This is the most important question that auto part buyers ask themselves when searching for parts online. If you sell aftermarket parts and accessories for cars, motorcycles, trucks, boats, or RV’s, you need to make sure that your visitors can see whether the items you sell are compatible with their vehicle. eBay’s parts compatibility feature enables you to do this, and it is a great way to unload inventory and try to sell your slow-turning items.
Parts compatibility (fitment tables) allow you to list your parts and accessories on eBay by associating what other vehicles those parts are compatible with. The compatibility is defined by Year, Make, and Model, and the tool works by adding fitment data to the eBay item listing automatically. Whenever someone searches for a part online, and your part is compatible, it will show up in their search results.
Parts compatibility is an excellent way for buyers to find parts that fit their vehicles, but it is also a great way for sellers to list parts that fit a broad range of vehicles. You can create a listing under the eBay Motors category that describes a single part and then add a list of compatible vehicles, which eliminates that need to list one part several times to make sure that all compatible vehicles are found in search results.
Why is Fitment/Parts Compatibility so Important?
When selling on eBay, fitment compatibility is important for both auto part buyers and sellers on eBay because – buyers need a part that fits their car, while sellers want their parts to show up in search results. There are several ways that buyers can determine whether a certain part will fit their vehicle.
- Using an online auto parts finder, where they select their model of the vehicle and are then shown parts that are compatible.
- Carefully reading the item specifics description, looking for a part that fits their year, model, make, and engine, and checking whether there are some exceptions that they should be aware of.
- Reaching out to the seller to ask whether the part they’re interested in fits their vehicle.
The online parts finder is the method that most car parts buyers prefer because it is convenient, quick, and reassuring. They just type in their exact vehicle information and get a listing of all products compatible with their vehicle. Everything is quite straightforward and simple.
Why Should You Use It?
With parts compatibility, you will reduce the number of listings that you need to create by including a detailed list of compatible vehicles for one part in just one listing. Once you do that, your parts compatibility listings will get a boost in Best Match search. To better market your listing, you can use your 55-character title for popular search elements (e.g., part number or brand).
The reason eBay developed this great feature is to simplify listing creation and management and to reduce repetitive listing, thus helping individual sellers, brands, and OEM manufacturers to run their businesses more smoothly. Auto part buyers are now able to find the parts they need much faster and be confident that the part will fit their vehicle. All that translates into fewer inquiries and returns (and sellers pay less in fees because they have fewer active listings).
The Parts Compatibility tool is designed to help you identify all of the K-types associated with each part you sell (by definition, K-Type is a class of vehicle distinguished by common traits). That will ultimately provide vital insight into other car models and make sure that your parts are compatible. This is a huge advantage in itself because it can open up great sales opportunities for your business.
An additional problem that the tools help resolve is duplicate listings of your eBay product. Within the motor parts vertical, duplicate listings are quite common because sellers often had a listing of each K-Type, instead of having one listing that includes all K-Types that are compatible. If you have many duplicate eBay listings, then using eBay’s Parts Compatibility tool is something that we would strongly recommend. Not only will it save you a great deal of time when managing your listings, but it will also save you some money on insertion fees. By removing duplicate listings, you’ll also be protecting yourself from being penalized.
According to their duplicate listings policy, eBay doesn’t allow more than one fixed price listing of an identical item at the same time and from the same seller (to ensure that buyers see a variety of options from different sellers). Right now, eBay is investing time and resources into cleaning up duplicate listings, such as those using slightly changed titles stating which vehicle make or model it fits for the same item. There are also exceptions to this, like having up to 5 listings for the same item, as a single listing can only contain 3,000 K-Types. This means that a seller can have up to 15,000 K-Types associated with each vehicle part that you sell. But when you know that you can have as little as five listings to manage manually, why would you opt to manually manage thousands?
To find compatible vehicles, you are no longer required to check eBay’s MVL (Master Vehicle List) manually to obtain necessary information on the compatibility of auto parts and accessories across your listings. Furthermore, your auto parts will appear in all search queries for other vehicles that your parts are compatible with. If you are selling internationally, this is especially beneficial because buyers from overseas will be more exposed to your listings.
High-Quality Compatibility/Fitment Data
- Format: Different formats of fitment data are required by different marketplaces. For example, Amazon uses the ACES (Aftermarket Catalog Exchange Standard) industry standard, which is managed by the Auto Care Association (a U.S. trade body). eBay, on the other hand, has its own MVLs or Master Vehicle Lists. Despite sharing much in common with the data itself, ACES and MVL are two completely different formats that cannot be taken and reused on other sales channels (other than their native one).
- Accuracy: Adding fitment/compatibility data needs to be accurate before anything. If it is not accurate, then you risk making sales to buyers who actually wanted a different part. Just imagine your customer spending half a day disassembling parts of their car only to find out that the part they had bought for you is incompatible. This translates into product returns, customer complaints, bad word of mouth, and negative feedback and online reviews. The returns and bad product reviews can be costly, not just in monetary terms, but also by damaging your reputation that can affect your bottom line in the long-term. As a seller, you need to detect bad data as quickly as possible so you can fix it before more bad sales occur.
- Completeness: Sellers can miss out on sales if their compatibility/fitment data is incomplete – that is, if it doesn’t include every vehicle a certain part is compatible with. Nowadays, many different makes and models of vehicles use the same engine types, suspension systems, transmissions, and other components. Therefore, it’s highly likely that auto parts and accessories you sell fit vehicles that you don’t even know about. Before you upload your compatibility data, do your research to ensure that it includes every compatible vehicle. If you don’t do your research, understand that you are underselling your parts and letting others get sales that you could have got.
Supercharge Sales with an eBay Integration
There are a number of third-party solutions out there, such as myFITMENT, that can be integrated with eBay’s API to help sellers upload their listings on eBay and manage fitment. If you have a huge catalog of auto parts, you can leverage this kind of solution for less than $100 per month, which will be worth it (in the end). These integrations make it incredibly easy to sell OEM car parts because they provide various options to easily and quickly upload your auto part compatibility information. Quick, simple, and effective.
Among primary concerns of every eBay seller of auto parts and accessories is – will the part fit my buyer’s vehicle? If it doesn’t fit, sellers can face various consequences, such as bad reviews, negative feedback, costly returns, and damaged reputation. eBay’s Parts Compatibility tool will help you provide complete, accurate, and clear data formatted to match your product descriptions. Since online presence has become the norm and an increasing number of people shop for aftermarket parts and accessories online, don’t waste your time on manually uploading your listings, but automate the process with the right third-party solution.
eBay’s Parts Compatibility feature is there to simplify listing creation and help you run your business smoothly.