ebay: Creating a more engaging feed experience

Client
eBay

Year
2013

Role
UX/ UI Designer

In 2013, eBay introduced a masonry style layout across the site to promote product browsing and discovery. As part of the team that led the effort, I was tasked to create concepts to promote engagement, discovery of other departments and to rethink contextual advertisements in the feed. 

In 2013, I was part of the team that re-designed the eBay home page experience. The new home page was home to products, interests, members and brands that users followed. These were displayed in a masonry style layout with infinite scrolling. One of the challenges of such a layout was the monotonous flow of thousands of products, overwhelming the user or losing their attention beyond a point. This provided a great opportunity to find ways to engage users, promote other departments and customize advertisements.  

The goal was to create a personalized, interactive experience that promoted browsing & discovery.

eBay is home to many categories of products from Fahion to Autombiled, Memorabilia to Tickets and more. Part of the challenge of this project was to promote those areas in a personalized and interactive way.

To promote eBay local shopping and give the user an option to get their product faster, the interactive Deals Near Me widget appears when 5 or more local products are in a close vicinity of each other. 

When there are more than 10 products from the same category, the site displays simple, elegant advertisements to promote and enhance shopping for that specific product.

These advertisements can also take over larger spaces to help brand the area around specific brands and products and provide a more personalized experience.

Filters can help the users narrow the results to their specific taste. The filters can be used on a variety of products from fashion and apparel to electronics and collectibles.

Advertisements interacting with products in the feed can instill surprise and delight.

Interactive widgets that highlight and recommend products in its vicinity for various occasions and celebrations.

This tickets widget appears around groups of sports and music products and memorabilia. Based on the user's interest, it can give them ideas for activities to help promote eBay tickets.

When there are multiple products from a musician or band, the feed is injected with the music player widget, promoting artists.ebay.com and letting the users jump into an immersive experience by listening to music based on their taste while shopping on eBay. 

eBay Entertainment

This project led to a similar exploration for eBay entertainment, where users are met with everything from music, video games and movies to tickets for their favorite events. These pages thrived with a more visually rich experience. 

This led to the creation of a more robust artist page filled with music, posters, merchandise, memorabilia and more, to completely immerse in the artists' work. The artist takes over the feed, billboard and wallpaper which are filled with related products across the site.

It is designed to also work with complete advertising packages that builds a story as you scroll through the page.

To create a good balance between searching & browsing, a finder questionnaire was introduced along with the left navigation filters.  

Users will find multiple strategically placed widgets that promote products across the site while personalizing and recommending better products on the feed.