Home › Forums › Buying and Selling › Selling on eBay › Problems with Mobile Friendly Checker
- This topic has 38 replies, 11 voices, and was last updated 5 years, 10 months ago by Anonymous.
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03/21/2018 at 3:48 pm #35784
Anyone else have trouble while listing with the Mobile Friendly Checker? Often it just spins and spins, slowing list down to a crawl.
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03/21/2018 at 5:39 pm #35794
We don’t even fool with it since it often says we have a problem when we don’t.
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03/21/2018 at 5:47 pm #35797
Yes, the problem is sporadic. One day it’s fine. The next day it spins. Then when you exit out and go back in it works again. It’s an important feature, so I just wait it out.
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03/22/2018 at 8:26 am #35836
I tried to use it for a while. It’s a junk tool that doesn’t work half the time. When I review my listings on mobile they look fine. On some of them it seems to have made them look worse. Waste of time IMO.
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03/22/2018 at 5:59 pm #35901
I didn’t see this thread and asked the same question – I find it does make a big difference, without the program checking my draft, I noticed my descriptions are too tiny too read! So many sales are through phones its important.
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03/23/2018 at 8:11 am #35935
Im confused. So if you dont use the mobile friendly checker, then our descriptions wont be in the correct format on phones?
Why doesnt eBay just automatically turn any description you write into the proper format?
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03/22/2018 at 6:20 pm #35904
Yes, mobile sales are growing rapidly and making sure the mobile format is on a listing can be the difference between making a sale or not making one.
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03/22/2018 at 7:13 pm #35908
I have been having a problem with it for a few weeks. What a pain!! Wish we could send eBay a message without calling.
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03/22/2018 at 7:36 pm #35912
Mike,
On the top right corner of the listing page there is a link that says Send Us Your Feedback. Once you click on it, it will open up into an email in which you can write and send a message. This may be a way to let them know about the problem without calling them.
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03/23/2018 at 9:01 am #35940
The mysteries of Ebay – Mobile friendly checker is working fine today. Haven’t been able to find a bulk editing tool to check descriptions so time consuming to edit every listing. (My store is very small right now, so not too bad to do and actually finding other mistakes I’m fixing…) Your listing will look fine on a phone without Mobile Checker unless you scroll over to see full Description. Error message is usually “Viewport meta tag incorrect or missing”. Press “Fix it for me” but make sure you scroll down to save. (Or close if no problem found).
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03/23/2018 at 9:24 am #35944
But my question is this: if you create the listing on eBay, are we all saying that eBay will create a listing that will cause on error on their own app UNLESS you run it through the Mobile Friendly Checker?
If true, this seems insane.
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03/23/2018 at 9:34 am #35945
I concur whole heartedly with this statement. Why do I need to hit that stupid button when I am merely creating the listing exactly as ebay wants me to. The checker will resize the text and adjust spacing every single time.
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03/23/2018 at 9:39 am #35946
Apparently.
I have not tried creating a listing from start to finish on my phone, this may be just about using the laptop? I tend to Search item on the laptop, list similar so all my info prefills in, save draft, switch to phone for photos, save draft again, finish up on laptop. -
03/23/2018 at 11:10 am #35952
Makes no sense to me. Never has. Why doesn’t eBay automatically format our listings to look right on mobiles?? If you don’t select their little crappy Mobile Friendly Checker, your listings are barely readable on phones. Tiny print.
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03/23/2018 at 4:51 pm #35992
I’m really confused. I never use the mobile friendly checker, and my listings seem fine. The print in the description is very small, but no smaller than that of the other fields in the listing. And when I click on “read more”, the description comes up in a print size that is slightly bigger. Is this not the case for other people? Is everyone else using mobile-friendly checker all the time?
I just tried the checker on a random listing, and it seemed to have found some viewport issue that I told it to fix, and now my listing looks no different than it did before.
I do all my listing on a laptop. Just viewed them now on my iphone 6
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03/23/2018 at 6:40 pm #36004
I’m with you on this. I think the “mobile friendly checker” is a tool created three years ago when eBay first started pushing sellers to optimize for the phone. This was when people had Descriptions that were full of multiple fonts, photos, etc.
We dont use it. Our listings look fine on phones.
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03/23/2018 at 5:18 pm #35994
The mobile friendly checker is used to provide compatibility between the PC/Mac eBay platform programming/coding and that of mobile devices which include phones and tablets. Phones and tablets use different operating systems, specs and features than those used on PCs and Macs. This means there must be specific coding written so that one operating system (the coding/programming) can “talk to” the other operating system (coding/programming) systems regardless of format (phone or tablet) and make certain actions occur. Due to the fact that operating systems are constantly being updated, programmers have to keep up with the changes in order to ensure compatibility. Without compatibility, certain listing features will not show up in a user-friendly form which may cause a buyer to simply bounce from a listing. The goal is to have a buyer see a listing, look through all elements with ease, and then complete a conversion (purchase). The easier this process is, the more likely a sale will occur. If the buyer finds it easy and enjoyable, they are more likely to shop for items and/or return as a consumer which is really the ultimate goal.
I am not a programmer, so I do not know why the mobile compatibility utility cannot just be automatically included in all listings instead of us having to activate it each time.
- This reply was modified 6 years ago by AdventureE.
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05/18/2018 at 6:05 pm #40319
I’m reopening/re-upping this thread because of something we noticed with the new eBay updates for mobile-friendly stores.
I haven’t read through all of the comments above, but wanted to note this since it’s just now doing it for us.
Our store got the ‘mobile friendly’ update yesterday, and when I went into Safari on my iPhone and checked our store it looked GREAT!
—-UNTIL—- I went into our descriptions.
The font is TINY! (Ryanne and Jay I checked yours, and same for your descriptions for me)
I thought maybe it was a bump in the rollout and didn’t think anything of it because of that.
But today something had me click on the mobile-friendly checker button and the description had a “Viewport meta tag incorrect or missing” error and when I clicked fix it for me, the font size was as it should be.
We were already trying to go through old listings and check categories etc, but now there is something else on our to-do list.
Should this be a priority or is this something we are ok working through normally.
It looks fine on the app, and I wonder how many people actually use eBay on their phones via browser versus the app, but there must be a reason they put all of that effort into making the stores “mobile friendly” instead of working on other things, right?
Interested to hear y’alls thoughts!
- This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by karlacreekbank.
- This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by karlacreekbank.
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05/18/2018 at 7:15 pm #40322
karlacreekbank,
Mobile browsing/shopping (phone or tablet using the website or app) in general has been shown to be on the rise, so while not a crisis, it may be a good thing to work on resolving the issue. We are heading into hot weather/summer/ beach season, so mobile browsing/shopping will definately be in full swing.
I found this interesting article I thought I would share:
https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/ebay-stats/
- This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by AdventureE.
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05/19/2018 at 10:35 am #40361
That link is interesting; I was surprised to see the stat on the women vs men income – and the article it linked to was also an interesting read. When I told my husband that he told me to keep his account when dies and continue to use that lol
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05/19/2018 at 7:06 am #40345
That’s good to know. I guess we need to all be in the habit of clicking that fix button when listing. Im not sure it’s worth our time to go back through and click it on all our current listings.
I do wonder how many people buy from eBay’s website on their phone vs the app.
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05/19/2018 at 10:47 am #40364
I know that correlation does not imply causation, but wanted to share this:
Our store has been super quiet and this week it was especially quiet. We haven’t been getting messages/questions, offers nothing… *tumbleweeds*
We’d already been spending time on the phone several times with eBay this week asking them to check our account because of some actual technical issues that we have encountered in our dashboard area that were concerning us.
After a call with them yesterday was when I noticed the error on the mobile-checker. My husband decided to go into our highest priced items and do the mobile-checker fix last night, just to get started and try it out, and before we even went to bed we had 2 separate messages with offers on one of the items, 1 offer on another, and a question on yet another!
Again – not sayin’ it’s related, but it is very odd!
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05/19/2018 at 10:57 am #40365
>>”I do wonder how many people buy from eBay’s website on their phone vs the app.”<<
I’ve been curious to know this too, Jay, so I did some Googling and found this very surprising stat in this article:
“U.S. mobile is still largely a browser based world as mobile browser audiences are ~2X larger than app audiences across the top 50 U.S. mobile web properties.
As shown, the median browser audience (across the top 50 U.S. mobile apps as of July 2015) has grown at 61% per year, while app audiences have grown at an average of 51% per year.
Said another way, mobile browser audiences have grown 1.2x faster than mobile app audiences off of a 1.8x larger base.”
Your M-Commerce Deep Dive: Data, Trends and What’s Next in the Mobile Retail Revenue World
I guess I live in a bubble – I use apps for everything when a store has one when it comes to shopping on my phone and wrongly assumed everyone else would too.
Goodness, was I wrong!!
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05/20/2018 at 8:32 am #40458
Appreciate the link to the fix in the bulk editor.
I noticed that we dont have much info on our description these days anyway. Mostly it’s just the meaurements. Nothing else. What info are you putting in the Description?
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05/20/2018 at 2:53 pm #40476
We mostly do measurements and condition info – pointing out things for the buyer to notice/be aware of. I’m still not at the confidence level to just point them out in photos. We also repeat some of what is put into item specifics.
I’m trying to get faster at listing and descriptions do slow me down, but I feel like until we are at a high-seller level I need to rely on as many potential ways to get relevant views as possible (without keyword stuffing)
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05/20/2018 at 2:57 pm #40477
Totally agreed. I guess my point is that as much as its good to fix the font size on descriptions, I’m not sure if its a deal breaker for our items since there’s little info in the description on our listings.
eBay should certainly fix that issue. All descriptions should be mobile friendly by default.
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05/19/2018 at 2:26 pm #40370
Good news for those who are dismayed about having to manually fix all of their listings:
It can be done via bulk edit.
After we started manually fixing things last night, we decided to do a search and see if there was an easier way to fix them.
Randy came across this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_O8K5m1kgE which shows how to bulk edit your listings to fix it by adding a code snippet – it’s the snippet that is added when you click the fix it button and you can copy it from the comments for adding into your descriptions.
I was curious if it would affect those that had already been fixed, since they’d now have the code in it twice. I tried it on two listings and it didn’t make anything look wonky or messed up and the mobile checker came out good with nothing to fix on them.
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05/19/2018 at 5:35 pm #40383
Thanks for this. I was writing a message asking how to do it with bulk editing when I left to do family stuff. When I got back, there was the help I needed!
This link provides the code you need:
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05/19/2018 at 6:52 pm #40392
What I don’t get is why it has to be done by the sellers and why Ebay does not just make all listings mobile friendly…
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05/20/2018 at 2:58 pm #40478
This is what has been bugging me especially since they are making a point of telling us that if our listings aren’t mobile-friendly we risk them not being pulled into searches. So we are being penalized for something that is an issue on their end if we don’t do it and don’t make the fix ourselves.
I’m glad it was an easy fix (once we found the bulk-edit) and I’m glad it worked for you.
One thing to keep in mind: you have to always click “save” after you click the fix it button. On my laptop the save button falls below the fold on my screen and I kept missing it and thinking I was making the change only to realize I kept forgetting to click save *head desk*
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05/21/2018 at 7:14 am #40506
Yes, the save button is low and I have missed it too a couple of times.
I will say that making this change has not increased sales. In fact they dropped off the face of the earth after the mobile friendly the updates I made. But that is not to say this is the cause because that happens regularly where all of the sudden for no apparent reason the sales just stop and then they start up again.
I have done promotions, listed, relisted, listed and forgot about it, etc. I have not found the magic that will consistently produce sales.
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05/21/2018 at 7:58 am #40509
There is no magic that will consistently produce sales. All we can do is keep scavenging, finding cool stuff, and listing it the best we can. All the tricks people talk about are just that: “tricks”.
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05/19/2018 at 7:11 pm #40395
Sigilini,
I have been thinking about this too and am thinking that maybe the undertaking of having all listings be mobile friendly is not something they have taken on because it may not be on the list of programming priorities with the multitude of other programming needs. Maybe because they have something in place, they let it be, fix it as needed, and focus on other areas that are more pressing for the platform.
I am just thinking out loud here.
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05/19/2018 at 7:15 pm #40397
Thanks for your feedback AdventureE. I just applied the suggestions above (watched the video and bulk edited my listings), it was not hard to do–a little scary due to my lack of confidence in bulk editing and in Ebay’s programing–and it seems to have worked. Now the task is to remember to fix each new listing as I go on forward from here. It seems that it should just be mobile friendly from the get go. We are in the 21st century, no?
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05/19/2018 at 7:23 pm #40399
Sigilini,
While I do not know exactly what they are facing as ebay technicians, I do know that an old platform (and the programming that went into it) can face real challenges in bringing current technologies/programming into it. If you had to go through a small process to update your listings to make them mobile friendly, I can only imagine what it would take to make the platform completely mobile friendly without seller intervention. Remember, mobile friendly means taking into account tablets and phones and the technologies used on them. Technologies change rapidly and in order to stay mobile friendly, the programmers have to keep up with the various opearating systems (PC with (Windows, Linux) or MAC (Apple), tablet, and mobile) in order to get each platform to “talk to each other” and ensure compatibility.
- This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by AdventureE.
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05/19/2018 at 7:46 pm #40406
OK, I will be more tolerant, understanding and sympathetic since I really have no idea what they are facing. I just thought that since Ebay has made sweeping programing changes in the past, this would be a valuable one to standardize on the back end. Just my opinion but I am no expert.
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05/19/2018 at 8:06 pm #40409
As someone who worked in the product planning process at a number of large software companies, I can tell you that it’s not just about the difficulty of improving new features on old platforms, though that is often a concern, it’s also about business priorities. Resources are limited, there are never enough people to do everything, so what do you work on first? Management just doesn’t care that much about this type of usability issue (that has a workaround) when compared to a) issues/bugs that are leading to customer service being flooded with calls, and b) new & exciting things that you can present to the CEO and the board and write press releases about. That’s just the way it is, and is part of the reason why I found that world very frustrating.
So, personally I don’t think you need to be sympathetic. Accepting, yes, since this is unlikely to change. But whenever there is an opportunity to provide feedback to ebay, I plan to continue to communicate that spending a little bit more time on issues like this and/or the ones posted in the “ebay feedback” part of the forum, would go a long way toward keeping sellers happier, more productive, and spending less time talking about using other selling platforms.
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05/20/2018 at 9:15 am #40462
Thank you Sonia. Good info and appreciated.
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05/23/2018 at 6:29 am #40774Anonymous
- Location:
I wonder how much text scaling is a browser-specific problem. I use Chrome on an Android phone and tablet and find that many websites “resist” my efforts to scale text using Chrome’s Accessibility settings.
On my tablet, at 125%, for instance, this page, displays an annoyingly small default font size. At 135%, it displays a seemingly random mix of scaled and default font sizes!:
Also, I favor the listing of flaws in the description, myself, given the rapidly expanding visually-impared population in the aging developed countries!
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