Solving variation errors on online marketplaces

Your best-seller items as well as regular products come in various types and shapes. As a result, many products appear with multiple variations. Today we explore how Salestio users can overcome possible variant-related obstacles when syncing their e-commerce store with online marketplaces.

eBay – variations not allowed

eBay supports variations on GTC listings, but some categories are different from others. A few categories (like vintage items) do not allow variations, so you might see an error while listing some items:

Variations are not allowed in this category

Let’s review a case when you are listing an item with one variation. So the variation structure in Shopify might look like this:

Salestio can send the item as a standalone product with no variations instead, and that will fix the error. To send the product without variation, navigate to your eBay Profile and uncheck “Send the product with variation”. Save the changes and try sending the item again.

If the item has multiple variants, only two options remain:

• Split the item into multiple products with no variants.
• Edit the Creation Profile to select a different category. You can find all of the categories with variation support in eBay documentation.

Mismatched variations – eBay and Etsy

You may want to update your selling products by adding more variations at some point. For example, we have one color of lipstick listed on eBay. After adding a new color, only one variant will be linked:

After automatic updates or running “Revise QTY” manually, the item will remain in the Update Error status:

By checking the logs we can find the following error:

Missing name in the variation specifics or variation specifics set

To resolve this, select the item and run “Full Revise”. After a minute, both variants will be “Linked”, and the new variant will appear on eBay.

Keep in mind that this resolution only applies if the variant structure does not change. If the product had a variation in Size and we added another size, the items can be updated. At the same time, if the product had a variation in Size and we added a Color theme on top, the update would not work. To change the variation structure, we suggest stopping the item on the marketplace and listing it again through Salestio.

Mismatched variations on Amazon

Each individual variation on your Seller Central account is a separate product with a unique ASIN. This makes Amazon different from eBay and Etsy. If you try to link an item with more variants on Shopify than on Amazon, the matching variants will sync successfully. However, the variants that do not exist on Amazon will not be able to link:

To resolve this error, the missing variation needs to be created on Amazon. You can create the variation on Seller Central, select the item, and send it to Amazon again. Or you can create missing variations through Salestio.

Check out this article where we try to list an item with variations.

Conclusion

We hope that the tips above will make you better equipped to manage a store with complex products! If you are thinking about trying Salestio, get your free 30-day trial in the Shopify App Store.