Item traits are a way for Bonanza to get detailed information -- like genre, brand, or color -- about your items so we can help more buyers find them. Research from other sites has shown that items with trait information generally sell 25-35% better than those that don't.
Watch a quick video on how to set item traits.
Bonanza offers you many different ways to specify the detailed traits for your items. This guide will lay out your options, and answer our most frequently asked questions about item traits.
Questions
- Give me a brief primer to item traits
- Do all categories have item traits? Which do and which don't?
- How do I add item traits to my items?
- What if my item trait isn't available in the drop-down?
- How do item traits help buyers find my items?
- How do item traits compare to Google Base attributes?
- Tell me about Item Trait Profiles
Give me a brief primer to item traits
There are many ways to help buyers find your items amongst the millions of items that are available online. Item categories ("Collectibles," "Video Games," etc.) are a great start, but often times a category alone cannot capture all of the details that buyers will want to know when they're searching for an item.
For example, say you're searching for a necklace for your niece. You would start by browsing to the "Jewelry & Watches -> Fashion Jewelry" category, but, once you were there, you would be presented with green necklaces, red necklaces, gold necklaces, platinum necklaces, etc.
Item traits are a way for buyers to dig deeper within a given category. So, in the hypothetical scenario above, the buyer might create a search filter so they see only items with a ruby gemstone and a silver band.
Search engines love to get detailed information like this, and Bonanza will automatically take the item trait information you give us and translate it into data that is meaningful to Google and other advertising platforms, when possible. This will lead to a higher search ranking for your items, and, ultimately, more buyers. To learn more about how item traits relate to Google Search attributes, click here.
Do all categories have item traits? Which do and which don't?
No. Many categories don't have item traits at all, and many more categories will only have very basic item traits, like whether the item is "new" or "used."
This is because for a very broad category like "Collectibles," there are few unifying characteristics that can be used to filter all "Collectibles." The more specific your item category is, the more likely there will be item traits in that category. The more item traits you add to your item, the more likely it is to get found amongst the tens of millions of items that search engines browse through.
How do I add item traits to my items?
Adding item traits can inherently be a bit of a chore if you have hundreds or thousands of items, so we've provided a couple different choices to make your life as easy as possible when it comes to specifying traits for your items.
Via the New Item Form.
This is the most straightforward way to specify item traits for your item, when available (remember: not all categories will have item traits available). To specify item traits, first choose your item's category (through browsing or otherwise). Once your category is selected, the available traits for that category will populate below. If you have created any valid Item Trait Profiles for the item's category, those will be listed here, too, so you can apply them immediately.
Via the Batch Editor.
The item trait list can be accessed via the Batch Editor, under the "Item Traits" tab (on the left side of the batch edit page). There are two ways to set traits via the batch edit page. The first is by applying an Item Trait Profile to a selection of items. Use the "Add new filter" link to filter your listings by category. After you have successfully filtered by category, the batch editor will show you all available Item Traits Profiles within the category you filtered. You can then select the items you want to apply the Item Trait Profile to.
The other options is to follow the link to "Edit traits for all items filtered." This will take you to a page that lists all items that match your current Batch Editor filter, where the full set of item traits for each item can be specified en masse. This is probably the fastest method of choosing item traits for those that have a lot of items spread across different categories. Here's an example of what that might look like:
What if my trait isn't available from the drop-down?
Most traits have several options to choose from. Use the search field to try and locate the trait name that best fits your item. If the item trait name isn't built into our system or is a personalized trait name (for example, your own "brand"), you can manually enter the trait name in the search field and select the option use that by clicking the "Use [xxx] as a [trait]" link.
How do item traits help buyers find my items?
Three main ways. The first is that specifying item traits helps us feed more detailed information to item search engines (like Google), so when someone is looking for a "red" ring or a "blues" CD, we can definitely tell the search engine that we have those items. The second way is that, back in May of 2009, the Bonanza search engine was setup to present buyers with all of the available traits for a given item category. If you've setup traits for your items, then a buyer who applies a filter will find your items. The third way is that specifying item traits gives us more dimensions to make recommendations to buyers about similar items. Thus, if a buyer purchased red, size 11 running shoes a year ago, we can tell them what other shoes they might want to buy when their current shoes wear out.
Also, we display item traits in the item listing, so that when a buyer is browsing to your item, they can quickly ascertain if it meets whatever specific trait they may be looking for.
How do item traits compare to Google Base Attributes?
Google Base attributes are a way to provide detailed information about your items. In the case of Google Base attributes, these details are fed directly to the Google search engine, which helps more buyers locate your items.
When applicable, item traits will automatically be converted to their corresponding Google Base attribute. For example, if you specify an item trait for "color," "UPC," "size," "ISBN," or the like, we will automatically save this as a Google Base attribute, so if you put your items online via Google Shopping, Google will know about all of the detailed information you specified via Item Traits.
Item traits are translated to their corresponding Google Base attributes any time you change item traits, so if you plan to use both item traits and Google attributes -- because you're a heck of an overachiever -- you'll want to keep in mind that your item traits will overwrite any similar Google attributes when you change your item traits. For example, if you were selling frosting and you setup a list of Google attributes like "[[color:red]] [[texture:creamy]] [[taste:yummy]]", and you then specified item traits that said your item was "blue," your Google attributes would end up as "[[color:blue]] [[texture:creamy]] [[taste:yummy]]" This means that, in most cases, if you have setup item traits for your items, you shouldn't have to worry about specifying Google attributes.
Full documentation for Google Base Attributes here