eBay eBuzz (also called “Buzz of the Day!) uses similar technology to eBaySaurus that we looked at yesterday. eBuzz is offering a mile high view of eBay with the option to dig deeper. You can Learn more about the eBay eco-system with just a few clicks with this innovative but experimental tool.
You can look back in history at what the eBay world were interested in on a day by day basis, along with news served by Yahoo! The data is provided as a net with related key word searches and alongside are suggestions of products to purchase on eBay related to that theme. A nice feature is the “Surprise Me” button which picks a random day from the past and shows what the eBay buzz was about at that point in time.
Although this is historical data it could make sense for eBay to use this information to tailor Daily Deals to products and themes that eBay users were searching for last week, although in truth they probably have a much greater lead time to prepare Daily and Weekly Deals. It would also make sense to build a weighting in to eBay search results to highlight products that much of the eBay community are actively interested in.
Over the last four days we’ve looked at a number of eBay’s experimental search research prototypes. What I find interesting is that apart from search terms and categories none of the tools rely on complicated item specifics. They rely on how users interact with the site – either trends of search terms or purchases.
If you were designing eBay’s search to surface the unique one off items which features would you build into the main site or do you have other ideas of how to make sure the unusual and one-off items are found?
