
Welcome to the new eBay - taitems
http://www.ebay.com/new#
======
swang
Are there still ridiculously high fees associated with selling a product on
eBay?

I have something that due to the niche of the product, makes it very hard to
sell to anywhere BUT eBay. There are a lot of attempted alternatives in this
niche but none provide the instant kind of payment you'd get from using eBay
or have the quantity of buyers. It is truly the network effect at work.

What's my point about this? It's that the problem with eBay isn't because it
doesn't have a Pinterest-esque style layout. No one really cares about eBay's
dotcom style layout, or the fact that it the logo until recently was
schizophrenic about it's capitalization. It's because they completely bone the
sellers. If you're a seller on eBay, you're constantly juiced on every little
single thing. You also have little recourse if a buyer rates you poorly (I
guess punish him back by rating him badly too?). It's been a slow methodical
shakedown of sellers and quite frankly people are sick of being nickel and
dimed to death. So I hope this blows up in their face and that they continue
to lose market and mindshare.

And I find it funny that eBay is now promoting that images are the way to go
with this layout when for years they nickel and dimed sellers on photos (Is
the max 3 without paying? I forget) and the photo quality of those images was
always terrible, like someone set JPG compression to 50%

~~~
dvdhsu
> _You also have little recourse if a buyer rates you poorly (I guess punish
> him back by rating him badly too?)_

Hilariously, sellers can't leave negative feedback for buyers:
<http://pages.ebay.com/services/forum/sellerprotection.html>

If you're selling on eBay and something goes wrong (buyer claims she received
a box of rocks), there really isn't much to do. PayPal and eBay favor buyers
so much that if the buyer _really wants her money back_ , she'll certainly get
it.

~~~
philjohn
I'm still puzzled as to why they didn't go with a system where the seller and
buyer feedback are both secret until both have been set.

~~~
rada
Because nefarious sellers and buyers would have unlimited license to prevent
negative feedback from being posted to their account, ever. They would always
appear to be a new seller/buyer.

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chubot
Is it just me, or are the recent visual overhauls of EBay, Microsoft, and
Google remarkably similar?

    
    
      - The logos all have red, blue, yellow, green (that was
        true before, but the shades they use seem more
        similar now)
      - flat styling with minimal drop shadows
      - using lots of white background and light grey lines/panels
      - more hard square corners than rounded
      - san serif fonts (very similar if not identical)
      - hovering over links underlines
      - full width backgrounds
    

I'm not a designer, but it just seems like a very common visual vocabulary. I
wonder why the brands wouldn't try to differentiate themselves more? It has
some similarities to Apple's aesthetic but less "sleek" with the multi-colors.

They're going for "clean" but to me it's starting to look a little bland.

~~~
reitoei
> I'm not a designer

Yet you attempt to critique using phrases like "sleek" and "clean".

~~~
lowboy
Why is that problem? Just because someone wouldn't define their job or
profession as designer doesn't mean they can't have opinions.

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bradly
Obligatory Pinterest Layout Will Not Save You link: <http://jfornear.co/the-
pinterest-layout-will-not-save-you/>

~~~
fusiongyro
I'm going to disagree, for several reasons.

First, eBay doesn't need saving. As long as they don't choose a UI that is
needlessly onerous, they will do fine with or without. It will boil down to
whether they are facilitating new users or pissing off old users; a better UI
can increase growth, a bad one can reduce it, but when you're in the position
they're in, a nice UI is practically a kindness rather than a necessity. Look
at Craigslist.

Second, how much of Pinterest is essentially shopping without the purchasing?
I'd venture quite a bit of it. I know my wife and sisters-in-law use Pinterest
extensively, and they're mostly looking at things they want to buy (and
recipes). Both Pinterest and eBay are about tapping into your greed as quickly
as possible. It seems like a move in the right direction--and perhaps an
implicit acknowledgement that they are Pinterest's principle competitor.

Finally, and this is kind of a technicality, the old layout didn't punish bad
photos as much as it should. If you uploaded a shitty little photo, in the
list view it looked the same as a nice big photo until you clicked through.
Switching to an image-heavy master layout will encourage people to take better
photos, and better photos will increase sales.

All things considered, this is the only site I've seen since Pinterest that
really should be using this layout.

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fmavituna
Usability of that announcement homepage is simply horrible.

~~~
eranation
Yep, you get to the bottom and then? where is the so called call for action?
or scroll to top? I was looking for a button to "let me in" and finally found
a small "U.S. customers try it here!" link which I could hardly notice.

unless this is on purpose (to lower the amount of users somehow to let the
system avoid a spike or something) then I really don't get it.

and after you go in, it's a pinterest wall.

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se85
Wow, do they have any design or UX people over there or just an overwhelming
level of nonsense politics or both?

It doesn't 'look' or 'feel' good at all.

Almost every change I see is a step back, instead of forward, which is crazy
considering how awful it was before.

Then again Ebay's strengths were never in anything product related.

I do believe that Ebay is very strong in the business side of things which is
the real reason why they are still here today.

Sadly the product has always been in a state of neglect, so maybe I'm crazy
for actually expecting something different from them this time.

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robryan
eBay have ridiculously restrictive seller limits. I could probably be doing 5+
times the sales volume that I do now if I could list as much as I wanted to. I
understand being cautious with new sellers but I don't see the logic of drip
feeding sellers more limit after they have say 500 feedback that is all or
close to all positive.

Amazon take 15% but let you list as much inventory as you want, they will
likely restrict your account until some feedback comes in but after a few
weeks this is lifted.

So amazon makes way more money off us and is a lot easier to manage. One of
eBays problems I guess is that in some ways they are still rooted in the
traditional model of small personal sellers and don't support big sellers that
well.

~~~
s_henry_paulson
Personally the only reason I go to eBay is to get away from "big sellers".

If it were a free-for-all everyone with a massive inventory would drown out
all of the individuals (the core of the site).

~~~
robryan
I don't think eBay is really the best place for small sellers anymore either,
they are kind of in between both models and not a leader in either.

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Tichy
Surprise: it looks like Pinterest. Yawn...

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jtchang
It is possible that ebay is worried about the new crop of companies that are
slowly nipping away at its core business model. Specifically people are
discovering things to buy through other means and not necessarily searching
for them directly on ebay.

That said I like the design a lot. The old design was showing some age. I see
they kept most of the layout so it should be semi familiar to all the power
users.

~~~
interg12
Ebay isn't ignoring innovations in eccomerce. I'd point you to their x.com
(xcommerce) platform - it's pretty impressive what they're doing. check out:
<https://www.x.com/products>

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MatthewPhillips
A lot of negativity here. I like the redesign quite a lot. I don't think every
website redesign needs to usher in its own new UI paradigm. I'm betting eBay
has the data that shows many people click on a listing, look at the picture,
then press the back button. Putting pictures front and center saves the user
time. And it puts it on sellers to provide good pictures instead of just the
stock photos.

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pajju
Here is the new Interface Link - <http://www.ebay.com/feed>

Today, its the Interface that sells. My mom and sister love Pinterest the most
in the web. I consider that - web is all about giving greater user experience
for super easy discovery!

eBay has done a nice design change, and the Pinterest like Interface sells
well for shopping sites.

The change is happening fast, users consume lot of content from tablets,
mobile devices so Pinterest, Wookmark and masonary like plugins create
beautiful grids and layouts for easy discovery.

But eBay should work more on their recommendation algorithms. It keeps showing
me Tablets, even after I bought a tablet recently in eBay. It should stop
showing me Tablets again. May be it should show Tablet accessories - Screen-
guards, pouches and Connectors? I may be interested in buying them.

Also an option to personalize the shopping experience by showing Items from
WishLists and Research-Lists is also missing.

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DigitalSea
I'm not really that impressed to be honest. The feed feature is a rather
trivial idea, eBay will never be Facebook so implementing a feed might be good
for some, but I'll most likely forget it's there (unless it's the new default
logged in view). The better checkout however is something that I am pretty
happy about, I will reserve final judgement when this redesign goes live.

Still not digging that new logo though...

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ryanio
See it live here: <http://ebay.com/feed>

(Had to read through the whole thing to find out where it is!)

~~~
gurkendoktor
Is everyone getting the same suggestions? These look either barely-safe-for-
work or dorky, or both. A Pinterest for nerds?

<http://imgur.com/qJQj5>

No connection to my purchase history that I can see... o_O

~~~
lessnonymous
Don't panic. I have exactly the same products.

~~~
gurkendoktor
No panic here, but I'm pretty confused by the selection. I would have bet
money that sexy nurse costumes are on the _least_ -selling item list.

~~~
jrabone
You'd be surprised. Every Halloween they make a resurgence. Considerable
developer effort goes into keeping pictures of the damn things off the
(U-rated) front page of _certain_ large e-commerce sites.

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dazzawazza
Ive been using the iPad App mostly as the website has been such a poor
experience in comparison. I hope the new website goes someway to bridge the
gap.

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hk__2
YAPL — Yet Another Pinterest Layout

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johnx123-up
_Bootstrap like design without using Bootstrap_

Am I the only one to find it out?

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ed209
I have to admit I'm not a huge fan of that logo, there are some nice ideas on
dribbble
[http://dribbble.com/search?page=1&q=ebay](http://dribbble.com/search?page=1&q=ebay)

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mkhalil
Eff eBay. They will not let me SELL anything on eBay because I sold like 15
items at once liquifiying a cousin store. I canceled one and was late on 2.
This was like 6 years ago and I was young and reckless. I made a new account
last week to try to sell 2 iPhones I had laying around. iPhone4 32gb and
iPhone4S 64GB, both unlocked. Was almost at 800 for both and coming down to
the last days. POOF. They removed my listings. I called and they said they
can't do anything and there isn't anything I can do.

I would sell on Craigslist but everyone wants to undercut or bargain the hell
out of you. I guess I'll just put it there anyway. The phones have GOT TO GO.

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zizzer
I'm guessing the same lumbering beast is hiding under these new changes,
including the search annoyances like not being able to exclude whole
categories from the results.

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Jarshwah
Am I the only one that really dislikes the pinterest style layouts? Off
center, mis-aligned .. I don't know how anyone finds it usable.

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hayksaakian
Its so jarring to see eBay alternate between capital b and lowercase for no
obvious reason. Anyone have a good explanation?

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taitems
The most disappointing part of it for me? It's still heavily tied to PayPal.

~~~
joelrunyon
Ironically, the reason they bought Paypal was because it was originally a
competitive advantage for them :).

Funny how a decade can change things.

~~~
irreverentbits
I'd guess PayPal would still be a competitive advantage if it were quicker to
respond to competitors like Stripe.

~~~
rbn
Stripe might be more dev friendly. But PayPal is years ahead. They are
available in most countries and you can practically do anything with PayPal
Adaptive Payments. They are also doing a the Square like credit card
processing plus many many other things.

I know Stripe is good. But It will be interesting to see when they can match
PayPal's features.

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alisnic
The scrolling is lagging as hell on my laptop (Core Duo 1.6)

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shocks
Works in IE8. o.o

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mdgrech23
TERRIBLE!!!!

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sbate
did they buy Etsy?

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drivebyacct2
Wait, wait, wait. Surely this isn't what I should see:
<http://i.imgur.com/kdKBT.png>

I mean, those legs look _interesting_ but I'm guessing that's not what ebay's
going for.

edit: wow, I was dropped into the middle (basically right at the end) of the
page. I didn't realize that... Is Chrome acting incorrectly? It goes to the
top of the page without the '#' at the end. Also, those orange bag jpeg
artifacts are not good. I would absolutely shudder to see what that looks like
on a Retina display.

I actually quite enjoy it otherwise, but it really _has_ to start at the top.
(Surely I'm not the only one this happened to, it happens every time for me)

