The costly mistake ecommerce sellers overlook: Your listing publish rate

In ecommerce, if your products aren’t listed properly, they don’t exist – no matter how much you spend on advertising. Yet many sellers overlook a critical metric that directly impacts their sales, ad performance, and operational efficiency: listing publish rate.

Listing publish rate refers to the percentage of your product catalog that is actively live and available for purchase on a marketplace. A high publish rate means more of your inventory is visible to shoppers, while a low publish rate results in lost revenue, wasted resources, and frustrated customers.

Sellers often assume that once they’ve uploaded their products, they’re live and ready to sell. But listing errors, missing attributes, and outdated data often prevent a significant portion of their catalog from going live, without them even realizing it.

“Sometimes it can be really shocking when sellers first look at their publish rates,” said Ryan Berg, founder of TALENTA Commerce. “The knee-jerk reaction is often to find out whose job it was and get frustrated. But really, it’s an issue that can fly under the radar, especially with large, complex catalogs.”

So, how do you know if your publish rate is working for or against you? And what can you do to improve it?

The hidden cost of low publish rates

A low publish rate doesn’t just mean fewer products online. It quietly drains your budget, sales, and productivity. Here’s how:

📉Wasted ad spend: If your ads are driving clicks but not converting, the issue may not be your ad strategy, it could be your catalog. If a product page is incomplete, out-of-stock, or missing key variations, potential customers click away and your ad spend is wasted. “We often see sellers struggling with conversion rates but they’re looking in the wrong place for the problem,” Ryan explained.

💰Lost revenue opportunities: Imagine a brick-and-mortar store with empty shelves. Customers walk in expecting to buy but the product they want isn’t there. The same thing happens in ecommerce when products don’t publish correctly. “It’s cash on the shelf. Even if that portion of the catalog isn’t your best-seller, it’s still inventory that could be moving,” said Ryan. “I’ve seen so many sellers shocked by how many SKUs they have sitting unpublished that they didn’t even know about.”

🚨Operational inefficiencies: Sellers often pour time into troubleshooting issues manually, submitting support tickets, or dealing with vague error messages from marketplaces. Without proper visibility into listing errors, businesses waste valuable time fixing issues instead of focusing on growing their revenue. “Marketplace error messages are often vague or misleading. I’ve seen errors that simply say ‘brand issue’ when the real problem was a formatting issue. These small nuances can take a lot of time to figure out manually,” said Ryan.

How to improve your publish rate (and your sales)

One of the biggest reasons sellers don’t track their publish rate? They don’t have the time or manpower. “A lot of sellers just don’t have the resources to track these details daily,” Ryan said. “They’re running lean teams or they don’t have an in-house expert who knows what to look for.”

But manual tracking isn’t scalable, especially across multiple marketplaces.

“Without automation and an API connection, this becomes a manual and extremely time-consuming process,” he explained. “Zentail provides real-time data on listing errors and publish rates, allowing sellers to catch problems before they impact sales.”

Some of the most common publish rate issues sellers should be aware of include:

• Attribute errors – Missing required fields, incorrect formatting
• Image issues – Non-compliant background colors, wrong sizing
• Category mismatches – Listings placed in the wrong product category

It’s extremely critical to have a centralized system to manage listing data, especially for sellers operating on multiple marketplaces. “If you have an employee logging into Amazon, eBay, and Walmart separately, checking listings one by one, it’s not scalable. Each time they update one platform, they risk creating inconsistencies elsewhere. With Zentail, you make updates in one place and push them across all channels.” 

So how can sellers ensure their listings stay live, optimized, and error-free?

✔️ Optimize your catalog first

Before ramping up marketing efforts, ensure your product data is clean, complete, and marketplace-ready. “The first principle I always follow is to fix catalog data first,” explained Ryan. “If you do this out of order, you’re likely overspending on ads and missing easy wins.”

✔️ Use technology to surface errors quickly

Many sellers rely on slow, manual processes to track down listing issues. Platforms like Zentail help sellers automatically detect errors, highlight missing attributes, and ensure listings meet marketplace requirements before submission. “One of the biggest challenges sellers face is that errors are often buried in their catalog. Zentail surfaces those issues upfront so they can be fixed before they impact sales,” said Ryan.

✔️ Fix issues at the source

“With Zentail, I can see exactly which attributes are causing an issue and resolve them without sifting through endless spreadsheets or waiting on support tickets. That’s a game-changer.” By identifying errors in real-time, sellers can avoid prolonged downtime, keep their catalog live, and maximize revenue without interruptions.

✔️ Monitor your publish rate regularly

Marketplace rules and requirements change frequently. Keeping an eye on publish rates ensures that updates don’t silently disrupt your listings. “You need to check your listings like a farmer checks irrigation,” said Ryan. “If your revenue is down, dig into why.”

Check your listings like a farmer checks irrigation

In ecommerce, monitoring your listings should be just as routine as a farmer checking irrigation. Ryan learned this lesson by watching his desert ranching friend in Utah:

“He lives in a very remote area, and there is a limited amount of snow that falls in the high peaks each winter. Come spring, he spends time each day riding his dirt bike up the canyon to check the stream that flows out of it. He can tell based on the flow into his alfalfa fields if there is something wrong up the mountain. In this region of the desert, gallons of water make the difference between a successful harvest and a failure in the field.

He will find a downed tree that caused the flow to change. That flow goes across dry ground, where less of the water can flow down the canyon because it is seeping into the dry soil, rather than waterlogged soil. This reduces flow. He will find someone drove the road and took out a dirt berm that used to guide the flow of the stream. The stream now flows down the road instead of the stream bed. This reduces the flow.”

Just like the rancher tracking water flow, sellers need to spend time checking their catalogs and marketplaces for hidden issues. “Standing in the field, wondering why the flow is slow, taking more pictures and videos of the field, and sending them to millions of people won’t fix the flow if the flow is being diverted by issues in the streambed,” Ryan explained. “Go find the issues, fix them, and watch the field grow. Farmers plant once and then maintain it all year long to get a good harvest.”

In the same way, ensuring your listings are consistently live, optimized, and error-free is an ongoing process. If your revenue is dropping, don’t assume it’s just the market. Trace the source. Go upstream, investigate your catalog, and make sure nothing is blocking the flow of your sales.

The role of Zentail in keeping listings live

A high publish rate is the foundation of ecommerce success and Zentail’s Revenue Growth Platform makes it easy to achieve. Built by ecommerce experts, Zentail takes the guesswork out of your ecommerce strategy by simplifying listing management.

“With Zentail, I’m able to list items faster with fewer errors from the beginning,” said Ryan. “If there are errors after the first internal validation steps, I can fix those prior to submitting a feed to the marketplace.”

Zentail helps sellers:

• Resolve listing errors before they impact sales: Real-time error detection prevents lost revenue.
• Surface only the attributes that need fixing: No more wasting time on unnecessary details.
• Keep listings live and optimized across multiple marketplaces: Confidently manage their catalog without manual updates.
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Learn more about how the Sherper’s team increased their publish rate and kept their catalog live across multiple marketplaces.

By automating tedious listing management tasks and ensuring compliance with marketplace requirements, Zentail empowers sellers to maintain a high publish rate, driving stronger sales and operational efficiency.

Fix your listings, unlock more revenue

If your revenue isn’t where you want it to be, your listing publish rate could be the missing piece. Before blaming your ads or discounting your pricing strategy, take a closer look at your catalog. Are your products actually live? Are your listings optimized for visibility and conversion?

By prioritizing listing health first, leveraging automation, and using real-time data to resolve issues, sellers can unlock new growth opportunities without unnecessary stress or wasted ad spend.

💡 Want to improve your publish rate and scale smarter? Book a call with Zentail today to see how automation can help you list faster, sell more, and eliminate manual work.