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Why You Should Avoid Moving Images on Your eBay Listings

I don’t know about you but I positively hate eBay listings with moving icons and video clips, I think they look so unprofessional.  I can’t even stand moving images on sites belonging to top players like Amazon and Google.  But when they feature on web sites and eBay listings from ordinary folk like you and me, they turn completely off buying and I'm sure they do the same for other people also.

But generally, and specifically relating to eBay, I think most people, buyers certainly, would agree that superficial moving objects should be shot out of existence.  I’m talking the likes of moving wizard icons thanking you for  visiting so-and-so’s eBay pages, eBay pages that emerge like a slow moving snow storm and take ages to open your chosen listing by which time you’re dizzy and totally disinterested in whatever you wanted to view.  And let’s not forget video clips, to my mind THE worst thing to include in your eBay listings.  To my mind these moving objects look so supercilious, completely amateurish, they are immensely off-putting and can reveal the seller as totally unprofessional.  Which of course gets people escaping fast from strange moving listings and leaving the would-be, should-be seller, wondering why no one ever buys from him.

The reason I’m saying this today is because a subscriber emailed last night, asking me to view his listings to help determine why not one of about fifty items he listed last week had sold.  I looked, but only at three items chosen randomly throughout his failed listings.  Any more than that and I’d have developed a migraine.  I gave my friend my opinion, I said I think he’d do better with static images for the books he had listed instead of the video he’d created showing someone turning the pages of what were otherwise very attractive books.

“Strange”, he said, “quite a few other people said the same thing”, then asked why people swear you can increase your selling chances by adding bells and whistles to your eBay listings.

Answer: “Because they’re selling bells and whistles!”

Recent research shows that people do not like moving images on eBay, or off eBay for that matter, the reason being they distract visitors too much from what they originally wanted to see. 

Having said that, and I am definitely not in agreement with them, there are sellers who insist video clips and moving icons are beneficial to their listings.  It’s up to you to decide, preferably by testing a few listings with moving clips against static images for similar products.  To help you choose between shooting and saluting I found two sites featuring software designed to upload video images to your listings.