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Three weeks after eBay began enforcing its new photo requirements, it announced new tools to help sellers meet those requirements. eBay posted an announcement on its Announcement Board on Wednesday with the title, "Attention sellers: New tools help you easily meet photo quality requirements."

eBay first advised sellers of the new requirements a year ago, but didn't have tools in place for sellers to easily identify and edit non-compliant photos until just prior to this year's enforcement deadline. And as the deadline approached, sellers encountered glitches and misinformation. Sellers also found that eBay's own listing tool, Turbo Lister, was in some cases shrinking the size of photos, making compliant photos non-compliant.

Also of concern to sellers now is a new requirement from Google. eBay requires sellers submit photos with a minimum size of at least 500 pixels on the longest side. But in May, Google announced it was requiring merchants to submit higher resolution photos of at least 800 pixels in height and width to "give users a better visual representation of advertised products."

Google's requirements matter for merchants and marketplaces who send product feeds as part of Google's Product Listing Ads, which is the only way to get exposure in Google Shopping search results. Sellers have speculated that eBay could raise the minimum size requirement to 800 pixels as a result.

The tools eBay announced to help merchants get their images into compliance included the following:

Bulk edit and relist tool
You can find a link to a handy photo workspace available in the bulk edit and relist tool to identify all your listings with photos that don’t meet the requirements. Use the photo uploader to update any non-compliant photos. If all of your pictures are compliant, you’ll be redirected back to My eBay or Selling Manager. As long as you have non-compliant listings, you can access this photo workspace through the selling reminder section in My eBay (or in listing improvement recommendations within Selling Manager).

Turbo Lister
A new version of Turbo Lister detects if your photos comply with the eBay photo quality requirements when you submit a listing. For the best experience, download the latest version of Turbo Lister or click on “check for updates” in your Turbo Lister.

File Exchange
In File Exchange, now you can request a report called Recommendations in the dropdown menu, which shows you at a glance all of the pictures in your listings that are not compliant and explains why.

eBay also told sellers they can get guidance as they list items: "You now get photo guidance as you list or relist in the Sell Your Item form to help ensure your pictures meet the requirements. Identify your current listings with non-compliant photos in the reminder in My eBay or Listing improvement recommendations in Selling Manager Pro."

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About the author:

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com.

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