eBay Opens Social Networks - More Like Amazon?
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I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to reproduce Sandoval’s experience. As it turned out, however, he simply clicked through on one of his results to get to the page he described. Here’s something visual to go with all those words in the previous section:
I know, having to reduce the image means you lose a lot of detail, but you can see the tabs and the description, and that there are more listings. Scrolling down the page reveals product reviews, and that members can create product descriptions. Over on the right hand side, eBay offers users the following options:
- Save this search
- Add to Want it Now
- Sell one like this
- Blog it
I'd like to point to the "Sell one like this" option as a way that eBay is trying to make things easier for its sellers as well as its buyers; after all, on eBay, they're often the same people. As I understand it, using this function makes the process of starting an auction go more quickly because a lot of the information required by the form is already filled in. I believe there are other ways to access this function as well.
So is eBay truly becoming more like Amazon? I must be one of the five or six people in the US who have never bought anything from Amazon, but even I know that some of the features Sandoval listed as popping up for his eBay search are used by Amazon. In particular, the list of products that other customers bought after buying the item displayed strikes me as distinctly Amazonian. So I had to do a search on Nikon D40 on Amazon to compare.
There’s no way I could do the listing on Amazon justice. It includes a LOT of stuff, and I couldn’t scroll to get all of it in the picture. But many of the items it includes – product reviews, product descriptions, how many are available, etc. – are also present in an eBay listing now. The layout is very different, of course, but whether it’s on eBay or Amazon, there are advantages to having all this information in one place. It makes it a lot easier to do your research when you’re looking for something.
If users are doing research on eBay, they’re likely to be staying on the site longer, but making more efficient use of their time. The changes discussed in the previous article are also aimed at increased efficiency. So what will users do with that extra time? That’s where Neighborhoods come in.
Next: For Like-Minded eBayers >>
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