eBay.com abandon new links policy
1/08/2008 at 00:40
The saga of eBay.com’s changes to the links policy has come full circle tonight, with an announcement that there will be no changes at all at this time. Email addresses are still allowed on listings; website links are still allowed on ME pages.
Whatever the reality behind the change of mind is, it’s being presented by eBay themselves as “listening to sellers”: John McDonald writes “we received questions and concerns from sellers about this change … we’ve been reviewing all the different types of situations that our sellers have brought to our attention”. eBay had previously said that the implementation of the new policy would be delayed by a month, and at Live, Brian Burke said that the original announcement had probably been made prematurely. Certainly those who have spent hours and days editing listings to comply with a policy that’s now been abandoned, will wish it had been given a little more consideration first.
Gill says
9:57 am on 01/08/2008
Certainly those who have spent hours and days editing listings to comply with a policy that’s now been abandoned, will wish it had been given a little more consideration first.
Yes, that would be me – I decided that if the policy was changing, it would be sensible to get on and amend well over 1000 listings as I had more than 5 links in each listing (to other sections of my ebay shop), rather than end up with a short deadline to do it in and risk listings being pulled for infringing the new policy.
More fool me!
Whirly says
10:10 am on 01/08/2008
Sorry Gill
I don’t think eBay realise sometimes just how much work goes into running a business on eBay.
Chris Dawson says
10:31 am on 01/08/2008
The only advice I can give any seller is that item descriptions should be just that and no more.
Editing listings is a nightmare and much as I value template design building anything else in such as shipping/return/warranty/contact details etc means that they’re incredibly time intensive to edit.
If you want to include other information I’d strongly recommend it be limited to the shipping/returns policy/additional payment instruction/business seller info sections as they are at least editable in bulk.
eBay still don’t seem to realise that most sellers use TurboLister, SMP or a third party tool and store every item they list as a template. It’s not the ending, editing and relisting all live items and SIFs, it’s the editing of the 1000′s of stored templates that is the huge investment in time to make changes.
Sean Mewse says
11:07 am on 01/08/2008
I don’t think eBay always appreciate how much time is taken implementing all the changes. All our listings now just contain a description, no returns policy, no links it makes life far easier. I even removed a link to our website on our about us page, personally I prefer to promote my site away from my eBay sales, Sean
Sue Bailey says
11:11 am on 01/08/2008
I will never forget the weekend I spent removing Nochex links from my listings… only for eBay to reverse the policy on Monday. eBay really need to work on making listings more easily editable (and make SIF editable even when the listing has had sales).
Spoonfeeder as a listing tool has many faults, but one thing I did like about it was the “listing footer”, a file which you could include in every listing template, so that changing one file changed every single item you had saved.
AuctionChex says
11:21 am on 01/08/2008
eBay posted the announcement about no changes to the links policy at 1:21 pm.
At 4:00 pm, they posted this Identical Items and Finding Update announcement:
http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200807311600062.html
The Frequently Asked Questions that they linked to in the 4 pm announcement ( http://pages.ebay.com/sell/May2008Update/FAQ/ ) includes the Links policy changes that they revoked in the 1:21 pm announcement.
Chris Dawson says
11:24 am on 01/08/2008
#5 There is a really big hole in the listing tool market for a tool that reliably takes raw data – listing/price/title/item specifics etc and injects them into a master template which is then editable and will edit all stored listings.
Nothing really does that, and sadly the more complex your template (hopefully leading to a better buyer experience and more sales!) the harder it is to easily edit
Sadly no third party tool (and quite often in the past not even TurboLister) has been able to keep up to date with eBay changes. Until they can every time there’s a major change they’re next to useless
Chris Dawson says
11:26 am on 01/08/2008
#6 You know what Eddie, I spoke to Sue about that and meant to mention it and forgot
Very funny – the FAQs are the old ones from May
Whirly says
11:27 am on 01/08/2008
#6 lol
Gill says
11:33 am on 01/08/2008
Thanks Sue, for fixing the pig’s ear I made of my original post!
Steve H says
1:26 pm on 01/08/2008
#7 This is possible with Spoonfeeder using their “templates”. I can edit one text file and any future listings will take on those changes.
The main problem with SF (as I’m sure Sue will testify) is the speed, or lack of, with which they update the software to accommodate new eBay features, item specifics etc.
Sue Bailey says
1:29 pm on 01/08/2008
#11 Yep, Steve, won’t argue with you there. Support for more than one ID would be good too.