Follow good listing practices to remain competitive
eBay is evolving to make it faster and easier for buyers, including those using mobile devices, to find what they’re looking for. New features will be launching in 2012 that put more emphasis on the need for high quality listings.
To remain competitive, follow our guide to good listing practice.
Read about listing fundamentals in our Creating a listing help page. Highlights include the need for:
In order to make the most of pictures on eBay:
- Upload at least one picture for every listing, up to the limit of 12
- Ensure a minimum longest-picture-side length of 500 pixels
- Avoid borders and text in your pictures
- Make sure you upload your own picture as the primary listing photo when using the eBay catalogue to list an item that is not brand new. If selling a used item, don’t use the stock photo as your main picture for used items listed with the catalogue.
Read more about getting the most out of pictures.
Pictures in listings
- Take top quality pictures that will showcase your items. The ideal is 1000 pixels on the longest side (and the larger the image, the better for zoom and enlarge); 500 pixels on the longest side is the minimum requirement
- Photograph your item from different angles to give your buyers an accurate representation of the item you’re selling
- Add pictures to all listings
- Don’t add borders or text to your pictures – this distracts from your item
- Move your self-hosted images from the item description to eBay picture hosting services. All sellers get up to 12 FREE pictures for every listing starting from 2 May 2012.
Listing completeness
- List with the eBay catalogue whenever there’s a product match for your item
- Use as many item specifics in your listing as possible
- Select from the item specific options eBay provides whenever there’s an exact match.
- If any of the item specifics have been pre-filled for you, verify the information is accurate for the item you’re listing and make revisions as necessary
- Make sure the information in your listing description doesn’t contradict the other information contained in your listing
- Make sure all the information in your description is relevant and helpful for selling your item. Organise your description in sections and put each section into separate paragraphs:
- First describe your item. Include information like size, shape, colour, age, manufacture date, condition, flaws, company/artist/author, notable features or markings
- After describing the item, you may wish to include a personal story about the item
- Add any postage or return policy information you wish to include, taking care that it does not contradict anything else stated in your listing
- Finally, add any additional information you wish to include on the listing
- Include commonly-used terms to describe your item – think about what words a buyer might use to search for your product – but make sure your listing doesn’t violate eBay’s keyword spamming policy.
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