When deciding how to structure your listings: How should my titles look? What attributes do I need? What values can I use? it's helpful to think about marketplaces as product search engines.
More than half of shoppers start product discovery on Amazon, not Google. That means marketplace search is the primary gateway for many buyers — and marketplaces match buyer keywords to your structured product data, not to ad copy.
Marketplaces break queries into keywords and match them to specific fields. The fields they use — and how much weight each field carries — differ by platform.
Amazon (field-weighted): titles, category/product type, attributes (brand, size, colour, compatibility), backend search terms and then bullets/descriptions. Items with keywords in title and attributes get higher relevance. A+ (enhanced) content can also lift conversion once shoppers land on the page.
eBay (structured item specifics): titles are important, but eBay relies heavily on item specifics (Brand, Size, Colour, Condition). Listings missing required item specifics can be blocked or excluded from filtered searches. Complete item specifics improve visibility in Cassini (eBay's search) and external channels like Google Shopping.
Other marketplaces (Debenhams and Mirakl-powered marketplaces): newer marketplace platforms also use marketplace schemas and item specifics.
Debenhams is operating a marketplace model that depends on brand and category mappings and has launched retail media to help brands get visibility. Treat them like other marketplace search engines — structured attributes matter.
Practical implication: if your data lives in free-text fields or inconsistent formats, matching fails and filters drop you out of buyer results.
After relevance, marketplaces rank results using performance signals:
Marketplaces prioritise listings that convert and keep buyers happy. That's why structure alone isn't enough — you need both good data and good performance. (See platform docs and seller guidance for specific ranking levers.)
Search origin: ~56% of consumers start product search on Amazon, so failing to optimise for marketplace search costs large reach.
A+ / enhanced content: Amazon reports Basic A+ can increase sales up to ~8%; Premium A+ up to ~20% for well-executed pages. That's a direct conversion lift after matching.
Item specifics: eBay explicitly calls item specifics “critical” for visibility and requires them in many categories. In practice, complete specifics increase the chances of appearing in filtered results.
PIM / structured-data ROI: multiple industry studies and vendor analyses show well-run PIM programs often improve online conversion rates in the order of 15–50% and materially reduce time-to-market. Use conservative planning numbers of 15-25% conversion uplift when modelling.
Those numbers make a concrete point: fixing structure and content is not cosmetic — it materially increases traffic and sales when combined with conversion improvements.
Fix data structure first
Title strategy: machines first
Add enhanced content where allowed
Protect performance signals
Measure and iterate
Most sellers fail at scale because they treat these fixes as one-off tasks. Efficient implementation relies on automation and process.
Centralise product data (PIM or similar single source of truth)
Use channel-specific templates and pre-flight checks
Automate title builders and rules
Batch enrich and publish
Monitor and close the loop
Templates + automation + monitoring = scale. Multiple PIM vendors document these gains; the practical effect is fewer manual edits and faster channel launches.
Measure change at 30 days and iterate.
Marketplaces account for 60% of all e-commerce sales. We automate the data conversion so you don't have a mountain to climb before you can launch each channel.
Dan Burnham