eBay Design Templates and Templates: Design Templates in JTL

An eBay design template is basically nothing more than HTML code. But more about that in this article.

In a nutshell…

• Nowadays it is important to stand out from the competition with a functional responsive product presentation and in this way maximize the conversion rate.
• We can create design templates in JTL eBay directly in the Wawi and have a lot of freedom in design
• The template language dotLiquid used by JTL allows us to set variables and global text modules as placeholders in our design template, which are fed with data from the articles when creating the offer.

Our booth

Our eBay blog series was about how we can work more efficiently with eBay features from within JTL Wawi. We looked at how we can reuse quote templates or create Global Quote Templates as a permanent pattern. In the course of this, it is now also possible for us to upload any number of offers to eBay with just a few mouse clicks.

In this part we will cover the important topic of eBay design templates. In doing so, we will first go over why we should use a design template these days and how it should be built. In the second step, we will explain how to work with eBay design templates from within Wawi.

Maximization of the conversion rate

It has become common knowledge that some product presentations are more likely to motivate customers to buy than others. In the Internet age, this is also known as conversion rate. A monotonous long-line text, for example, looks less attractive than if the flood of text is broken up by images, symbols and other design elements. This can be determined by the number of sales in an A-B test and conclusions can be drawn about the attractiveness of certain presentations.

As a result, certain best practices have emerged over time that are highly likely to lead to better product presentation and thus higher conversion rates. Following these best practices is generally advisable, although there can and should be differences at the detailed level.

On the one hand, always the same presentations become boring in the long run and harm the conversion rate. If we as a retailer use a presentation over a longer period of time, that is still okay, but if dozens of other competitors do the same, then this product presentation no longer generates any additional customer benefit. In times of low margins and a lot of competition, this is a possible way to stand out from the gray masses.

Second, there are significant differences between the target groups. It’s easy to realize that jewelry and home improvement supplies, on average, satisfy completely different target groups (and needs), and this fact should be reflected in our product presentation.

Clean display, on all devices

As if that wasn’t complex enough, the advent of smartphones and tablets added a whole new dimension of design possibilities. Around 50% of all online commerce is now conducted via mobile devices. If you want to get the most out of your product, you can’t avoid a responsive display. But what is it actually?

Responsiveness refers to the ability of a website to maintain a user-pleasing display as the pixel width shrinks (or increases). This is especially true for the correct presentation of the website on smartphones and tablets, but partly also on extra-large desktop monitors.

Surely everyone knows this one website, where you first have to zoom in on your smartphone to be able to read the text. Even on eBay nowadays you can occasionally find such outdated templates in the product descriptions. But now that we know better, we can avoid this mistake. We just need to make sure that our eBay design template is responsive when choosing it.

Design Templates on eBay Platform

An eBay design template is basically nothing more than HTML code. We could basically save our template in code form somewhere on our PC and copy it into eBay backend when listing a new listing. Then, in the WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) editor, we would customize the text, images and descriptions to fit the product.

But what if at some point we decide we want to renew our template for all offers? When listing on eBay, there is no getting around the manual revision of all offers. The effort then very quickly exceeds the benefit.

Also, eBay can change its product description policies at any time and we would be equally forced to revise any listing. For example, there were extensive changes in 2017. Most product descriptions were affected and merchants had to act to prevent their listings from being blocked for policy violations.

All the mentioned problems can be easily solved in JTL. With just a few clicks we can assign a different design template to all(!) listings and transfer them to eBay. This allows us to react quickly and flexibly to new requirements on eBay and in e-commerce in general.

Design templates in JTL

JTL eazyAuction (interface from JTL to eBay/Amazon) comes out of the box with a handful of pre-made design templates. However, we can also create our own templates or adapt existing ones in an extensive editor. In the following we would like to show you the basic functions in dealing with design templates in JTL.

We can access the design template management within our Wawi with marketplaces > eBay > design templates. In the list on the left we can see all the templates currently available to us. The EVO design template is a JTL-own responsive template and is based on the JTL store. All others are standard templates.

For an up-to-date preview of the template we can press the Click here to render button at any time. Likewise, by clicking on Browser Preview (default browser), we can examine our design template in the browser display.

We can edit a template in the right window in the Edit or CSS tabs. There we can deposit our HTML as well as CSS code in each case. In the Images tab we can store generic images, which we then link to the template in the Edit tab. The images are stored in the JTL subfolder gfx and can be accessed under the address gfx/bildname.jpg in the HTML code. We can create, copy, export or delete templates in the template management. We can find the options for this in the lower left corner.

Technical subtleties

The HTML editor of JTL is equipped with a special finesse. JTL’s built-in template language dotLiquid allows us to put placeholders in our design template. These placeholders are either variables that are filled from the item data when a quote is created, or Global Text Blocks that apply to all quotes with this design template.

An example of a variable is the short description that we can store in the item data. We navigate ourselves in the right category tree in the Edit tab to Vorgang > Article > Description > Short description and can insert the placeholder into our HTML file with a double click on German. The command looks like this in dotLiquid language:

{{ process.item.description.short.description.German }}

Placeholders can still be controlled by various filters. For example, you can specify that the placeholder should only appear in the design template if corresponding data is stored at the item level. By right-clicking on one of the variables in the upper right corner, many other filters can be set.

Under Global Text Modules we can store texts that we can insert into our design templates as we wish. We can store dozens of other text fields here, in addition to imprint information and shipping terms, or create our own. A Global Text is applied to the design template with the following command:

{{ GlobalTexts.eBay.Return Policy }}

Professional design templates

Minor changes to a design template or the insertion of placeholders can easily be done by yourself. On the other hand, creating a fully functional, conversion rate optimized, responsive design template in the best case scenario requires real programming skills. As a merchant, you have the option to hire a web designer specialized in eBay templates or to buy ready-made design templates.

You can buy the latter on the marketplace of your choice or just have a look at the eBakery store. There we offer among others JTL eazyAuction design templates. For an individual design you can contact us directly via contact form.

Outlook

The possibilities eBay offers us in terms of product presentation are unique for online marketplaces. JTL equips us with a great arsenal of tools for this, to achieve the best possible display and whip the conversion rate upwards.

However, product presentation is by no means the only way to optimize your offer on eBay. In part 5 of the eBay blog series, we give you an excursion into eBay’s search engine technology Cassini and go into detail about SSearch Engine Optimization (SEO). Until then!

Read the entire eBay blog series now

• Connect eBay with JTL
• Create offers
• Global templates and efficiency
• eBay Design Templates

Ali Oukassi

Mohamed Ali Oukassi ist Gründer und Inhaber von eBakery. Er hat mehr als zwölf Jahre Erfahrung in der E-Commerce Welt. Mit seinem Team aus Experten kann er jeden Bereich abdecken und lebt den Full-Service-Gedanken, egal ob es um die Erstellung / Umstellung eines Shops, die Berartung hinsichtlich des richtigen Shopsystems, Marketingfragen, SEO oder auch das Thema Social Media Integration geht. Gut vernetzt und mit einem leistungsstarken Personal im Rücken, nimmt er sich jeder Herausforderung im E-Commerce an.