To get the most out of your eBay auction listings, no matter the format, you must be able to make them both readable and accessible. In almost all cases, this means being able to use at least a little bit of HTML, or HyperText Markup Language, the type of computer code from which all websites (including eBay) are ultimately composed.
Identifying the Problem
How many times have you visited someone else's auction listing only to see what appears to be a rambling description, almost indecipherable due to its lack of formatting or punctuation? Consider this sample:Great new Sigma 24mm lens Focal length: 24mm. Minimum aperture: f/22 Maximum aperture: f/1.8 Aperture blades: 9 Front cap: included Rear cap: included Compatibility: Canon EF Condition: Like New Buy this great lens using Buy It Now and I'll throw in an extra lens carrying bag and lens cleaning cloth. It's a great deal! Shipping Terms Shipped via UPS 3-day service to anywhere in the lower 48 states. Guarantee Guaranteed for 30 days, refunds or exchanges with advance notice only. Thanks for bidding!
Ugh, listings like this are horrible to read. Clearly, the seller in question needs to learn just a few basic HTML techniques to help him or her to present sale items more appealingly.
The Five HTML Tags to Know
Using just five HTML techniques (otherwise known as tags), you can make you auction listings infinitely more readable and avoid alienating would-be bidders. The tags are:- <br> — Inserting these four characters (a less-than symbol, the letters "br", and a greater-than symbol, no spaces between them) causes a line break, similar to a carriage return on a typewriter. Insert one of these in your listing text whenever you want to go to the next line. Insert two of them together when you want to skip a line.
- <b>your text here</b> — Any text that you surround by opening and closing bold tags (<b> and </b>, respectively) will appear in bold face type. This is very useful for emphasizing text in your listings that you'd like to have stand out.
- <i>your text here</i> — Any text that you surround by opening and closing italic tags (<i> and </i>, respectively) will appear in italic style type. This is, too, is useful for emphsizing aspects of your listing that should stand out to your reader.
- <font size="num">your text here</font> — Any text that you surround with opening and closing font tags that uses the size property will appear larger or smaller than regular text. Replace num with a number from -4 to 4 to indicate the size of the text you desire, with 0 being normal text. Negative numbers produce smaller text, while positive numbers produce larger text.
- <font color="name">your text here</font> — Any text that you surround with opening and closing font tags that uses the color property will appear in a different color from regular text. Replace name with the name of a primary color that you'd like to use for the text. Among the valid choices are red, green, blue, yellow, or brown.
That's it! It seems simple, doesn't it? You can use these tags anywhere in your auction listing, so long as you remember that every tage except <br> must have both an opening and a closing tag, and that tags must not overlap—i.e. the following overlapping tags won't work:
<b>this text is bold <i>this is bold-italic</b>and this is only italic</i>
Let's see how the poorly presented listing text shown above can be spruced up significantly using the tags we've just learned. Read on to see.
