If I create a listing on Ebay, the first thing requested is a title. Ebay then suggests the most popular categories for my item. On selecting a category Ebay then displays Item Specifics that are relevant to that category. These Item Specifics may be of any data type - such as a dropdown list, free type text, radio control and more.
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If I want my Neto Inventory to push Item Specific information from my product to Ebay, then currently I need to hand-type the specific name and value (eg. "Colour" and "Red"). This manual process is an open door for human error. Worse, for variation products, if a sale has been recorded in Ebay, you may *add* new Item Specific information but not edit or remove existing Item Specific information. This means if an incorrect name or value is added to a product in Neto and this is pushed to Ebay, you cannot undo the change without ending the listing and losing your sales history (shown on Ebay, along with user feedback) for that product.
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I understand many Neto clients map specifics at the listing template level, but not all. Even if specifics are mapped in the listing template, this does not seem to make sense for some kinds of specifics - for example, my template might relate to t-shirts, but one product will have 'red', another will have 'blue' as the specific value for 'colour'. Hence, *item* specifics really should be modeled at the item level in my opinion.
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The big reason why this is so important is that Ebay presents buyers with filters when they search. The filters are created automatically, based upon the item specifics that are relevant to a listing's category. In my example above, if Ebay is presenting a filter for t-shirts named "Colour" that has an option for "Red", but my staff member accidentally typed "Color" or copied the product's description label which said the colour is "Rose Red", then my product will not appear if the buyer uses Ebay's search filter for Colour: Red.
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My proposed solution to improve the handling of Item Specifics in Neto is described below. A detailed description is in my support ticket # 00222675.
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At the product level in Neto, you can specify an ebay listing category (not Ebay store category). Once the listing category is specified, Neto displays all the form elements that would ordinarily be displayed by Ebay when creating that listing (as described above) - including the specific values in each element.
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A this point the solution could go one of two ways - all of this information could be left to sit on its own for exclusive use with Ebay - whatever you choose in these fields, this is what will transfer to your listing in that ebay category. This may require the ability to "add a new row" to specify further information if you choose to list into a second ebay category.
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Alternatively, this form could be used as a data entry form and the data you create here would then be copied into the existing Item Specifics fields against the product in Neto. If this is the way forward, then I would recommend adding some checkboxes against each Item Specific name/value pair: one checkbox to represent "use this Item Specific in the Web Store" and another to represent "use this Item Specific in Ebay" - although the Ebay one is still tied to a specific ebay category - so the ebay category may need to be recorded against the specific as well.
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Other third party vendors have coded interfaces using Ebay APIs that reproduce this Ebay functionality within their own applications (see the support ticket I mentioned) - so this is entirely doable.
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One last thought - to extend this functionality into other marketing channels / marketplaces (such as Amazon), perhaps rather than checkboxes specifying target marketplaces, just present a multi-select list of all marketplaces active for the current Neto account (although there remains the issue that some Item Specifics are valid in ebay only in specific categories).
