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If you are a seller of motor parts on eBay, you will be pleased to know that the marketplace has just released a Motor Parts Compatibility Tool, which is designed to help you maximize your search exposure and save on insertion fees.
Below, we have summarized everything you need to know about the tool, and provided further guidance on how you can use this tool with Linnworks. Selling Motorcycle Parts instead of car parts? You're still going to want to read on...
The tool will specifically help you to identify all of the K-Types associated with each of the motor parts you sell, ultimately providing invaluable insight into some of the other car makes and models that these parts are compatible with.
While this in itself is a huge advantage as it can open up some huge sales opportunities for you to capitalize on, an additional problem that this tool helps to resolve is duplicate listings.
Duplicate listings are in fact extremely common within the motor parts vertical, with sellers often having a listing for each individual K-Type, rather than having a single listing that includes all of the compatible K-Types.
If this is something that you are guilty of, we would strongly recommend that you use only one listing per motor part, as this not only saves you a huge amount of time when managing your listings, but it also helps you save on insertion fees.
But that’s not all. By removing duplicate listings from your account, you will also be protecting yourself from any penalties.
eBay are currently investing a lot of resources into cleaning up duplicate listings, an example of which would be using a slightly modified title stating which car make / model it fits for the same product. There are however exceptions, for instance you can have up to five listings for the same product, as a single listing can only feature 3,000 K-Types. This essentially means you can have up to 15,000 K-Types associated with each individual vehicle part that you sell. That's a lot of listings to manually manage, when you can have as little as five.
In short, you will no longer be required to manually check eBay’s Master Vehicle List (MVL) to find compatible vehicles. Instead, you will now be able to obtain information on the compatibility of automotive parts and accessories across your listings.
Your products will also appear in all search queries for any vehicle that your product is compatible with. This is also particularly beneficial for those of you selling internationally as overseas buyers will be also be more exposed to your listings.
Using the Motor Parts Compatibility Tool with Linnworks
Linnworks integrates with eBay’s K-Type functionality, which allows you to easily identify the makes and models of the cars that your products are compatible with.
As eBay’s Motor Parts Compatibility Tool is not specific to Linnworks, there is still a manual process that you will need to follow to import your obtained K-Type data into the system.
To start with, you will need to log into eBay’s tool, link up your eBay account and build a report of the data you wish to retrieve. To look up products that you aren’t already listing, you can submit the item’s SKU code or EAN. This data can then be exported from the tool and then imported into Linnworks against your Linnworks SKUs. From here, you can then create or revise listings.
Again, do keep in mind that the report may require some manipulation as it is not Linnworks specific.
To learn more about Linnworks K-Types Import, you can read our documentation here. We will also be running a live webinar with eBay's Craig MacCallum, at 3pm on Tuesday 4th July. This will also give you an unmissable opportunity to raise any questions you may have about this new tool and how it works with Linnworks.
Keep in mind that the eBay Motor Parts Compatibility Tool is designed only for motor vehicle parts on eBay UK and does not support motorcycle parts. That said, if you are selling the latter it is still extremely important that you read on.
Why?
Because plenty of the above still very much applies to you. The use of duplicate listings is still costing you more, both in terms of time and insertion fees, and your duplicate listings are also at risk of being penalized.
The only difference is that instead of using eBay’s tool, you will be required to check the Master Motorcycle List (MML) to get the full list of compatible parts and their ePIDs (eBay Product Identifiers). Once you have retrieved these codes, you can import them into Linnworks using our ePID Import which is part of our Data Import Functionality. Once imported, you can then revise your existing listings or create new ones.
If you're not familiar with ePIDs, they are the equivalent to K-Types for Motocycle Parts.
To learn more about using this import tool, take a look at the relevant Linnworks documentation or alternatively watch our video recording, where our Product Specialist Chris Gates demonstrates the entire process.
Speak to us to find out how Linnworks can connect and automate your commerce operations so you can capture every revenue opportunity.
