very doable, and takes very little time for me to do a listing.

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I have six selling accounts, and three of them are using the new tool and three are using the old. 

I did a handful of listings in each tool and I found almost no difference in time using the two, but I did notice one annoying thing in the new tool: 

When an item specific is too long for the allotted space, the tool gives the message that says an item specific is missing rather than saying it is not valid. That took me a couple minutes to figure out, but once noted it was no longer an issue. 

[reallynicestamps]

The problem with listing on a phone is that there isn't enough room on the tiny keyboard for all my fingers.

So instead of typing at about 40 words per minute (and then correcting my spelling) I am down to five words per minute and another five for wiping out all the stuff I entered after an unnoticed spelling error.

I also cannot figure out how to cut and paste on a phone, but that's probably just me being a technodolt. Normally I write my descriptions in a text document, add HTML, and then paste that onto the Description.

[buyologist-3]

BRAVO!  Brought a tear to my eye.  And then listened to Eddie Money's 'We Should Be Sleeping'!  🎶 Lots of fun today on 'Ebay...'   🎶  🎊 🎶

[johnson_junk_company]

You would be surprised! Using app is the way most do it and it’s way easier than the desktop version. If the phone isn’t your thing, get a tablet and use the app there. 

[zamo-zuan]

Some of eBay's design decisions absolutely baffle me. It's the same as what they did to the forums here a year ago (Crazy that so much time has passed already!)

I understand them wanting to make a unified experience between mobile and pc, that's standard "responsive design" that you see in every web application nowadays.

But once you see their tool in action, the decisions follow no logic. For example, if you click the shipping options, and it has a HUGE popup using a ridiculously high font size, and requires 2-3 pages of scrolling just to get down to the "standard" shipping options...?

The responsive design tools contain features that allow designers to literally change the size of windows, font sizes, width, columns - everything - to tailor the application for big and small screens. 

Why on earth are they taking the mobile version and scaling it UP on top a PC screen?! Rather than scaling the font size down, making the popup a bit wider to fit more information, using both columns? Since they're using responsive design the tools to do this are integrated! 

It has to be a conscious decision for them to make it scale to PC poorly. Considering it does scale at all, it's not an oversight. The only conclusion that makes sense is they are doing this to encourage people to use the mobile tools, as PC offers no advantage, and it's actually a drawback that you can't simply swipe a finger to scroll down multiple pages. But if this is the case - it's outrageous to not give adequate tools for both PC and mobile. Not everyone has the capability or wants to use their phone to list.

You could see the same illogical decisions on this forum. Poor use of vertical space. More than 1/3 of the screen is whitespace. Font sizes follow no rhyme or reason. Menus taking up nearly the top 50% of the screen.

It's poor design. The decisions being made are the very things that are taught to be bad practice in the very first days of learning web design. Shouldn't we expect more from a company as large as eBay?