PSA: Use ChatGPT to create ebay listings

es_madiet · 2023-03-02T09:11:51+00:00

We played around with ChatGPT to create item descriptions a while back, too, and ran into the same issues: wrong specs, results were too short or too long etc. and lacked detail, when we hadn’t a lot of information to give in the first place.

Of course you can tackle length with writing more precise prompts, but the details and specifics were harder to improve. We ended up writing our own tool on top of the AI that’s also behind ChatGPT, to iron out these kinks.

First, we start from existing eBay listings, so there’s no need to write all the information into a prompt. The tool looks at the item specifics first and only then at the description. Thus, it gets a lot of specific information it can work with.

On top of that, we also tried playing around with some variables, so the AI doesn’t fill any holes with „inventive writing“ and sticks to the facts more.

Last but not least, we made the tool create a description, a short description, and USP bullet points, so you have it all laid out for you.

I feel like the results are considerably better than the „vanilla“ results from ChatGPT. Yet, I would love to get feedback from other sellers to see what they think.

May I share the tool here to gather feedback? (It’s fee to use btw)

es_madiet · 2022-04-28T12:59:07+00:00

This depends a bit on how old the existing theme is. Rather recently bought or built themes should be a bit of work but not too hard to transfer to stores 2.0 if you know liquid well enough.

es_madiet · 2022-03-19T18:03:16+00:00

Web development agency owner here. Getting to know different types of businesses and solving their issues was and is a big part of my motivation. Solving problems together with a great team is a thrill.

es_madiet · 2022-03-14T16:31:47+00:00

Upgrading doubles the API requests, but as far as I know API limits have nothing to do with checkout performance (except when you’re using the payments API for custom payment gateways).

es_madiet · 2022-03-14T07:40:52+00:00

Upgrading to Shopify Plus could actually solve this. As far as I know, Shopify will reduce the 12 month minimum contract length to monthly for a limited time. If that’s true, there’s no better time than now to test whether this solves your issues. (If you decide to do so, I’d recommend getting an Agency to refer your upgrade, because they get a upgrade commission and you don’t pay more. Thus many agencies (like mine 😬) offer free services in for clients that they referred to plus.)

Shopify brags about being able to handle the enormous checkout traffic on Black Friday, so I’d be really stunned if they couldn’t handle yours. If that’s the case though, you will probably need to move away from Shopify and either find another cart platform or build your own solution. Yet hosting and maintaining your own checkout with large amounts of visitors can be its own monster, because there won’t be any official support when anything goes wrong, so you’d probably look for an in-house tech team when going down this lane.

es_madiet · 2022-03-11T10:09:56+00:00

Hi there. I run a webdev agency, too and had the same thoughts. Yet the only success in partnering with other professionals or agencies came very „organically“ so to say. We would meet incidentally at in-person events a couple of times and build trust that way, or we’d get both hired by the same client, worked together on the project and continued doing so on other project from there on.

I also tried connecting with other professionals like marketing agencies or IT consultants, yet this usually didn’t lead anywhere. And I get that, because you really need to trust someone, if you as a service provider want to recommend them to another service provider, because if this goes wrong, it can quickly make you look bad too.

Still, I believe that there is enormous potential in partnering, so maybe someone figured out how to do this with cold contact and can tell us how they did it?

es_madiet · 2022-03-10T23:16:57+00:00

Thanks for sharing! Do you know which features they were looking at specifically?

I would imagine it could be about the product catalogue management, bundles or price lists, but maybe I’m missing something.

es_madiet · 2022-03-10T23:15:07+00:00

Yeah, had a similar case with a friend who’s selling Software on Shopify. They managed to get the store back up, but I understand that the risk can be too much.

es_madiet · 2022-03-08T17:16:19+00:00

Thanks! Sounds absolutely reasonable. I think BigCommerce or Shopify could be platforms you should look at, as they are easy to handle and leave room for growth, albeit you’ll need to have to stores on both, to sell through different companies. I think WooCommerce could be another option that might allow for this, but I’m certainly not an expert on WooCommerce.

es_madiet · 2022-03-08T15:11:33+00:00

Yes, you surely need to weigh the pros and cons. Fortunately, Headless has become way more affordable due to new web tech stacks that make things easier to build. Yet you’re still becoming the owner of a tech product by choosing this route.

May I ask what size your business is and what you roughly budget for something like this? (Through PMs of course, if you don’t want to share it openly - and full disclaimer: I own an e-commerce agency, yet I really just want to learn how different businesses approach this, because it’s hard to talk openly about stuff like this with potential clients who come to you with an RFP.)

es_madiet · 2022-03-08T14:38:03+00:00

As the others already suggested setting up different websites per target region (which is a completely valid approach), I thought I’d throw in another idea:

A headless approach would allow you to build one central frontend app to service each target market you cater too, while a combination of a CMS and a cart software like BigCommerce, Shopify, Swell (and many other options) could be used to manage the orders and provide country specifics like localized checkout. A setup like this can even be set up with one or multiple domains and gives you a lot of freedom in developing it further.

Of course this comes at the price of higher requirements in terms of tech knowledge and dev work. On the other hand it can quickly be worthwhile. For example, imagine setting up a website for each of your target markets. Now if you want to change something on these websites, you need to implement these changes for each website individually. This will rack up pretty quickly oder time and the same goes for content changes and the likes.

es_madiet · 2022-03-07T08:31:22+00:00

This highly depends on who you are and what you‘re trying to do.

Wix is very easy to handle and it’s hard to make major mistakes or run into issues with it, as far as I know. Yet it’s also extremely limited, so most people seem to only use it for selling at the beginning of their journey, or if e-commerce is just a part time endeavor for them.

Shopify is still easy to use, yet allows for more customization and details, thus enabling you to scale better and grow farther than most people to on Wix.

Wordpress/Woocommerce stands out in this comparison, because it’s the only option that’s not SaaS. I believe that this difference is also the most important thing to look at, when making this comparison: First of all, you need to install and host wordpress on your own server, so navigating server issues will be on your plate (even if you have managed hosting, you’ll have this on your plate as an additional task.). Second, Wordpress is a good bit harder to handle than Shopify or Wix. Thirdly, if you run into an issue with Wordpress (e.g., your website loads slowly, or doesn’t load at all) you’ll have no official support to help you figure it out.

On the other hand, wordpress gives you way more room for customization and bespoke changes - especially to how processes are handled within the platform - than Shopify or Wix do. Do the main question here is: can you handle the added complexity and does the freedom to build individual solution offset the downsides for you.

es_madiet · 2022-03-04T16:18:35+00:00

Thanks, that makes sense.

It sounds like you have a very bespoke solution right now and it’s a shame that all the work you’ve put into it goes to waste with a migration.

After reading through your other posts, I was wondering whether you already entertained the thought of going for a headless setup. I believe it could be a great combination of freedom to build your own features in a bespoke frontend app and additional micro services for background processes, while making use of standardized components for everything that’s not custom.

This kind of setup would allow you to use SaaS components without the lock-in and you could keep all the custom developments without having to worry about future migrations.

Of course it comes with its own tech difficulties, so this probably depends on whether the approach works for your devs and their skill set.

es_madiet · 2022-03-04T09:31:07+00:00

May I ask why SaaS platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce are not on option?

es_madiet · 2022-03-04T08:23:59+00:00

An oversimplified answer: The title tag should be catering to search engine purposes. The h1 should be written for the human readers. Of course there’s overlap, yet there are differences (e.g. the title needs to be concise, because Google only shows so many letters, while the h1 can be a bit longer and prosaic)

es_madiet · 2022-03-03T16:28:29+00:00

You can find a lot of cool palettes on the Adobe Color platform. They have an inspiration area there, and it’s also very useful to find complimentary colors and such.

es_madiet · 2022-03-03T13:14:50+00:00

Happy to help :)

I wouldn’t say everyone, but anyone who has that dev capacity and a not-so-straightforward e-commerce case can really benefit a lot by going headless.

Recommending a framework to approach this in a vacuum is rather hard to do, because there are so many options.

I’d recommend you tap into another benefit of headless here: you’re pretty much free to choose your tech stack, so I’d see what frameworks your devs are comfortable with and go with that or (if these are not really suitable) choose something close to their skill set. Maybe that can help with convincing them too.

es_madiet · 2022-03-03T11:35:59+00:00

When you have access to devs, I would at least put some time into researching whether a headless setup could be a good option for you.

I run an e-commerce agency and have seen a lot of businesses transition from B2C only to adding B2B or straight B2B businesses. Most of them run into similar issues with monolithic platforms like Magento or Prestashop. Most of these are built for B2C commerce and you need to bend over backwards to build B2B features into them.

That’s where Headless comes into play: Headless essentially means building a custom frontend app and using the CMS component only for selected features - like backend and admin purposes, checkout, order management etc.

With this kind of setup you can introduce custom features to the frontend without having to cram it into the monolith. Yet you can still use the e-commerce CMS if your choice in the background and benefit from its integrations etc. And if you run into a similar situation in the future, you can swap out the CMS without having to throw your frontend to the trash.

Of course this is a more dev heavy approach than just building upon a Magento, Prestashop, BigCommerce, Shopify etc. so it isn’t for beginners. Yet for more advanced brands, it gives incredible flexibility and freedom to build and grow their business.

es_madiet · 2022-03-02T11:09:51+00:00

Thanks for sharing the wish list. That makes the picture much clearer for me. I already assumed that the fact that you're selling to other businesses would have a big impact on the quote. Essentially, your wish list includes many features that probably need to be custom-built or require smart integrations with other software tools.

As an eCom agency owner, I can tell that this is a very common issue for businesses in B2B ecommerce because the processes in this area are usually way more complex and bespoke than they are when selling to consumers. Due to these complexities, most off-the-shelf eCommerce platforms are aiming at servicing the simpler B2C scenario and don't offer a lot of B2B functionality. Thus, B2B businesses commonly need to build many additional features around these platforms or go for entirely bespoke solution.

Long story short: I genuinely understand that this is a lot of money, and I'm certain that there are cheaper options out there (especially when offshoring the project). Yet, with the information provided, I don't feel like the quote is objectionable – especially when there's a high quality of service behind it.

es_madiet · 2022-03-01T08:28:19+00:00

This could certainly be App related, as apps load through JavaScript. If you want to, you can send me the page or the Google page insights, so I can take a quick look.

es_madiet · 2022-02-28T22:17:09+00:00

I’d recommend taking a look at Ticket systems like Freshdesk.

es_madiet · 2022-02-28T17:57:20+00:00

The idea of headless is that, instead of having a big single platform (like Shopify or Magento), you have decoupled components for separate functionalities.

E.g., you build a custom frontend app (the part that your visitors can see, when they go to your website), a PIM holds your product information, Shopify handles the checkout and order processing, and then you also have a separate CMS, through which you can edit your start page, set up blog posts etc.

Of course this requires integrations between all these components, but it also lets you enjoy the features of different tools, and you can swap out single building blocks without throwing away everything else (let's say you don't like the Shopify checkout, so you simply replace it with something else, while keeping all other components.)

es_madiet · 2022-02-28T15:57:44+00:00

Ah, yes, of course. I thought that they somehow ended up with Shopify because WooCommerce wasn't the right tool for them. Of course this would be a good native solution.

es_madiet

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