Interesting to see that EBay is now attaching great priority to the customer experience. Link
I think that this is an area they have neglected for a long time. Interesting to read that the reasoning behind this is:
“EBay needs to evolve the user experience to be more competitive and differentiated”
Reading between the lines, I think they mean that users prefer the experience that Amazon.com gives them, and that they want to stop the strong migration of sellers from EBay to Amazon. While Amazon has had a focus upon user experience for some time, and has finely tuned this (to great success), I think EBay has a lot to do before they can define the ‘right’ experience. In fact, the Amazon experience is part of their offering, and has been thought through. Amazon strives to offer the experience of reading a good book or seeing a great DVD, and has placed emphasis upon giving this experience as soon as possible (collaborative filtering, look inside, listmania etc). I don’t think it has ever been considered as part of EBays offering, which is why I think they have a long way to go. I think EBay need to ‘rethink’ the EBay experience rather than ‘evolve it’