Preston Smalley

Since eBay’s began the dominant means for buyers to browse the search results page was to use the Ending Soonest or Newly Listed time based sorts. Now with the launch this week of Best Match our buyers have a new more relevant way to shop which ranks the results based on the item’s title and description, plus past buyer behavior for similar searches.

Let’s look at a typical search for the words “Canon Powershot”…

Top 5 Results Sorted by Ending Soonest (see example):

• 2x NB-4L Battery for CANON Powershot SD200/SD300/SD400
• Battery NB-4L For CANON POWERSHOT SD400 SD450 SD600
• NEW Canon PowerShot SD600 ELPH 6.0 MP + 1GB SD Card
• Canon Powershot A540 6MP Digital Camera 2 Lens 1GB Kit!
• Leather Case Canon PowerShot Pro 1 G6 S1IS S2IS etcCX07

Top 5 Results Sorted by Best Match (see example):

• Canon Powershot A540 6 Megapixel Digital Camera NEW
• New Canon PowerShot SD450 Digital ELPH 5.0 Megapixl NR!
• CANON 5.0 Megapixel PowerShot(R) Compact Digital Camera
• NEW~CANON A530 POWERSHOT 5MP DIGITAL CAMERA+3 BONUS+1GB
• NEW~CANON A530 POWERSHOT 5.0MP DIGITAL CAMERA 16 X ZOOM

Notice how in the Best Match results the top results are actually cameras, not batteries and cases–although they’re all still there just further down in the list.

Hat’s off to Raghav and all the research guys that made this possible as well as Esteban and Sheila in the Product group for getting it out the door. Official Announcement

eBay’s growing its User Experience organization and so my team and others will continue to hire over the coming months. It’s an incredible opportunity to help make the unique eBay experience even more engaging and easy to use.

Here’s what I’m looking for:

• Sr. Information Architect / UI Designer
• UI Designer – Browsing and Search Experience
• UI Designer – Shopping Tools
• UI Designer – Bidding and Buying Process
• Manager, UI Design

Also within UED are following open roles:

• Sr. Manager, UI Design
• Principal UI Designer
• Lead UI Designer
• Sr. UI Designer | #2
• Principal Creative Designer
• Sr. Creative Designer
• Lead Quantitative User Researcher
• Sr. Content Manager
• Sr. Software Engineer
• Software Engineer

Update 4/25/07: See current positions open  or check eBaycareers.com

Matt Carey, eBay’s CTO, announced today a new browser policy for eBay.com which focuses support on the most modern of web browsers (accounting for 95% adoption). This means that eBay will focus on:

• Microsoft IE 6.0 and higher
• Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and higher (including my favorite variant Flock)
• Apple Safari 2.0

This is a big acknowledgment of the growing popularity of browsers and operating systems made outside Redmond. Mac and Linux users rejoice!

Similar to Yahoo!’s graded browser policy, eBay will also continue to support basic functionality across other web browsers. The older the browser, the less likely features will work. This will eBay’s product design team continue to innovate on increasingly more interactive user experiences–something I’m quite excited about.

Example of what users with older web browsers will see while using eBay:

More about eBay Marketplace’s Browser Policy and How to Upgrade

Shopping.com launched today a new comparison shopping site called DoorOne in the UK, France, Germany and Austrailia. It’s reported that this was due to the Shopping.X namespace being unavailable in all markets.

However this release is more than just a different URL as they have introduced a number of new features:

• Multiple selection of facets. First introduced on eBay Express, this is an easy way to select multiple brands you’re interested in or perhaps two size shoes that may work.
• Category Clustering of Results. Notice how the page is filled with TVs, Camcorders and Digital Cameras.
• Popular Data at Top. They show the most popular products bought on top.

I’m looking for a Senior UI Designer / Information Architect to join my design team. In this role you will join the team which focuses on enabling eBay buyers to find just the items they want out of the over 78 million unique items available every day. To give you a sense of scale, eBay serves over 400 million searches per day.

You will design how eBay captures and structures seller metadata in a way that fits the mental model of our buyers. This includes eBay defined facets as well as seller created tags and values. A successful system will be well adopted by sellers and provide an engaging and relevant refinement mechnism for shoppers.

Job Requirements (on eBaycareers.com)

If you or someone you know fits the bill let me know.

Update 4/25/07: See current positions open 

Monday’s launch of eBay Express marks an important milestone not just for eBay but for the larger Search design community. As many of you know, I believe that the faceted metadata search system introduced in eBay Express is very much the direction that all large collections should head and am pleased with the progress we’ve made with this launch.

Marti Hearst (UC Berkeley’s Flemenco), Corey Chandler (eBay) and I spoke at CHI2006, also on Monday, about lessons we’ve learned while designing faceted metadata systems. A theme emerged in the Q&A around the importance of merging browsing and searching that was encouraging.

• Separate systems undermine confidence
  If different matches are found when you browse a category structure and another when you search using keywords–users aren’t ever sure they are seeing everything.
• Augmenting keyword queries with browsable facets works
  In the discussion, there was agreement that while many users start with a keyword query they appreciate adding additional browsable facets to their query.
• Augmenting browsing with keywords is powerful
  In a similar way enabling browsing from the homepage is a good starting point for people but then it can be helpful to add keywords to that query.
• Faceted Metadata creates a common language
  If the searcher and the classifier are different people, faceted metadata can be a good common ground which can assist recall.

Time will tell whether faceted metadata will prove to be a success, but now I am pretty confident there are at least another 100 believers out there following my workshop.

Here are the course notes posted by Marti.
Update: Jessyca Frederick reviewed our course presented at CHI. Thanks Jessyca!

Check out the new eBay plugin for Google Desktop’s sidebar which allows you to see items you’re watching. It’s a great example of two platforms working together. My colleague Alan Lewis (who collaborated w/Google on the project) has more.

Esther Dyson was at eBay a couple weeks ago for a speaker series we have and she made a comment during her talk that really struck me. In discussing her upcoming PC Forum conference “Erosion of Power: Users in charge” she pointed out that in a Web 2.0 world where everyone is a participant there is a real need for smaller groups. I find the thought to be incredibly insightful and couldn’t agree more. The way I see it this is a result of two factors: the move to niche communities and the 80×20 rule.

Niche Communities
In the same way that the world of TV went from four networks owning the majority of viewers to the array of cable television stations we have today focused on niche areas, so too will go the web. We’re already seeing this happen. The rise of local classified communities around the world focuses on one niche (location). Social networking sites like Flickr focus on another (family, friends, interests). Successful companies will respond to our society’s need to feel comfortable sharing online and enable people to find a community that fits them. Whether that’s others that live in my town, people like me that love all things Pixar, or perhaps my family and friends that are interested in seeing pictures of my kid.

80×20 Rule
Lastly just take the common 80×20 rule and apply it the web. If you assume in any one community 20% of people do 80% of the work, then the only way to get more folks involved is to make more and smaller groups. We see this all the time in our lives. We throw parties for people that are close to us, not for someone else that just so happens to live in our state. It’s much more likely that a parent has attended a PTA meeting than shown up in Congress for the passage of educational legislation. If we can create a large number of smaller groups where people truly feel ownership then we can start to approach 100% participation. And perhaps these smaller communities can be linked together to form a larger one, but only time will tell.

I’m looking for 2 talented UI designers to join my product design team. We focus on the following:

• eBay’s search engine and results page (how to guide our 168 million shoppers to 20 million items that change each week)
• eBay’s community-based content platform (e.g. Review & Guides)
• eBay’s Homepage and other Landing Pages

Update 3/28/06: I’ve filled these two positions but contact me if you’re still interested in design at eBay as we can always make room for the right person.

Update 4/25/07: See current positions open 

Last night I tried out the latest eBay had to offer in selling cars. Was impressed by a few things but seriously disappointed elsewhere. The new listing process my friend Micah designed remembered my listing from a week ago that I didn’t even save–very cool a big timesaver. But I spent over 2 hours trying to get the picture uploader to work properly. Turns out it timed out on a 2MB photo I was uploading.

Anyway, here’s the end product. BMW 7-series (740iL) 4 sale.