Enhancing Your Listing with Listing Designer

eBay's text editor lets you format your listing text, but doesn't let you add anything in the way of graphic interest. For that you need to use eBay's Listing Designer, also accessible from the Describe Your Item page. Listing Design lets you apply predesigned templates, which it calls themes, to your item description. This feature isn't free; you pay 10 cents per listing to use Listing Designer.

Listing Designer also lets you customize the placement of the photos in your item listing. Normally, eBay sticks your photos below the listing; you don't have a choice in the matter. But when you use Listing Designer, you now can choose to put your photos at the top, bottom, left, or right of your item description. For many sellers, the customized photo placement alone is worth the 10-cent price of using Listing Designer.

Choosing a Theme

As just discussed, Listing Designer lets you apply one of more than 200 different visual themes to your listing. While these themes aren't near as sophisticated or versatile as a full-featured listing template, they do add a little visual spice to your listings.

A theme typically consists of some sort of background color or graphic, typically surrounded by a graphic border of some sort. The theme does not include any text formatting; you'll still need to format your item description text in the text editor. But by combining some simple text formatting with a colorful Listing Designer theme and custom photo layout, you can create listings that stand out from the standard eBay text-only listings.

Selecting a theme is as easy as scrolling to the Listing Designer section (under the Description section, as shown in Figure 2.5) and checking the Enhance Description with a Theme and Layout option, pulling down the Theme list to select a category, and then selecting a specific theme within that category. A thumbnail of the selected theme is displayed next to the pull-down list.

Figure 2.5. Selecting a Listing Designer theme.

eBay organizes its Listing Designer themes into seven major categories:

• New, which features the latest themessuch as the Night Driving theme, shown in Figure 2.6.

  Figure 2.6. eBay's Night Driving theme.

  

• Special Events, which features themes for anniversaries and other celebrationssuch as the Celebration - Glasses theme, shown in Figure 2.7.

  Figure 2.7. eBay's Celebration - Glasses theme.

  

• Category Specific, which features themes designed for specific product categoriessuch as the Coins - Red theme, shown in Figure 2.8.

  Figure 2.8. eBay's Coin - Red theme.

  

• Patterns/Textiles, which features themes with patterned borders or backgroundssuch as the Elegant Floral theme, shown in Figure 2.9.

  Figure 2.9. eBay's Elegant Floral theme.

  

• Holiday/Seasonal, which features a variety of holidaybased themessuch as the Christmas Tree theme, shown in Figure 2.10.

  Figure 2.10. eBay's Christmas Tree theme.

  

• eBay Stores, which features themes of interest to eBay Stores sellerssuch as the Stores Awning theme, shown in Figure 2.11.

  Figure 2.11. eBay's Stores Awning theme.

  

• Miscellaneous, which features themes that don't fit in any of the other categoriessuch as the Flags theme, shown in Figure 2.12.

  Figure 2.12. eBay's Flags theme.

  

Selecting a Picture Layout

Once you've selected a Listing Designer theme, you can select how you want your photo(s) to appear in your listing. All you have to do is pull down the Picture Layout list and select one of the following options:

• Standard, which displays your photos in the default position underneath the item description, as shown in Figure 2.13. With this option, multiple photos appear as one big photo and a series of smaller thumbnails; visitors have to click a thumbnail to view the full-size picture.

  Figure 2.13. eBay's Standard photo layout.

  

• Photo on the left, which displays your photos on the left side of your listing, with the item description text to the right, as shown in Figure 2.14.

  Figure 2.14. Photos displayed on the left of the item description.

  

• Photo on the right, which displays your photos on the right side of your listing, with the item description text to the left, as shown in Figure 2.15.

  Figure 2.15. Photos displayed on the right of the item description.

  

• Photo on the bottom, which displays your photos below the item description text, as shown in Figure 2.16. This option differs from the Standard layout in that all photos are displayed full size, stacked one on top of another.

  Figure 2.16. Photos displayed below the item description.

  

• Photo on the top, which displays your first photo at the very top of the listing and the others below the description text, as shown in Figure 2.17.

  Figure 2.17. Multiple photos displayed above and below the item description.

  

Previewing Your Listing

Unfortunately, you can't preview how your listing will look with the Listing Designer theme directly from the Describe Your Item page. You have to click the Continue button at the bottom of the page to advance to the Review and Enhance Your Listing page. Scroll down to the Review Your Listing section, and you'll see your listing displayed within the short scroll box, as shown in Figure 2.18. This probably won't give you a good idea of how the listing will really look in a web browser, so click Preview in a Window to open a full-size preview of your listing in a new browser window, as shown in Figure 2.19.

Figure 2.18. Your themed listing displayed in the middle of the Review and Enhance Your Listing page.

Figure 2.19. The same listing, previewed full-size in a separate window.