As you may already know, I started the Hallman Labs Vintage Store a few months back. I am currently using EBay to sell these items and I came across a handful of rules that aren’t exactly easy to find. So, I have created a list of the most commonly encountered EBay rules.
1: You can only have 2 font sizes in your EBay description, any more and the mobile app will not show your product.
2: There is a limit on how wide the description can be in pixels (limit = 375 pixels). This width is determined by the font size used, plus the number of characters. Note: charts will also mess this up, this is why I moved to picture tables. Meaning you can write more if you use a smaller font size. Sounds weird, but it is true. This is to maintain the proper view-port compatible sizes and aspect ratios.
Look at it as a piece of land Y*Pixels by X*Pixels is all the size you get. It’s not limited by the literal character numbers (like most sites). That is, unless you always use the smallest font size for all characters, then it is character limited (because you can’t go any smaller). I don’t recommend this, even 12 point font is pretty small on EBay. The error will give you a pixels warning if too big, not the number of extra words currently being used.
An Example of the window width being too large
3: There is also a limit on the vertical length of the description, again decided by font size and the number of words.
4: I-Ways, is extremely important if none of the advice above seems to help you. Go to this sister company of Ebay and check your ads there. The system is better and gives you much more detailed info on the problem. Click on this link: http://www.i-ways.net/mobile-friendly/en-us/tools/MobileTests/process , then copy and paste your EBay item number into the text box shown and hit “Check Now”.
5: No graphs/charts in the description, due to the fact the mobile app doesn’t allow horizontal adjustment/scrolling. This means a large excel chart pasted into the HTML (after being converted) will give you problems. A document/chart, unless only 4 columns wide, will exceed the optimal horizontal pixel width again! I got around this by moving my graphs to picture form. You lose the ability to copy and paste from it and users can’t highlight rows for easier reading. However, it keeps you passing all the IWays and Ebay mobile friendly checks.
6: Speaking of, Mobile Friendly Checker will automatically scan your ad and look for any issue/s with the description. Then this tool will usually fix most of the common issues by itself! You can find this option/checker right above the top right of the text box for the ad descriptions of the EBay listing tool.
7: Lastly, EBay ads can no longer have active hyperlinks in the description. You can technically do it, but you won’t find your ad on the mobile app (at all). However, you can use non-active hyperlinks, as in normal text the user has to copy and paste into their browser.
Noncompliant Link Example
I will continue to update this as I run into more issues or more solutions. Thanks for checking out this topic at Hallman Labs. If you’d like to see more articles like this one please comment below.
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