EEF: Bill Cobb keynote, post 2 (fun!)

(Bill Cobb keynote continued - post 2)

2007 initiatives

Taking an aggressive approach at T+S issues (S+H/etc.) Reigniting the core auction business - eBay is the heritage and will always be at the center of the experience. Fixed price sellers - that's less about pricing format and more about the entire site (so don't worry).

Improving buyer consideration is job #1 at eBay. In 06 intro'd IT campaign and it has worked - bringing buyers to eBay. (showed 3 IT commercials - kids getting in door, dollhouse/robot, alarm clock).

Last month made some changes (covered previously here) to the management team at eBay - intro'd Philipp Justus (pronounced you-stus NOT Justice) - focused on core.

Hint: Introducing some new 'fun' ways to interact with eBay.

User interface discussion - eBay has done good job, but bar is raising. Historically put reliability on forefront (backend) and added complexity to front-end UI. This has introduced some buyer frustrations. In 2007 going to address the UI side.

Finding
For 2yrs they have been working on a better finding system. eBay Express has different category layout (Magellan). Smart system based on wisdom of crowds, where makes sense will be testing on eBay.com over several months, monitored closely.

Another advancement, is a new search results page - AJAXy with pop-ups when hovering and with feedback on results page (good results so far) Testing across small % of buyers in US/UK/DE.

Another change that is coming is FUN. In 2007, will reassert the concept of fun. eBay Match ups for example. Showed the Fruit cat helmet vs. Meg page.

eBay Strategies