On some of the interviews around earnings, JD and Meg hinted about some secret sauce that would allow a buyer to see auctions and fixed price items in a ‘special eBay kind of way that only eBay can provide. There are only a couple of ways to do this that I’ve ever seen:
- Mixed – some kind of mixed listings with icons/etc designating the two types of listings
- Tabbed – currently on eBay you get mixed results and then you can segregate with the auction only or BIN tab.
- Split screen – you can split the screen horizontally or vertically for top/bottom or side/side viewing of two ‘lists’.
At a roundtable at the e-commerce forum, an eBayer hinted about a split screen view that is roaming around the playground.
Today I noticed that the mystery person at onlyebay has snagged a screen shot and it’s definitely a split view.
After studying this a while, I have mixed thoughts. On one hand it’s neat to see both together, but is this really the best buyer experience? I could see how it would be very overwhelming to newer buyers, but perfect for power-buyers.
This is the kind of thing that you’d need to A/B test about 10,000 iterations of to make sure you nail it and also see how it performs against BestMatch/ending first. No matter how snazzy it is, if it can’t beat those ‘views’, then it shouldn’t make it to production IMO.
eBay strategies readers – love it? hate it?