Back in August eBay began testing a bid box (the ability to type a bid in directly instead of clicking to an additional page) at the top of the auction page, next to the bid button. After six weeks of testing they’ve realised the obvious, that it’s a good thing to make it as easy as possible for buyers to bid! They’ve just announced that in the next few days the bid box at the top of auctions will be rolled out site wide.
The one thing that still confuses me is why it took six weeks of testing to establish that making it easier for buyers to bid and saving them time encourages bidding. To me it seemed logical and obvious with no need to test! It’s a good move though and will appear on the site just in time for the Christmas shopping season.
7 Responses
How many times have sellers complained that buyers haven’t read the description? Surely putting the “bid box” at the top of the page will result in even fewer buyers reading the complete description.
True Steve, but currently they just click the “Bid” or BIN” button and go to the next page, enter their bid and confirm. As soon as they click the button they can’t see the auction any more at all. At least this way if they want they can still scroll up and down, and with the length of some sellers descriptions bidding at the bottom of the page is a long long way down.
Personally I can’t remember the last time I entered a bid at the bottom of the page, I always use the top so I’m happy with the change 🙂
And there’s a hidden bonus as our testing on the US has shown
A surprising number of bidders on BINs don’t even check how many items or lots are in the listing and using the top button means they are automatically buying them all….. and most of them simply pay whatever they are invoiced.
We’ve had several say (after getting the goods) that they didn’t realise they had bought more than one, but were glad they did.
🙂
“To me it seemed logical and obvious with no need to test! ”
Logical sure, but no need to test? If you’re encouraging eBay (this would apply to any site really) to make a change that affects millions of pages without testing it first you must have a death wish 🙂
Their “test” appears to have been whether it would assist sales as opposed to a technical test…. but yes I take your point! 😮
But won’t this also make it easier for their cats and 2 year olds to bid? 😉
For real, Percy? Oh lordy. (I sell almost everything as multiple BINs.)