eBay should abolish multi-variation listings

[mbeaumont7]

For several years multi variation listings have been causing problems. Treated as eBay's panacea to dealing with other online stores inasmuch as positioning itself as one, they just don't work with its search engine.

On Amazon, sellers find an item and attach their goods to it. On eBay, each seller creates a listing individually. 

The search enguine has been getting dumber since the site launched. Years ago they deleted the wild card. Now, if a search is done for a particular item, and the list is ordered in price (a basic option for any ecommerce site) the cheapest multi-varation appears. Further, these multi-variation often exploit the broken rules of eBay, allowing listings of items within them that aren't in the item title, or are not the key search term most buyers would be looking for. An example is SD cards, where a seller might list a very cheap adapter with a series of SD cards which are more expensive than their competitors.

Further, eBay's response to this problem is also broken. "Best Match" shows listings which are the most accessed, which are more often than not, those which eBay choses to promote. I also query if what eBay thinks is my 'best match' is in fact what I was looking for in the first place. How would eBay know what my key critera of purchase are?

These broken multi-variation formats cannot be reported for eBay because they technically aren't against guidelines. Even if they could, the policing at eBay is so behind that I doubt they'd ever be on top of all the search and browser manipulation occuring. 

The simplest answer is to acknowledge that eBay is fundamentally a website of individual item listings, as it was designed initially. That means abandoning multi-variation listings.

[kopenhagen5]

I still think multi variation listings have their place and I find them useful at times.

However the exploitation of eBay functions need to be policed aiming towards total eradication.

To begin with perhaps eBay could have a seach refinement to eliminate multi variation listings.

[springyzone]

I agree with you, they can be intensely annoying, the way some of them work at the moment.

I don't mind listings where there is a drop down menu to choose a different colour or different size of the same thing.

But I think the key words should be same item.

[digital*ghost]

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@mbeaumont7 wrote:

On Amazon, sellers find an item and attach their goods to it. 

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For better or worse, eBay are attempting to move towards this set-up, so (at least theoretcially), the issue will eventually (or perhaps hopefully) be resolved that way.

Even if not, I can't see eBay ever getting rid of the format, because it reduces volumes of listings. I use them frequently, and while I only have a small store, my listing count would increase from a bit over 600 to 950-1000 if I had to list each item separately. Multiply that by literal millions as a result of some of the t-shirt sellers on this site, who are also using the format correctly, and then good luck ever browsing certain categories again (i.e. it's a lose / lose situation whichever way you look at it, in some regards). 

The most pertinent point however is that the sellers who abuse the format do it for one reason alone - it works.

If it didn't work, they wouldn't do it. That means for every buyer who complains about it, there are probably several who found a listing like that and bought regardless. The worst offenders tend to be located in China, and eBay caved in to pressure from eBay CN to abolish all selling fees for Chinese sellers. Considering money is pretty much their priority, if there was enough pressure to cave to that, I also doubt they'd push back on an issue like this, which means if eBay's shift to product-based listings doesn't work, they only way it will be stopped is if consumers (as a whole) change their behaviour.

[jellybirddesigns]

Most of my listings are multi-variation by size as I sell cushion covers etc in 3-4 options.

It would be an utter disaster if I had to make a separate listing for each and every size I carry in each and every fabric.

My listings would jump from approx 400 to over 2000, which would become unpleasant and my store subscription limit would be used up very quickly.

[travelsizeme]

I am just wondering if (apart from reducing the number of listings one has) there are any other benefits to listing with multi variation? Has anybody found that their variated listings perform better / worse than their single item BINs or auctions?

[travelsizeme]

Sorry I didn’t realise this thread wasn’t on the selling board (I found it through a search). I am happy to repost my question there if it can’t be moved manually by a moderator?

[go-tazz]

Their latest way of abusing the listings is to list with a photo of a more expensive item that shows in the search

results but when you click on the listing the photo changes to some cheap **bleep**py over priced item because all

the other items are out of stock,(which were never in stock to start with),

[digital*ghost]

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@travelsizeme wrote:
I am just wondering if (apart from reducing the number of listings one has) there are any other benefits to listing with multi variation? Has anybody found that their variated listings perform better / worse than their single item BINs or auctions?

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The primary benefit to sellers is listing ranking - the more sales an individual listing has, the higher the ranking it gets in best match search results, this makes one listing with 20 sales far more attractive than 5 separate listings with around 4 sales each - but speaking from personal experience, variations should be limited to items with only one visual difference that can be displayed when an option is selected.

T-shirts are my go-to example for this kind of thing as it's the easiest example to use, though sometimes imperfect - if you screenprint t-shirts, and can do them in multiple styles (sleeveless, normal, longsleeved), multiple colours and with multiple designs, sales will suffer if you try to cram too many of those options into one listing, because eBay images aren't dynamic and you can only upload photos to one variation type. 

I'd be inclined to list a single design, a single print, and make it available in multiple colours and sizes, with the uploaded pictures showing the print on different colour tees. That would mean one listing for a long-sleeve with one print, available in different colours and sizes, and then a different listing for short sleeve with the same print, with different colours and sizes. (Admittedly the short / long sleeve isn't hard for buyers to visualise, so there are plenty of t-shirt sellers who will include these kinds of variations in a single listing, but there are a lot of other things where you don't want visual differences to be left up to the buyer's imagination at all). 

Buyers and purchase decisions are quite visual these days, so I am not keen on having options in variation listings that don't become visible in images when an option is selected - I also experimented with listings where buyers were able to select from more than one variation to customise a piece of jewellery - before I made the variation listing, it was one of my most popular designs ever. Once I gave buyers the option to choose their own attachments to add to the basic design, I hardly ever sold another one again, because there were too many combinations, and I could only show a very small handful of them.