Jewellery sellers, you may have heard about the latest set of mandates and that your store could be impacted by these changes. The changes must be made by the 22nd February 2022 and if missed, they can have a negative impact on your sales and online visibility. Not to worry, we can help you navigate these changes and even have some tools that can make this task easier for you.
Mandates in a nutshell
If you haven’t experienced one of eBay’s mandates before, you may be unsure what they mean. This is a process that takes place a few times a year where eBay require certain Item Specifics to be populated in certain categories. These changes are required as eBay monitor their traffic and how customers filter. They determine the changes based on how to make the most positive changes to the buying and selling experience. So, being affected by this mandate is actually good news for your store. It means that buyers are searching for listings just like yours! This doesn’t automatically mean that the traffic can or will come to your listings. You need to put the work in first!
Some of the categories affected include*:
| Category |
Product |
| Engagement & Wedding |
Engagement & Wedding Ring Sets |
| Fine Jewellery |
Necklaces & Pendants |
| Ethnic, Regional & Tribal |
Bracelets & charms |
| Men's Jewellery |
Cufflinks |
*Please note these examples are from the UK spreadsheet but good examples to give you context for any region you sell in.
Here is a full list of the Item Specifics you may be required to populate for UK listings:
- Bead size
- Brand
- Colour
- Gemstone Type
- Main Stone
- Material
- Metal
- Metal Purity
- Ring size
- Stone Creation
- Stone Type
- Style
- Type
What happens if you miss the deadline?
It is important for sellers to know that if you miss the deadline, you will be unable to re-list any of your listings or create new ones. It also means that your listings will be filtered out as customers narrow down their search using the aspects on the left-hand side of the page. So, although you may think you have plenty of time to make the changes, the time between now and February will fly by. Additionally, by making these changes earlier, you may see an improvement in ranking, traffic and sales performance before the changes are even imposed. However, we know this time of year is extremely busy for online sellers, so getting to know and use our tools can help automate this potentially lengthy process for you.
We have the tools to support you
Aspect Finder+ allows you to see which of your listings have Required, Required Soon, Recommended or Optional Item Specifics, you can select eBay approved aspects from the drop-downs so you can be sure your Item Specifics will generate traffic.
A feature recently added to the Aspect Finder+ tool is the Bulk Updates, this was highly requested by many users and is a feature that is sure to save you time when updating a large number of listings. Bulk updates do what they say on the tin, they allow you to update multiple listings at once. It speeds up the time-consuming process of going through your listings one by one. Make the most of this tool and get ahead of the looming deadline.
Aspect Finder+ shows you the status of all of your Item Specifics for every listing on your store. This can be overwhelming when you are looking to tackle the required Item Specifics first. One of our latest releases included the Filter Builder Feature of AF+. This way you can opt to see certain Item Specifics, for example by applying an eBay mandates filter, you can drill down to this area to prioritise these first and come back to the rest when you have the time. This filter ensures you populate the Item Specifics which will have the highest impact and be most beneficial to your listings.
To help you prioritise even further, our Category Lookup tool is an essential part of many of our client’s tool kits. It gives you the insight to understand how frequently searched and filtered certain ITemItem Specifics are for your category. This tool shows a 1-5 star rating which indicates how frequently buyers are filtering using these Item Specifics. You can be certain this data is up to date as eBay monitors and updates this data every 30 days.
Access these tools and more by signing up to a 7 day free trial to one of our plans.
Hopefully this overview has given you all the info you need to get started and begin to populate these Required Soon Item Specifics. If you have any questions, please get in touch at customersuccess@optiseller.com.
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