Given that online shoppers have widely varying needs, how do you deliver the best, most relevant shopping experiences for them — emphasizing choice? At eBay, we are well aware that one of the unique advantages our platform offers is spectrum of value, where we can present shoppers with items that may be attractive because they are popular, or because they offer the best values. With these concepts in mind, our technology team is rolling out enhancements to our product pages that present shoppers with multiple choices as they browse.
Top Products in One View
Today’s online shoppers are connected to many sites offering last-minute deals and incentives. Yet, eBay has found that online shoppers follow some common patterns in proceeding from wanting a particular item to actually purchasing it. These patterns are driving our new product and browsing-related enhancements.
In the past, product pages on eBay have placed special emphasis on a single listing at the top of a page. However, in situations where a user is arriving at a page and may not have any immediate affinity with a specific type of listing, it can be beneficial for users to see multiple featured listings. Displaying multiple top picks allows users to get a quick view of the variety of inventory available within a product category. It also gives users a good understanding of the various ways one can shop on eBay.
We are excited to highlight the range of value that can be found with items of differing conditions, making it easy to compare savings directly on a product page.
If you scroll down this page, after opening it in a mobile browser, you’ll see the range of value offered.
Structured Data Drives the Improvements
At eBay, we have strongly advanced our structured data, so that we can instantly create the types of connections between like products that inform a product page.
"The intent of all of our product pages is to offer more guided shopping experience, emphasizing the amazing range of choice we offer on eBay” said Jonas Klink, Director, Product Management - Shopping Experience. “The breadth of our inventory is the difference maker here. By intelligently grouping multiple products as users browse, we can show them that they can explore tradeoffs between attributes like condition, price or use other types of guidance to identify the exact right items at the best value for them.”
“Showing a single listing on our product pages is not representative of the uniqueness of eBay’s inventory,” Klink added. “No site anywhere has the complete spectrum of value that eBay has, and we want shoppers to get instantly digestible views of how much choice they really have when shopping within a single category of items. If they are interested in tablets, they will see examples at different price points by condition (used vs. new vs. refurbished) or by generation (iPad Air 2 vs. iPad Air), and more.
Being able to make such trade-off decisions, moving freely across conditions, product generations and price points, is one of the great strengths with shopping on eBay. Users will be able to gain a sense of all these options without having to jump from page to page, easily comparing features across products and product generations alike.”
For shoppers looking to find out how to get to a product page with this new experience as part of their regular shopping paths, one way is to access our Apple iPad Air 2 page in a mobile browser and click on any product in the Top Selling section of that page.
These shopping experience improvements advance our strategy to offer the best choice and the most relevance for shoppers, and we’ve been rolling out new experiences at a steady cadence, as covered here and here. Look for more news on our enhanced item discovery features and search innovation in the coming weeks.