No title field. So your first line is one.
Every other marketplace gives you a title box and a description box. Depop gives you one box, and the first line of it does the job a title does everywhere else — whether you wrote it that way or not.
The highest-leverage sentence on the platform, written like a text message.
"Got this ages ago and never really wore it tbh." That is a genuinely normal opening line on Depop and it is also the single most expensive mistake available, because it is what appears where a title would appear, and it says nothing a buyer is searching for: not the item, not the era, not the fit, not the size.
The fix is not to make it sound corporate. Depop's whole register is conversational and a listing that reads like a department store is out of place in a different way. It is to put the scannable facts in the first line — era, item, fit, size — and then carry on sounding like yourself in the second.
The other half of a Depop listing is the five hashtags, and they are a taste filter rather than a reach lever. #fyp and #trending on a denim jacket describe nothing, match nobody's browsing, and unrelated tag stuffing is treated by Depop's community guidelines as a suspension risk rather than a wasted opportunity. Five genuine style, era and material tags do more work and carry none of that.
Depop publishes neither its ranking algorithm nor an official character limit, so anything you are told about how discovery behaves arrives labelled as what sellers consistently report — never dressed up as platform policy.
The two that are not about writing at all.
The first is the category. A jacket filed under Tops is a jacket that does not appear when somebody filters to jackets, and filtered browsing is how a large share of Depop buying happens — the search box is not the only route in. No amount of rewriting the description reaches a buyer who has already narrowed to a category your item is not in. It is a dropdown, it takes four seconds, and it is checked before anything else because it can cost you every impression.
The second is what the platform will not let you sell. Depop's buyer base is streetwear-heavy, which makes replica trainers and counterfeit branded pieces a live enforcement category rather than a theoretical one — and in the UK, selling counterfeit goods at commercial scale is a criminal matter, not a platform ticking-off. Where the material describes an item in terms that suggest a replica, the report says so and stops. It does not write the listing better.
Both of those sit above the copy in the ranked fixes for the same reason: a perfect description of an item nobody can find, or an item that gets the account closed, is not worth paying for.
A real listing, before and after.
From the Depop rubric behind the job.
Description Got this ages ago and never really wore it tbh, it's a nice jacket, size M I think? DM for any questions
Hashtags #cute #trending #musthave #fyp #ootd
Photos one flat-lay photo
Description Vintage 90s denim jacket, oversized fit, UK size M/L. Flat measurements: chest [ADD FACT], length [ADD FACT], sleeve [ADD FACT]. Light wash denim with [ADD FACT: any fading, distressing, or repairs — describe honestly]. Great layered over a hoodie or thrown on with baggy jeans. Some [ADD FACT: any visible wear] — see close-up photos.
Hashtags #vintagedenim #90sfashion #oversizedjacket #y2kstyle #streetwear
Photos [ADD FACT: replace with full front shot, worn/styled shot, close-up of label and any fading, back of jacket]
The second sentence still sounds like a person. "Great layered over a hoodie or thrown on with baggy jeans" is not marketing copy; it is how the seller would actually describe wearing it, and it is doing useful work because it tells a Depop buyer what look this fits into.
The interesting change is "size M I think?". That is real uncertainty, and it did not get resolved by guessing. It became three measurement requests, because the seller has a tape measure and the model does not. Vintage sizing maps badly onto modern UK sizes and a confident "M" would have been worse than the honest question mark.
How the job runs.
- Paste the description and the hashtags. All five hashtags, even the lazy ones — especially the lazy ones. Say what category you filed it under too, since the wrong category quietly removes an item from the filtered browsing most Depop buyers actually use.
- One top-up, no subscription. store credit; never more than 40p on this job and only what the report costs is spent. If you are listing a wardrobe, the leftover balance is the point — one payment stretches to seventeen goes. A change is another go at the job, so it costs pence too.
- You get back a first line, a body, five hashtags and a shot list. Plus the score, the ranked problems, and the measurements to take before you post it.
Nothing is spent on a generation that fails.
Is this for you?
Yes if
- Your listings open with how you feel about the item rather than what it is.
- You sell vintage and have never named an era or an aesthetic.
- Your five hashtags are the same five on every item.
- You get messages asking for measurements you have not posted.
- You want to know whether your category choice is costing you.
No if
- You want it to sound polished. It is aiming for clear and like you, not for retail copy, and it will strip "this exquisite garment" on sight.
- You want an era assigned. It will not decide a jacket is 90s if you did not say so.
- You are selling replicas. It will not write the listing.
- Your listings are stale rather than weak. Refreshing is something you do, not something this writes.
What Depop sellers ask about that first line.
Where is the title field?
There is not one, and that is the most consequential thing about writing for this platform. The first line of your description does the job a title does everywhere else: it is what appears, and it is what somebody decides on while scrolling. So a first line reading got this ages ago, not sure of the size spends the only headline you have on an apology. What it should carry is the item, the era or aesthetic, the fit and the size, in that order, and scannable at a glance.
How many hashtags before I get flagged?
Five is where they stop being useful, and relevance counts for more than the number: stuffing tags unrelated to the item is a community guidelines problem rather than merely a wasted tag, and it carries suspension risk. Five genuine ones beat any quantity of trend-chasing. The tags worth having name the style, the era and the aesthetic people browse by — the words somebody types when they want a look rather than a product.
Can I call it vintage?
There is no age threshold enforced here the way there is on Etsy, so the word is not a category rule on this platform. That does not make it free. What it costs you is precision: vintage tells a buyer far less than the decade does, and the decade is what people search and what makes an item findable by anybody who cares. If you know the era, name it. If you do not, describing the cut and the fabric is worth more than a word that could mean anything at all.
Everyone's listings sound the same. How do I avoid that?
By writing as yourself rather than as a shop, which is the register the platform runs on — corporate copy reads as wrong here in a way it would not on eBay. But the failure that actually matters is not tone: it is a personal register turning into a diary entry, where the words about how you felt about the item crowd out the words a buyer needs. Both can be true at once. Keep the voice, and put the measurements, the fit and the flaws inside it.
Should I relist to get back to the top?
Recency is widely held to be the strongest early-visibility signal here, which is why the temptation exists and why a listing left untouched for months quietly stops being seen. The report will tell you when a stale listing is the problem. It will not recommend deleting and reposting as a routine, because that is a pattern platforms watch for. The more durable fix is that a refreshed listing with better photographs and a real first line earns its position rather than renting it.
All my photographs are flat-lays on the floor.
Then a buyer can see the item and cannot see how it wears, and on a platform selling a look rather than a product that is the entire gap. A missing worn or styled shot is a listed failure. It needs no model and no studio: on a hanger against a plain wall, or simply held up, tells somebody the drape and the scale. Keep the flat-lay for the detail and the flaw, and lead with the shot that shows how it actually looks on.
Fix the first line.
Paste the description exactly as it stands, hashtags included. What comes back opens with something a buyer can scan.
Top up once. No subscription. About 28p — never more than 40p.