Sellers in the musical instrument categories, your listings could be affected by the latest eBay mandates. It is important to get ahead of these changes and fully understand them before the 12th of July deadline.
You will have heard about these changes but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you understand why they are happening or how to tackle them. If your listings are affected by the mandates, it means your products are being regularly searched and filtered for. If you ensure that you populate the required Item Specifics you are more likely to boost ranking and increase the likelihood of a sale.
In the UK, there are 184 affected categories. So there is no time to waste when getting started on the changes. Please note that while the examples used are UK categories, these changes are similar across the board so you can learn from this and apply it to your own store.
Here are a few examples of the products you might sell that will be impacted by these mandated changes:
| Category |
Product |
| Brass |
Bags & Cases, Care & Cleaning and Mutes |
|
| Pianos, keyboards & organs |
Harmoniums, organs, keyboard covers and stools & benches |
|
| Percussion |
Practice pads, stands, bass drum and sets & kits |
|
The Item Specifics which may be required are:
- Brand
- Compatible Brand
- Connectivity
- For instrument
- Form factor
- Instrument
- Model
- Number of Keys
- Type
Don’t panic, not all Item Specifics will be required for every product and category but there could be a variation of these across some or all your listings.
It can seem intimidating and time-consuming to have these changes ahead of you. However, we have a tool that can automate this lengthy process for you. Aspect Finder+ helps optimise your Item Specifics, the is tool recommended by eBay. It is currently free for you to use until 30th September 2021, courtesy of eBay themselves.
There is a handy Buyer Demand Indicator which is an additional feature of the Aspect Finder+ tool. It provides you with a rating for Item specifics that buyers are regularly using to filter down their searches. The Item Specific will be given a rating of 1-5 stars. This data can help you go above and beyond what is needed, as although an aspect isn’t currently required, it may well be worth your while populating anyway based on the buyer demand rating.
Our Category Lookup tool can help you find the exact number of filtered searches from the last 30 days. This information refreshes every 30 days, so you can be sure this information is always up to date. Seeing the numbers of sales you could potentially miss out on due to missing Item Specifics, will definitely be the boost of motivation you’ve been looking for!
As you can see from the image above, type is soon to be required and is currently higher in demand than brand, which is already required. These trends can change and therefore it is always worth checking to ensure any highly filtered options are being populated where possible. You can also see the value for both of these aspects is incredibly high. This is not something you want to slack on, this would result in you missing out on being found by so many buyers.
Disclaimer: Please note that all the category examples are based on UK changes. Generally, these changes are the same internationally, with the exception of France, Italy, and Spain.
To fully understand how these changes affect you, please contact us.
For more general information on this round of eBay mandates, check out this blog post.
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