eBay Classic Listing Form's Days Are Numbered
UPDATE 4-22-22
The podcast crew was definitely not lying about the Classic Listing Form's days being numbered - apparently less than 30 days is the final answer.
I'm seeing multiple threads in the community popping up with sellers indicating they no longer have the option to revert back to the Classic Listing Form and it was confirmed by eBay community staff that eBay has begun the forced migration - no going back now!
Velvet@ebay said:
I did some asking around and it sounds like they're working to make this permanent for sellers. That means groups of sellers are being migrated to the new listing flow without an option to return to the classic listing form.
Not the response you wanted I know, but that is why you aren't seeing the option to revert to the classic listing flow now. From here, I would encourage you to submit your Feedback via the link in the listing form I noted in my last post. Hopefully between using it more, and any updates that come about due to seller feedback, you'll grow to like the new format.
The eBay for Business Podcast crew revealed today that the Classic Listing Form's days are numbered, though they declined to give an exact sunset date.
Griff:I can't sugar coat this answer, no matter how much I try, because video is never going to be added to the old classic list your item form. And in fact, if you're familiar with the way eBay introduces and sunset's features, you would be correct in assuming that the old classic list, your item form won't be available forever.
Rebecca: So a sunset date for the old form is not on the calendar as of yet, I checked, but it really, it's not gonna be available forever. And like Griff said, whenever there are two versions of a service on eBay, like the sell your item form. You can be sure that the older ones days are numbered.
The Classic Listing Form will be replaced by the Unified Listing Experience. The first iteration of the unified experience rolled out in March 2021 with a less than positive reaction from sellers, that prompted then VP of Seller Experience Harry Temkin to walk back some of the design and functionality decisions that had been made.
Liz Morton ~ Founder
I'll be taking an updated look at the new listing experience soon - stay tuned!
Sellers are discussing the changes in the eBay community and it sounds like the big concern/frustration at this point is with the design of the form requiring entering information in multiple pop of fields that can slow the listing process down considerably.
New Listing Tool - A Warning
Lag:
There is a significant lag when opening a listing/draft with the new listing tool, sometimes up to a minute or longer - the form is just solid white and blinks for a while. I thought it might be my internet connection, but I have zero issues with the classic tool.Item Specifics:
If you thought they were a pain before, this will be excruciating. First of all, if when you ‘convert’ a draft or any single listing to the new listing tool, ALL of your active listings and drafts switch over to the new format. With that, you randomly lose item specifics from every single active listing and draft and have to enter then all over again.In addition, each item specific is met with a pop-up window that has to be navigated. This is specifically troublesome because you cannot see any other portion of the listing when you’re making these changes.
I didn’t realize before, but sometimes I just forget what I’m working on and now I can’t even see the title - I have to close the pop-up, scroll up, scroll down, open pop-up again. Oh wait, what color was it again?…repeat entire process. I honestly cannot believe how long it takes to do this.
HTML:
If you’re like me and write your own code for your descriptions and/or have descriptive listings with different fonts, etc., that’s over. Attempting to even view the HTML prompts a pop-up warning that has to be clicked through, which discourages adding any “extra”.Once you’re past the warning, attempting to simply change the font color creates another lag where you have to wait on a color box to appear. My intention was to include a picture here, but I just tried and gave up after waiting almost 2 minutes for it to come up.
Video:
This is probably minor, but video cannot be added to variation listings.Loss of draft data:
This is the worst. Last night I left my computer for a few minutes, then came back to a draft. After entering all the data, the screen flashed white, then the draft reset to what it was before I opened it. I entered everything again, and it did it AGAIN.I can only assume this happened because my session timed out, but I wasn’t gone more than 10 minutes. I’m in and out all day long, every single day - I’ve never had anything like this happen before. I strongly suggest everyone save their drafts before stepping away.
Since using the new listing tool, I’ve sent several “Tell us what you think” comments to eBay over the last month, but have seen zero improvements. I can’t even describe the amount of time I’ve wasted on this thing - something that used to take me 5 minutes now takes 30.
I’m not prone to doom and gloom, but I really can’t emphasize enough how many issues this is going to create for everyone who is actively selling.
I've just walked through the new listing form to see how it compares to the current one, and added comments below in the order that I encountered some of the new methods introduced.
What caught my eye were not technical glitches, but some strange and non-intuitive design changes that don't appear to address any problem that could be present in the current form, but do introduce a new level of busywork in some areas:
The Delete icon in the upper right corner of the uploaded images doesn't look like a trash can, but a bucket. (It has a handle on it?) A simple traditional "X" would suffice.
It's not necessary to bury options beneath a sub-menu in the Pricing group (upper left corner menu of the Pricing popup), especially for options such as Starting Date & Time which have nothing to do with pricing.
In the Returns option of the Preferences popup, the two values under Domestic returns and International returns read "Free for buyer, you pay" or "Buyer" (with no further explanation). This appears to be worded in the context of the THIRD sub-menu (!) down this rabbit hole, a pop-up under the title of "Return shipping paid by" in which the single word "Buyer" can complete the sentence. In all the upper menus leading down to this point, it just floats as a word by itself with no clear explanation. "Buyer pays return cost" would be much clearer.
The final confirmation popup for the successfully submitted listing reads "Your listing is now live." For a listing with a scheduled future starting time, that is simply wrong. If it is scheduled to start in the future, the message should acknowledge that: "Your listing is now scheduled."
In conclusion, this whole new listing form seems like a solution in search of a problem. More to the point, it wastes even more whitespace than the previous one: I could fire a cannon through the middle of it without hitting anything.
The excess whitespace only serves to underscore the point that popup menus are not needed here, nor is it necessarily easy or logical to find some particular setting, especially for something optional such as a Starting Date and Time that would have no default setting to display or click on (in case you want to change its current value). There is simply no excuse for making the user drill down through three popups just to set that one option.
The most efficient way to allow sellers to upload their listings in the shortest possible time is to figure out how to keep things on all one level, so we can complete the job with a minimum of keyclicks. If you cannot code that, seek help or input from others; don't just dump it into Production like that.
The current listing form can manage to keep things visible and somewhat organized. It's unclear how this new design is supposed to be better.
What are your thoughts on the new eBay listing experience? Love it or hate it? Let us know in the comments below!
