eBay is in the process of making some major changes to the look and feel of the site in hopes of bringing people back to buy and sell. They’ve come a long way in the 12 years that they’ve been around, but over the last few years, things have gotten a bit rocky. According to a recent article in Business Week, this is "eBay’s bid to win back buyers." With multiple places online to buy and sell, eBay is no longer "the" place to go.
So what is it that has changed? Probably the most obvious is the look of their new home page. Sometimes change is hard for people to deal with, and in this situation, I think that’s the case. Now when a user logs in, they’ll see four main things - eBay categories, My Recent Activities, My eBay at a Glance which includes items you’re watching or selling, reminders, and more, and the option to Start shopping.
Another change you’ll notice as Download Squad pointed out, is that there’s now more options for viewing items that you’re searching for. In certain categories like computers - instead of just viewing all the items in a list, you can view them in a picture gallery, or snapshot view. The picture gallery is probably going to be the most beneficial because you get to see an image of what’s being sold, but you also have pertinent information like the price, shipping costs, and when it was listed. Think of it as window shopping.
This is only just the beginning of what eBay has in store. Coming soon they’ll have a few new features. One of them is "quick and easy," an option for selling items, and another is a countdown- a new way to manage and bid on auctions. The last change we can expect soon is one click bidding where users won’t be taken to a new page to confirm the bid that they entered.
If you’d like to test out some of eBay’s new features which they haven’t rolled out quite yet on their main site, you can visit The Playground where you’ll see some of the new things eBay is testing out.
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Tags: Web Sites, eBay, Features
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Well I just created an account on eBay like two days ago to get a really good deal on fog lamps for my car, and let me tell you for my surprise the site looks very good and clean. It looks very attractive and in my opinion it’s a welcome change.
I’ve been a member since 2001, and I love the site. I do have to say that the changes they made really see to have de-cluttered the interface.
I’m really really hoping against hope that they begin to listen to both their buyers and sellers as to what they want and what they need on that site. All this time, they’ve been instituting changes and raising fees, etc. but never really asking the actual users of that site. They are not in good standing right now with most sellers and a lot of buyers (many of whom are also sellers) just plain left. I’ve been selling on ebay for 9 years - this last year was very very bad
It used to be such fun…I sure do hope they can get their act together.
They do actually have a forum setup where some of the eBay employees are actively involved in getting user feedback. The problem is that most buyers and sellers don’t realize that eBay has that:
http://forums.ebay.com/db1/for.....orumID=120
LOL I’m well aware of the forums and am a frequent poster on them. However, when so many say “this is wrong or this needs to be changed or we can’t work with this”. We are ignored! We put up petitions and they are also ignored! Ebay has always forged ahead and put their own plans in place…always stating that it was a consensus of their “community” (imaginary at that). They have fooled no one and still they forge on! In the 9 years I’ve been selling on that site things have gone from bad to worse and now, with a whole month of reduced fees and no fees, sales have not improved very much. They are in trouble and they are making it worse by catering to what “they” feel buyers want…totally forgetting that many of their buyers are also sellers! The same fraudsters are still alive and well and selling on that site - while Ebay comes out with an elaborate plan that also fools no one! We all keep hoping in vain that they will get their act together - reduce fees, put stores back in search - get rid of the star system and bring back transparency to their “community” before its too late and for goodness sake stop trampling over the small sellers that made them what they are! I can’t put it any plainer than that and I speak from hard and solid experience and not just thought or analysis about what’s best.
Sorry about that Patricia. We sold on eBay for over a year and made some really great money doing it. We never really had any problems with it, although the fees kept getting a little more ridiculous as time went on. We decided it was time to move on to something else, and never really looked back. I could only imagine how frustrating it all is for you though when you’ve been selling for so long.