In this article I’ll be covering what an eBay listing template is, examples of such listing templates in action and finally why you need one, even if its a really simple one.

So what really is a eBay listing template then? In its shortest form, all it is is a template (think of a set of of guides or like drawing some pencil lines on a page) to help you layout your product or service information out in a consistent, informative manner for both yourself and your customers.

eBay listing templates can be exceptionally complex especially when you mix in logic testing keywords and multiple sets of  data. Some of the templates I’ve helped design have far surpassed anything that you’ll ever come across, (going on a slight tangent here, bear with me) I remember one template that I worked on that involved nested keywords in eSellerPro (an auction management tool) that had about 300 lines deep of logic tests and  that excluded the sub paragraphs that were being pulled in with even more keywords in them.

However on the flip side, they can be exceptionally basic, just a few place holders for the description, images and maybe a few common lines of text for shipping and postage.

I’ve made a really simple one below, even this would assist in easy listing creation:

• Major point 1 – Maybe condition?
• Major point 2
• Major point 3
• Major point 4
• Major point 5 – If you’re stuck for a 5th, why not mention you’re fast delivery or fantastic feedback?

Main description here

Postage Information
Enter text here about postage. You could include the odd paragraph here as well and just leave place holders for postage prices for example:
UK Shipping is £UKShippingHere and Europe is £EUShippingHere

Payment Information
Enter text here about payment, I’ve also included the paypal logo below as well to give you a hand.

Returns Information
Include standard information here, but please don’t scare people away with 10 pages of T&C’s. Write it in plain english

My point is that eBay listing templates can with third party tools go to extremes, but they all do the same job no matter how simple or how complex, which is:

1. Format information clearly buyers
2. Format information easily for merchants/sellers to populate
3. To speed up the listing process
4. To (hopefully) allow making changes at a later date much easier

Note: We’ll be including complex examples soon and also we have it noted to include some more basic examples and maybe even a short HTML to help you with the basics.

For these examples, I’m going to include examples of professionally designed eBay templates, mainly because these show the use of such templates to their best effect, but as noted above, eBay listing templates don’t need to be ultra complex or professionally designed to be a great benefit to you and your customers, its all about displaying information in a clean, well structured format.

Example 1 uniq-clothing Template (click the image for super sized image) In this example, we’ve got a whole host of template things going on. I’ll break these down for you.Firstly the entire outer shell is one big template, for example the logo, the top navigation, the sides and the content areas. If we focus on the sections that change, such as the images, the seller has loaded these images into a back end tool and then the gallery is auto created by the template, placing the first image as a large one and the extra images as smaller images down the side.The listing title “UNIQ P2-J Long Womens MAXI/ Boho/Hippie Summer DRESS” is also included as a keyword (see our other articles for what this means) to bring it through automatically when the item is listed. Moving down to the item description, this is probably included from one of two places in the backend system, but the output is the same, they’ve entered the description in a description box (of some form) and its being spilled out into the listing where its being told to in the template. A similar process is happening for the lower tabs for sizing, brands, payment, delivery and returns, but instead of them being entered manually each time, they’re most likely hard coded (sorry this is a term I use, it means “written by hand”) into the template, so that they don’t need to keep writing it over and over. Just like the basic example I included above. They’ve also got a related items box in this listing too, I know how you can do this and I’ll be including the steps to do this in a later article (try searching for “related items” in the search box on the right. While I’ve picked a pretty complex template to begin with, this only amplifies that the seller would never have been able to achieve such a quality of presentation without the use of an eBay template.

Example 2 funkydivaltd eBay Template (Click for super-sized version) While I personally dislike white text on a black background and excessive use of CAPSLOCK (and flash for that matter), they’ve done themselves a huge favour by using a template.They’re able to include the product information in very easily and are saving themselves a huge amount of time and even with my personal gripes with the template, it gives a uniform layout across all their listings and have a few bonuses to boot, such as the lack of requirement to include the repetitive information for shipping, about us, size guides and returns information, plus including some useful links to their other aspects and a basic cross selling module to the right for categories or products they also stock.

Example 3 cliphair.ltd eBay Template (Click for super-sized version) While not as visually appealing as the previous two examples, if you look closely at the contents, they’re using a layout to format their information much more clearly than just a few lines of text.For example the opening two paragraphs are common across their listings and adds brand awareness to the listing. I actually quite like the “We Promise” section and reassures the buyer viewing the listing. If you look further down the listing you’ll see a couple of tables included, these are fantastic for showing product specifics and even further down the shipping table, while not ‘visually pretty’, does a good job at formatting the shipping information.

eBay listing templates don’t need to be ultra complex, even though I’ve hinted that some (if not all) of the largest sellers on eBay use complex versions, even if you’re selling just a few items, a simple template like the one I’ve included, will enable you to list faster, not miss out on key information for your listings, provide the information in a clear format for your buyers and crucially make your life a lot simpler, if you need to update the listings at a later date.