Re changes to auction description width

[HannaHolly]

i'm ok with this if it's solved all those scrolling issues ( a wee border would have looked nice though!)



edited because i just found a post on the KT ( why there?) giving a couple of hours notice of the change. It's a step in the right direction, but in my opinion an announcement in the annoucements forum giving (say) two weeks notice of the change would have given people time to get used to the idea, to adjust their templates (if needed) and possibly to warn of potential snags.

[johnwash1]

That's easy enough to say but how would you like to have to adapt 3600 auction pages. It's a distraction from selling that I can't afford.

OK, I certainly sympathise with that. Bear in mind that the intent of this change was to correct a situation that meant new sellers had to make serious changes to their 3,600 listings (or even 36,000).

I agree with Hanna there should have been a lot more notice of the change. Though if there had been, no doubt there would have been screams of protest and it would never have happened -- bad for recruiting new sellers to the site.

Also I think that while it's an improvement, the site still needs professional help with a redesign.

Kedo -- if I needed to change 3,600 listings I certainly wouldn't be doing it by hand, I'd be recruiting a computer. You could probably even do it with some scripting method like Firefox Greasemonkey (though I've never used it myself, so I don't know for sure). Or find someone who's good at hacking Perl or PHP.

Maybe it's worthwhile telling us what you actually need to change in your listings. If there's enough people that require something similar I can probably find someone to do the needful.

Also, discussion about eBid APIs is relevant here. This has been mentioned quite a bit in recent months, yet no draft proposals have appeared. If the API will include means of creating and editing auction listings (as I would hope it would) then this is an obvious application for it.

I really really hope we're not going to have 2 hours notice of an API becoming available, with no prior discussion of its detail.

[3drom]

Well, I think it's fantastic. I can now just copy over exactly the same auctions as I'm using on Feepay, without having to resize images, etc. That will save me literally days of my time.

To Kedo - try BKReplace'em - a free program that will search for strings of characters in any files you want (i.e. your HTML auction files) and replace them with anything you want.
Say for example your current auctions use something like:
<table width=600>
you can get BKReplace'em to just replace this in all 3,600 of your auctions with
<table width=900> or whatever value you want.

Ideally the best way to write your auction code is to use CSS so you can change the presentation in one place - the CSS file, just the once. The problem I had was that a lot of my images were too large to fit into the old Ebid style, and I had to manually shrink them down yet again, for Ebid, which takes a lot of time, as you can imagine.

I agree that the new look of the auction isn't quite right, it doesn't 'flow' right, but it's much better than it was before, simply because we aren't now restricted to that very narrow width.

I'm sure Ebid will be able to get their site designers to do a few more minor tweaks so that the new width is completely integrated into the old look of the auction page, but this is a great stop gap for the time being.

To those who worry that maybe the new look might put buyers off, because it isn't quite perfect - first of all, everybody's auctions look the same, so nobody's auctions look any better or worse than anybody else's, as far as the auction page layout goes, and secondly, although a really well designed auction may look better, I don't think that it actually translates into significantly better sales (i.e. more than 1 or 2 percent difference). I've been looking at some sellers on Feepay with feedbacks in the tens of thousands, some of them use virtually no auction design whatsoever, they just put up basic text in Times Roman, a simple photo of the item, not very clearly written terms and conditions, etc. and still sell loads of stuff and have excellent feedback, and do you know why? Price. That and the fact that they are selling items that lots of people want to buy.

Think of your own experience of this: if you were looking to buy Item X and you saw it for £20.00 on a beautifully done auction, with all the flashy trimmings, lovely colours, customised graphics, etc., and then you saw the exact same item for £18.00, but with a simple (dead simple) auction, but both sellers had the same number of feedbacks, or the £18.00 seller had 1,000 feedbacks, 99% positive, and the £20.00 seller had 30,000 feedbacks, 99% positive, would you buy the item at £20.00 just because of the prettier looking auction? I think most people don't.

When it comes to running your own website, that's a different kettle of fish. Customers have nothing other than the look of your site to judge whether they can trust you or not, on auction sites they have your feedback, and the protection that (some) auction sites give, and in those cases, the presentation of the auctions isn't always that important.

Just my two penneth.

[3drom]

Dockerills, I had a look at some of your auctions, and they look fine to me. Your description looks perfect.

[johnwash1]

Well, I think it's fantastic. I can now just copy over exactly the same auctions as I'm using on Feepay, without having to resize images, etc. That will save me literally days of my time.

To Kedo - try BKReplace'em - a free program that will search for strings of characters in any files you want (i.e. your HTML auction files) and replace them with anything you want.
...
Ideally the best way to write your auction code is to use CSS so you can change the presentation in one place - the CSS file, just the once. The problem I had was that a lot of my images were too large to fit into the old Ebid style, and I had to manually shrink them down yet again, for Ebid, which takes a lot of time, as you can imagine.
...
you saw the exact same item for £18.00, but with a simple (dead simple) auction, but both sellers had the same number of feedbacks, or the £18.00 seller had 1,000 feedbacks, 99% positive, and the £20.00 seller had 30,000 feedbacks, 99% positive, would you buy the item at £20.00 just because of the prettier looking auction? I think most people don't.
...

Another good free program for changes in multiple files, interactively or batch, optionally with regular expressions (if you don't know what they are, just don't use them), is MiniTrue.

But globally changing offline files is one thing, changing a bunch of live auctions is quite another.

I'm very interested in your comments about CSS. I was under the impression that it's not possible to use CSS on auction sites, because your listing is only a small part of the whole page. Are you actually doing this? More detail please?

Price vs pretty auctions. Spot on. (Though I really must get round to adding photos and gallery pics to a lot of my auctions -- I believe they're the one aspect of presentation that can make a difference).

[hypn0t0ad]

I'm not opposed to the auction description width changes per se but I do think giving two hours notice of such a change in the "general chat" boards is laughable. Really, what is the point of that? It doesn't exactly give much time for anyone to raise any valid questions/objections does it?

I have very limited knowledge of HTML/templates and I have no desire to improve on that knowledge. What I do know is that Gothicina sent me a customised eBid auction template that ticked all the boxes for my requirements as a seller in a simple, stylish and elegant way (and no I'm not on commission ).

As it happens I've got a load of old listings I want to update/change photos/add videos to anyway so it's not THAT much of a big deal for me but I wonder how many 'middle of the road' sellers this might effect? I'll have to close about 700-800 listings on here in the short-term.

[kedo]

I've been looking at some sellers on Feepay with feedbacks in the tens of thousands, some of them use virtually no auction design whatsoever, they just put up basic text in Times Roman, a simple photo of the item, not very clearly written terms and conditions, etc. and still sell loads of stuff and have excellent feedback, and do you know why? Price. That and the fact that they are selling items that lots of people want to buy.

Think of your own experience of this: if you were looking to buy Item X and you saw it for £20.00 on a beautifully done auction, with all the flashy trimmings, lovely colours, customised graphics, etc., and then you saw the exact same item for £18.00, but with a simple (dead simple) auction, but both sellers had the same number of feedbacks, or the £18.00 seller had 1,000 feedbacks, 99% positive, and the £20.00 seller had 30,000 feedbacks, 99% positive, would you buy the item at £20.00 just because of the prettier looking auction? I think most people don't.

No, simplicity. The less you have on an auction page the more chance you have of making the sale (within reason). If you haven't heard the phrase 'Keep it simple stupid' you probably haven't worked in a sales environment.

Yes, of course price too!

I don't have any templates to change.

My problem is that I had stuff on my pages that worked. It's no accident that I'm near the top of the buddy points table every month for instance.

Gothicina, if you're around, have you got any ideas? You can obviously see the problem. How can I push everything back towards the centre without changing each individual auction.

[kedo]

I have very limited knowledge of HTML/templates and I have no desire to improve on that knowledge.

Likewise. I'm selling away quite happily. Don't want distractions.

[Gothicina]

No, simplicity. The less you have on an auction page the more chance you have of making the sale (within reason). If you haven't heard the phrase 'Keep it simple stupid' you probably haven't worked in a sales environment.

Yes, of course price too!

I don't have any templates to change.

My problem is that I had stuff on my pages that worked. It's no accident that I'm near the top of the buddy points table every month for instance.

Gothicina, if you're around, have you got any ideas? You can obviously see the problem. How can I push everything back towards the centre without changing each individual auction.

To do changes using one of the programs mentioned you need an identifiable string of HTML at the beginning of each auction,(it cannot repeated anywhere else in the listing) you'd also need another identifiable string, at the end of every auction, (again not repeated anywhere else)

You could then add to those strings to enclose your listings, but that would involve saving them to a spreadsheet, making the changes, & using the spreadsheet to bulk upload them again.

Although the layouts look the same searching through the HTML on a number of your items it does vary slightly, so I don't think that would work.

Support SHOULD be able to do it for you because they can ignore your code & use their own which will be identical for everyone.

IE

<div class="f_description2">

at the start

</div><br>
</td>
<td class="f_white" width="10">

at the end

You would have to let them know how wide you wanted it, either as a fixed width or a % of the available description space.

[merlin]

Well All My Auctions Now Look Carp So Cheers Gaz It Might Have Been Nice To Let Us Know At Least I Could Have Asked Someone To Help Me Sought Out My Auctions , I Am Not Techy Enough To Sort This Out And No Way Will I Be Doing Them One At A Time

Oh And Thanks To The Whingers Who Wanted This Theres Now Thousands Of Auctions Like Mine Making The Site Look Stupid