Attribute types on marketplaces

Marketplaces are deeply vested in their taxonomies and failure on the part of sellers to comply with the requirements on the attribute types on marketplaces might cause the products to appear low in searches and eventually cause listing rejection.

Data tagging is vital for sellers who really want to compete in the e-commerce world, as it attaches critical and relevant information about the product, such as its brand, color, size, type, etc, allowing shoppers the cut through large number of search results by simply selecting the attributes of the product they are looking for.  

Most of the marketplaces, like eBay, Amazon, Rakuten, etc. use extensive category and attribute structures. These structures on the marketplace side require data tagging for products in various product categories, while the marketplaces continually adjust and update the structure to better cater to their customers. For instance, while eBay revises its Item Specifics structure twice a year, Yahoo! Shopping updates its tagging policy every 2 weeks, and Rakuten, which announced a significant structural change in attributes and formats coming next April, currently updates its requirements every 2 months. 

The sellers are then required to follow the structural updates and make sure their listings are optimized and tagged accordingly. Marketplaces are deeply vested into their taxonomies and failure on the part of sellers to optimize their listings might not only lead to the products to appear low in  searches, but it might also cause the listing not to be shown in the marketplace at all.  

Following up on all these constant changes, separate and distinct for each market place, is quite a burdensome task. To help with this process, Lisuto created Xtag, a tool that helps sellers optimize their product data and drive more sales on their online store. Xtag goes through the existing product information, tagging the data with marketplace specific navigational tags, making necessary corrections and completions, bringing the quality of the sellers' product feed up to highest standard in terms of uniformity and completeness, making it perfectly optimized for each channel and for the user's eyes, while taking the burden off the sellers’ shoulders.

Most marketplaces place 3-4 degrees of importance on the attributes of the listed products:

1. Mandatory - product attributes, the marketplace deems most essential to the listing and most important for the shoppers. Product listings that are not tagged with the mandatory attributes will not be displayed by the marketplace or even declined upon feed upload.   
2. Soon to be Mandatory- product attributes that are very important, but not mandatory… yet. But it soon will be. It is recommended not to wait for them to become mandatory, and provide the necessary data as soon as possible. Providing this data does help sales. 
3. Recommended - as the name suggests, these attributes contain data the shoppers usually find helpful in their site navigation, and although it is not mandatory, tagging your listings with this data can increase their exposure on the marketplace.
4. Optional - although less popular than the recommended attributes, tagging your listings with optional product attributes can nonetheless increase their exposure. 
   

Lisuto is currently building a new platform which will allow sellers to clearly see all 4 types of required attribute types on marketplaces. This platform will help sellers focus on the most urgently needed changes, and prioritize them accordingly.  

Several case studies conducted by Lisuto in cooperation with its clients to measure the impact of data tagging on marketplace performances found instant improvements after Xtagging, across all key performance indicators examined. 

“All in all, throughout the test period, Xtag improved our sales by an average of 414.45%”