eBay announces site redesign and Pinterest-like discovery feed. | Hacker News Reader

eBay announces site redesign and Pinterest-like discovery feed.

thenextweb.com

22 pointsbrackin18 comments

A friend and I built the whole eBay + Pinterest mashup earlier this year (http://rumma.ge). We were trying to solve the "browsing" problem that eBay has. Basically, if you have a specific product you're searching for, the traditional search interface did an OK job. But if you're just browsing through "vintage transistor radios" or art or any visual category, it was difficult to browse.

These new changes are great because one of eBay's long-hidden assets is it's product images. It hosts more unique product photos than pretty much any other company out there and for a long time, it surfaced those product images as 140px x 140px thumbnails. Focusing on showing larger, higher-quality images is going to be a big win for users.

That being said, I don't have much confidence in their feed setup. eBay is trying to create an entirely new browsing behavior and while it will definitely result in new sales (how could it not over the old homepage?), the mashup up of a users varied interests into one feed is incredibly disorienting. I just loaded up a couple of interests (biking, guitars, and baseball) and I'm seeing a hodgepodge of handbar grips, random baseball cards, and really nice Les Pauls. While the format seems nice, the content isn't really there yet--and the content, i.e. the quality and relevancy of listings surfaced isn't going to be carried by the format alone.

I actually agree with you, both your content and your feed design is actually much better. How's the site performing wrt conversion?

One of the stronger use cases we've seen is sellers doing competitive research due to the visual format. Obviously this hurts CVR a bit (along with encouraging browsing), but that's just the nature of the site. We're encouraging lots of clicks on a variety of listings, but with the potential for more serendipitous purchases.

Hmm. This is pretty damned nice. Bookmarked. I especially like your strategy of picking a random category of visually-captivating products with a strong quality reputation (Eames chairs, Les Paul guitars...) as the default homepage display. That "borrowed" aesthetic rubs off on the rest of your site, and makes further browsing almost irresistible.

That said, I'm sure there'll be a C&D from eBay in 5, 4, 3, 2...

Noteworthy Link from yesterday: "The Pinterest Layout Will Not Save You"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4628594

In the case of ebay, though, it makes sense, because it's nearly ideal for shopping visually.

I like that they're reworking the site's design - as a very early eBay user, I've been seeing these changes roll out on a trial basis for a few months now. But I still find their home page confusing, with lots of horizontal and vertical vectors at cross-purposes.

What they're missing is a 'reject' button that would allow people to easily dismiss things they don't want to see. I don't always know what I want on a home page, and I appreciate the suggestions that can be algorithmically generated from my previous and ongoing activity. But I usually know instinctively what I don't want. Sadly, eBay provides me with no way to communicate that, even though it would free up space for more well-targeted (and therefore valuable) suggestions. They're not the only company with this problem.

The problem with product suggestions is that they're limited by computers' inability to model the purpose of things. For example, we bought our first house last year, and as a result I ended up owning a lot more tools, having a subscription to a DIY magazine, and so on. Now every time I go on eBay or Amazon I get lots of suggestions for things for like power tools, based on this major change in my shopping activity over the last year. Fair enough, except that once I have bought a good drill, I probably don't need another one. Sure, I bought several power tools for different things, but having acquired the basic necessities it's not like I want to keep collecting them. Instead of showing me more tools, the smart thing now would be to start showing me accessories like drill bits and saw blades, which need regular replacement and have higher profit margins. But most shopping algorithms seem unable to effectively model product associations, distinguish between total and marginal profits, or usage patterns. Most attempts at the latter seem to involve expert systems, whereas I suspect the right approach is a multiscalar one (but now I am running up against my ignorance of the proper terminology).

One of the more customized Bootstrap deployments I saw so far. While I like Bootstrap in general, I don't find the new eBay design very visually pleasing. There are inconsistencies all over the place and the contrasts are not the easiest on the eyes on my screen.

The Pinterest style image feeds can work in some cases (probably most for the items being sold on eBay) but not others. Imagine you are looking for RAM modules, harddisks or similar items which all look the same. A table with data showing capacity etc. is essential in that case. Also ordering is essential.

It's about time, the old one was really ugly and sometimes confusing

I actually like eBay, and use it pretty frequently. It's a great place to buy cheap stuff made in Asia, such as cheap bike parts and cheap electronics. I guess the problem with that is the profits on cheap items are much lower than on higher-priced collectibles. So eBay is attempting to return to their roots with a redesign...

Interesting that they haven't used their new logo when announcing their new site design.

I'm not sure I want this. eBay need a lot more than a redesign to become popular again. eBay remained the company that has always been without changing. This is not good in a fast environment like this.

Who said eBay wasn't popular any more? Maybe compared to its peak (whenever that was), but they still have an enormous amount of stuff for sale via auctions and fixed prices.

I did not express myself correctly. You are right eBay is still famous, but a lot more than what it used to be. Years ago if you wanted to buy something from the Internet you would buy it from eBay, instead now a lot of shops have websites where you can buy things and there is also Amazon that is growing bigger every day. Or at least this was the situation in Italy.

It looks like this could be the first glimpse of how eBay is using its acquisition of Svpply and its team.

I doubt that, considering that Svpply was acquired just over a month ago and changing the design of a site on the scale of eBay would take much longer.

Agreed but the fact that they acquired Svpply means they were working on this and wanted to use Svvply's team to build upon this.

The original team that worked on the Feed was a mashup between Milo and Hunch folks; there were two engineers from Milo, one from Hunch, and a couple of product people from both sides. eBay Now was born completely under the Milo umbrella. Svpply hasn't been involved.

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