Super bizarre item specifics

[schloopertz]

So there may another thread about this, forgive me if there is...

I sell women's apparel and I noticed recently that these bizarre item specifics have cropped up that seem completely out of place for women's clothing, and only appropriate for costumes and children's clothing.

For example, there is a "theme" category and a "character" category, with suggestions like Astroboy and Barbie. What the hell?

My question is..if you don't fill these categories in, (the little blue circle doesn't show as being solid blue) does that cause the algorithm to make your items less visible? I have noticed a steep drop off in sales, and I am not sure if it's because many of my listings have had these item specifics added to them and are not all filled in, or if it's because I was recently forced into the managed payment system.  Can anyone please enlighten me a bit on this?

[gwzcomps]

I regularly choose not to fill in certain item specifics with no problems so far.  Especially if they don't apply.  The people at eBay expect us to fix these problems at our expense sadly.

[reallynicestamps]

The steep dropoff in sales probably has little to do with Item Specifics.

There has definitely been a surge in online selling that went from lockdown in March until re-openings started in late June.

Then a dropoff to normal summer sales, which are traditionally soft.

There was an excellent article in the Canadian Globe and Mail- Report on Business today (8/8/20) which also showed that even within that surge there was a drop in sales of garments and makeup.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-the-post-lockdown-consumer-how-the-global-crisis-ha...

There is a paywall unfortunately.

So what you are seeing may well be just that return to normal.

In my categories there are some odd IS.  I'm very confused when Antique and Antiquarian Books asks what kind of cuisine is covered. It's a political history of the Ottoman Empire in 18th century Greece. There are no recipes!

Check that the IS is not a dropdown and whether there is an option for "not applicable".

[schloopertz]

Ha! I love that they ask about cuisine with in the Antique book category, that's hilarious. It's like the programmers/formatter for the listing pages live on some distant planet and have only a basic grasp of what Ebay is about.

True, I hadn't thought that it could just be a return to normal, August IS normally abysmal, however, up until a couple of days ago I was making 3 times what I have been. My views are also very scattershot-I will have the EXACT same item listed in 2 different sizes, small and medium- and have 100 views for one, the other will have 20 views, listed within minutes of each other. It makes absolutely no sense, and people may accuse me of wearing a tinfoil hat, but there is definitely some serious view manipulating going on. I would just like to know why, and how I can change that. *sigh*

[simply-the-best-for-you]

They've been there for months & they are ridiculous.  I know a lot of clothing sellers & IDK one who fills out those bizarre ones.  

[postingid7659]

There are adult women's clothing lines with Barbie themes, Torrid and Hot Topic have various theme lines each season.  

Those categories exist because someone somewhere added enough of them for it to stick in the system.

I don't sell clothes but I ignore non-relevant specifics with no apparent issue, I still have sales.   As long as some of them are filled out it's usually good enough.

[simply-the-best-for-you]

Those are Jrs clothes, not adult women's clothing.   This is part of the problem, Ebay doesn't have a Jrs category, which is in between kids & adult (though the fashion industry does & it's Jrs).  It causes a lot of problems plus sizes too, b/c Jr plus sizes can't easily be differentiated from Women's plus sizes & the two are radically different.  As a general rule, 99% of women's clothing (not Jrs) does NOT have themes or characters.  

While some IS's are added b/c people entered enough of them, that is not how most are added & given that all these constructs are brand new with the last

change, they were purposefully & ridiculously added by Ebay.  Been selling in CSA for 20+ years.   After messing with IS's twice a year for the last 4 years, they FINALLY got it right, most everything was correct & now they COMPLETELY screwed it up again with the last change.  For about 6 months, we didn't even have industry standard options for plus sizes (1x,2x,3x), they FINALLY fixed that, though it took months to add those very basic & MOST COMMON options, but they are still at the very bottom of the drop down, even though they're the most used.   During the first 2 days of listing after the latest round of changes, I racked up 3 pages of notes on errors & missing specifics.  It's a MESS.   

Not to mention the torture of years worth of changes that would make really important changes like changing v-neck to vneck to v-neckline to v neckline back to v-neck & J. Crew to J.Crew to J CREW & so on.  Each one of those ridiculous changes causing sellers to have to change THOUSANDS of items.  Sadly, I'm not exaggerating, it's been a debacle & some of the answers we get show that Ebay's own employees do not understand how IS's are used in search.  

ETA:  OP, also size DOES matter in views.  It's completely normal to receive different views in different sizes of the same item & August has historically always been the slowest month of the year in CSA unless you sell BTS.  Of course there isn't much school coming this year. 

[pjcdn2005]

I think that they have those same choices in most or all of the clothing and accessories categories as I also see a Barbie and Dora the Explorer character choices for mens wallets.  Some of the material types they have listed are bizarre too...aluminum, beaver, copper, guanaco..

[schloopertz]

I completely agree with everything you have stated. So, just a question- did you go through your listings one by one to write n/a or none in the new item specifics? I'm debating doing it, I'm not sure if it will affect my views or sales.

[thejo-52]

yeah this is new and SUPER stupid .  I don't fill in half now because they don't even come close to applying to my item.  Ebay has lost their mind and I go along to make a few bucks and I am actually still grateful.  Love my sales but CRAZY for sure.

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@schloopertz wrote:

I completely agree with everything you have stated. So, just a question- did you go through your listings one by one to write n/a or none in the new item specifics? I'm debating doing it, I'm not sure if it will affect my views or sales.

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Absolutely NOT.  Do NOT do that!  It's a total waste of your time & will NOT help you at all.  Write-ins do not help you, there is no point, unless you are trying to communicate something special or unusual to the buyer.  Even then, frankly, almost no buyer read Item Specs.  

Item Specs are used for left hand side navigation for those who search that way.  The one thing that DOES help is to (as much as possible) choose from their drop downs, do not write in your own.  If you don't choose from their drop downs, that item will not come up when someone searches uses left side navigation.  That said, IDK how many people really navigate that way, but some do.   Just leave the ones you don't use blank.  

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@pjcdn2005 wrote:

I think that they have those same choices in most or all of the clothing and accessories categories as I also see a Barbie and Dora the Explorer character choices for mens wallets.  Some of the material types they have listed are bizarre too...aluminum, beaver, copper, guanaco..

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You mean you DON'T have a Barbie copper & guanaco wallet in your pocket???  They're *all* the rage 😀  

On a serious note, I had no idea they were in every CSA category, interesting.  I also don't understand why that added Department, since it's redundant with the Category.   Ughhh & don't get me started in womens tops about Style & Type, both of which are basically the same thing & both of which are WOEFULLY inadequate.  We lost our Knit Tops in Style & I sell probably 50% knit tops.  It's scary how messed up it is! 

[reallynicestamps]

I disagree with your point about left-hand Searches.

You're not wrong about the Search,

but Item Specifics are useful to the phone shopper (and any other) as a quick and VISIBLE summary of what is on offer-- brand, place of manufacture, fabric, date, used/unused/NWT, colour, publisheer, literary movement.

(Yes, I did use both garment and book specifics in there. )

Over half our customers are shopping on phones and those beautiful layouts are invisible or annoying to phone shoppers.

I'm not saying don't use them. Layout is a good "branding".  But IS are practical.

[chapeau-noir]

Yes - I fill out all basic and applicable IS's - I do have an add-on IS which is garment measurements (CYA) and I do think they're important for basic search as they're a fast break-down, as well as being common to most websites so people are used to using them.  The weird ones - waste of time.  eBay tried to make there IS's top-down with meta-categories and breakdown after that, but it didn't work very well - hence the silly themes for adult clothing.

Hot Topic and Torrid have a few styles with themes but they're pretty few and generally are matched to brand, anyway.  

[simply-the-best-for-you]

Yeah, good point about the phone shoppers.  I do not shop on a phone & neither do (consistently) 60% of my buyers, but certainly there are many shoppers who do & your percentage differs based on demographics for what you sell.  My demos skew a bit older.