eBay Overhauls Site, Search
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eBay is still the top site online when it comes to auctions, but it is starting to feel the heat. In an effort to recapture some of its old magic and make the site more useful to its visitors, eBay is performing its biggest overhaul in years. In this article and the next, we’ll take a look at the changes.
Is eBay an auction house or a tremendous shopping search engine? A few years ago I was somewhat active on the site as a buyer and a seller. Back then people were just starting to discover that they could make a full-time living selling stuff on eBay. It was the world’s biggest yard sale, and one of the first, most glorious examples of something that could only be done on the web.
eBay was born 12 years ago – before Amazon, before Google, and before many retailers had web sites. Now visitors can go to Amazon and order just about anything without having to wait for an auction to finish. Many items can be purchased new or used, with substantial savings on used items. Users of search engines such as Google and Yahoo – and that includes just about everybody who gets online – expect an engine that “knows” what they’re looking for and quickly delivers relevant results. Sadly, in these areas, the online auction giant is showing its age.
It’s a biological and economical truth: as things age, they grow more slowly. Growth, in this case, can be measured by a metric known as gross merchandise volume (GMV), which is the total value of all goods and services sold on eBay’s shopping sites. In the second quarter of this year, GMV was 12 percent higher than the same quarter in 2006. That may not sound bad…but in 2005, GMV for year-over-year quarters often reached 30 and 40 percent.
While one can argue that eBay is at least still growing, the stock market tells a less pleasant story. Since the end of 2004, the online auction giant’s stock has dropped slightly more than a third – 36 percent, to be exact. So what is eBay CEO Meg Whitman doing to change this? Judging from the overhaul, it starts with a renewed focus on the buyer.
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