Creating Effective eBay Listings -- Categories

This is the second in a series of articles about how you can create effective eBay listings that help drive both sales and great customer experiences.

A well crafted listing will have everything a prospective buyer needs to make a purchasing decision.

In general, you want your listings to follow these guidelines:

• Place the item in the right category
• Create an descriptive title
• Include high-quality, accurate photos
• Utilize eBay's catalog when available, provide structured data when it's not
• Provide a brief, concise description

This article will focus on eBay categories.

Now it may seem a no-brainer to list an item in the proper category, but it's worth covering none-the-less.  
There are two primary reasons to ensure the accuracy of the categories under which you are listing:

1. Providing a great customer experience: buyers will inspect, in part, the category the listing is in to get visual assurance the item is going to be the actual thing they want to purchase.  For example, you can list an iPhone case either in the "iPhone 6 Accessories" category or in "Cell Phones Other" category.  While the former may not even be noticed by the buyer (because it's as he/she expects it to be), the latter will likely cause the buyer to think twice about the purchase.  In other words, cause unnecessary friction in the buying process -- and other listings won't have that friction. 
2. Avoiding eBay penalties:  eBay policy states you must list your item in the proper category.  They do so to protect buyers from seeing listings in one category that clearly should be in another.  Unscrupulous sellers have used this method to "game" the system.  For example, that iPhone case could be listed in the "iPhone 6" category instead of the proper "iPhone 6 Accessories" category.  The price of the case would be much lower than the iPhone 6 -- and the case could then end up at the top of the search results at the detriment of honest sellers.  For buyers, it pollutes the results making it frustrating to find the item you are looking for.

At CommerceESB, we have a long track record of helping sellers create effective listings.  Please contact your account manager if you want some advice -- we are happy to help our customers continue growing their business!