The final countdown
There’s officially just 4 days to go until the eBay mandates deadline. This means that after this date you will be unable to re-list or add any new listings if they don’t include the newly required Item Specifics. If you haven’t been through a mandate before, let us explain!
What are eBay mandates?
eBay mandate certain Item Specifics a few times a year. But this isn’t without good reason, they monitor how buyers have been filtering and mandate changes for stores who have an influx in traffic for particular Item Specifics. So, although it involves some extra work, it will be well worth it in the long run. If you populate the right Item Specifics, your chances of ranking and attracting the right traffic to your listings are far higher than delaying and letting the deadline pass.
What are Item Specifics?
Item Specifics are the data that buyers use to filter down their search, on eBay they are located on the left-hand side of search results. They facilitate the customer journey and allow customers to find what they want quickly. This also benefits you, the seller, as it increases the likelihood that the right traffic will find your listings and place an order. In doing so, this will also increase your conversion rate. Typical examples of Item Specifics include brand, type, size and colour.
Here are a few examples of affected categories in the Musical Instruments vertical for the UK:
| Category |
Product |
| DJ Equipment |
DJ Mixers |
| DJ Equipment |
Cables, Leads & Connectors |
| Karaoke Entertainment |
Karaoke Players & Machines |
| DJ Turntable Parts & Accessories |
Buttons & knobs |
Here is a full list of the Item Specifics that may be required for UK listings:
- Brand
- Colour
- Connectivity
- Form Factor
- Media Type
- Model
- Type
- Preamp Type
We have the tools to help you!
Our Aspect Finder+ tool generates a detailed report highlighting which of your listings have Required, Required Soon, Recommended or Optional Item Specifics. To help you populate them with eBay approved data, you can then use dropdowns which we provide. These are the Item Specifics that will generate traffic to your listings.
Aspect Finder+ has a Bulk Updates feature that will help you save time and resources. The feature was designed to tackle a common issue for sellers. Many of our customers with a large inventory were often finding themselves bogged down, having to populate the same Item Specific for hundreds if not thousands of listings. We designed our Bulk updates feature to tackle this problem. It does what it says on the tin, it allows you update as many listings as you want in one go. It speeds up what used to be a lengthy process of entering the same Item Specific one at a time. Make use of this feature to make your changes before the deadline.
Aspect Finder+ has yet another handy feature - the Filter Builder Feature allows you to filter through Item Specifics to prioritise what needs done first. For you to tackle the mandated changes quickly, it would be most beneficial to apply an eBay mandates filter. This way, you can drill down to this area to ensure these are all done before the deadline. Tackle the rest at a later date once the deadline has passed. Use this filter to ensure you populate the Item Specifics with the highest impact and tackle the changes where you’ll see the most benefits to your listings.
Our Category Lookup tool is also an essential tool for many of our customers as it gives the insight to understand how frequently searched and filtered certain Item Specifics are in your listing’s category. You will see a 1 to 5-star rating to indicate how frequently buyers are filtering using these Item Specifics. eBay monitors this and updates the data every 30 days, so you’ll always be provided with the latest data.
The example above shows the Cables, Leads & Connectors category in our Category Lookup Tool. The required Item Specific of 'Brand' has 5 stars, and the soon to be required 'Type' has 4. You can see from this example what a difference populating them could make to your listings. These Item Specifics could be the difference between a buyer coming to your listing, or a competitor's.
We hope you now feel equipped to tackle these changes.
Use our tools to get your listings ready for the upcoming mandate, start your 7-day free trial here.
For more mandate content, check out the blogs below.
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