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Devin Wenig (eBay CEO) said last autumn

“There have been more changes in the last six months than in the previous ten years” which was probably true. He also promised more changes to come, and although there is always a delay between the announcements and the implementation, as we saw last year the time can be very short.

 

Some things we know as they have been announced already:

“Find it on eBay” and “Image Search”

This will be used in mainly two ways:

1) Buyers can photo an item or capture it in a screenshot and eBay’s “Image Search” will search out the closest matches it can (similar to Google’s Image search) or

2) If buyers are on Pinterest or other web pages, they can enter the URL into eBay’s “Find it on eBay” and again come up with the closest match.

Originally as reported last summer, eBay intended to roll out these features in the autumn of 2017, but it has yet to reach the UK. Beta tests suggest another way, which is to show a stock image and when the buyer hovers over, for instance, a dress worn by one of the people in the photo, eBay will match that dress with what it can find in the database.

As part of that initiative, eBay has advised that images should not have watermarks – this is also good advice generally as Google and other search engines dislike any extras on images.

 

Augmented Reality (AR)

This will allow a more immersive experience for buyers and sellers – so, for instance, you could see what a car tyre would like on your own car by adding the product to an image of your car, or by adding a product to a box to see how it would fit.

Many websites already use this to some extent – allowing buyers to design a kitchen online for instance, or to swap colours on a sofa to see how it looks.

 

Product based experience

This is the increased use of the eBay catalogue, similar to Amazon. The buyer will see a “Buy Box” for items linked with barcodes, MPNs etc, and be able to choose either new or used versions. Extra features such as choosing sellers who offer fast despatch and 30-day returns will also be options.

It looks like eBay wants to not only switch to a product centred system but to improve on Amazon’s. This will have far-reaching implications, so we await with interest to see just how this will be rolled out. A glimpse of how this will appear to buyers can be seen with the new “Group Similar Listings” option on many search results pages:

If you have enjoyed reading this post, check out my other insights into eBay by clicking here – eBay Blog

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