Overview
Your success as a seller begins when your buyers choose to shop first on eBay. To meet the evolving expectations of buyers, eBay is transforming the shopping experience to be product-based, where all listings for the same product are grouped together.
Until now, search results on eBay have overwhelmed buyers. Combing through the dozens of similar listings within eBay's vast inventory has made the shopping experience time consuming and frustrating—driving buyers away from your merchandise.
By transforming the shopping experience to be product-based, listings will now be collapsed and grouped by product. A product-based shopping experience will make it easier for buyers to find the merchandise that meets their search criteria, and quickly decide which products they want to purchase.
Listing with structure
The eBay catalog is a database of structured product information. By associating your products with the eBay catalog in these categories, your listings will gain access to product identifiers—key to optimizing your search performance. Your listings will also qualify for product-based shopping, an industry retail-standard experience that buyers have come to expect when they shop online.
Associating your listings with the catalog also ensures that your listings qualify for product reviews, price trends, and other programs that further highlight the value of the items you are selling.
Listing requirements
If you're selling in the categories below, you will need to associate your listings with the eBay catalog to ensure maximum visibility within the product-based shopping experience. Non-compliant listings are highlighted in My eBay and in Seller Hub, on the Overview and Growth tabs.
How buyers will see products
Buyers shopping in the new product-based environment will find what they are looking for faster. By listing with the catalog, products that are heavily searched for will benefit from a collapsed search result. Items that are unique or vintage, will remain unique in search results and the catalog.
Since search results will be organized by product, buyers will be able to make quicker purchasing decisions. The image below shows this idea visually:
Slowly, over the next few years, we will expand the eBay catalog in phases to eventually cover all products. You will still be able to add any items that are not represented in the catalog yet—like unique, handmade, and vintage items.
We will invite you to provide your expertise and suggest edits to the catalog as you see fit to help ensure that all products in the catalog have accurate, up-to-date information.