At a star-studded launch in London this morning -attended by the likes of Kelly Hoppen, Reggie Yates, Alex James and Dannii Minogue – eBay UK launched the Collections feature as seen in action stateside since the end of last year. But enough celebrity froth already: what’s it all about?
It’s rather like Pinterest and is cousin to the Feed, which you’ll see on the homepage. It’s a feature that allows users – curators – to create Collections of items they like and share them with others on eBay. Check out the glitzy selection on the new eBay Today page here.
You have the opportunity to follow different collections and different curators so that in future you can get inspiration from their excellent taste.
The launch of Collections definitely reflects trends we see in the wider ecommerce world. Rich and sensual buying experiences are increasingly the norm, especially in some retail sectors and with specific buyers.
Take a look at a site like ASOS, they have visually stimulating, curated collections on show every day and the same is true of other ecommerce sites. So there can be no criticism of the innovation in that sense: it’s worth experimenting with. Indeed, it’s good to see interesting and bizarre items being surfaced in the collections.
But all that said, I can hardly see this being a massive game changer for eBay.
16 Responses
And if those ‘celebrities’ should get endorsement deals from certain sellers/brands how does that make the feeds/collections anything more than yet more intrusive clutter to distract from the main purpose of ebay? Search, find, buy what you went there for quickly and easily.
When will they grasp that people are not interested in what ebay THINK you want. It’s just visual noise in an already crowded search space.
As my mum said earlier today “why would I give two hoots what dannii minogue thinks about a lampshade auction when I went online to get a secondhand handbrake for my car and spent ages trying to get used to the layout and gave up trying”.
eBay launches ‘Collections’ at the Rook and Raven Art Gallery.
Jolly good!!!
Good luck to them .
I’m just packing up with eBay now.
The charges are just scandalously expensive ,been steadily losing interest over the past 6 months.
Started as a good idea ,but has been milked dry now by pure greed.
i’m guessing they clearly haven’t considered the timebomb staring them all in the face of when one of the celebrity “collections” one day turns out to contain a fake/copy/replica as is a statistical fact based on https://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/oct/02/counterfeit-goods-surge-uk.
When a celebrity eventually ‘endorses’ such a listing that directly leads to a buyer purchasing it, on their personal recommendation, I can foresee this backfiring spectacularly on all concerned and would raise interesting liability issues for one as effectively an ‘intermediary’.
The ‘real’ media will certainly not let such scandals go unexploited so it may be quite funny in the end to watch the fireworks and the backtracking in a few months.
I quite like them………
It’s basically ebay jumping on the band wagon of pinterest and the like but it is something they have built that actual works when you use it.
Will it increase sales…?Who knows but a quick search in collections for some of our categories and I spotted some of our products on boards.
The only big issue I have is ebay want everything on white backgrounds, but isn’t this going to ruin collections?
Is the standard ebay feedback and DSR system applied here? Or is it one rule for the plebs and another rule for the celebs?
Anything that increases ebay interest and traffic is fine as long as there is some consistency.
Can’t see the point of this. I would love ebay feed to feed stuff I want, and not a load of US based stuff priced in pounds. That makes feed a frustrating and now, proctically useless waste of space. I can’t see an eclectic bunch of stuff is going to do any better, especially when it will get screwed up over time, in the usual ebay manner. Give it a month and it will probably be all car parts or chinese stuff.
Great another load of boxes/pictures and other crap that gets in the way and slows you down.
I come on ebay to buy things I want or need, anything that gets in the way and stops me doing that is irritating and makes me go to Amazon instead where I can be confident the layout wont have been messed with for the tenth time this week.
It seems the consistent message from us ebay sellers who sell on multiple channels is that amazon have it right, ebay have it wrong. Amazon sales/traffic is consistent ebays is like blind mans buff.
Amazon leave their system alone and only occasionally introduce initiatives and in a measured gradual manner.
Why? because they know massive upheaval damages sales, traffic and buyer confidence.
Why? because they are retailers too and heed the guidance of other sellers quickly and without debate.
Ebay seem obsessed with style over content whilst their core software is eating itself, and us, alive.
Ultimately all ebay need to do is clamp down on keyword/brand name spammers and return to country based search results by lowest price incl shipping first. I guarantee my business on that fixing our problems.
How many of us here have reported listings to ebay who are keyword spamming, offering outside card/cash sales and all the usual games only to find those same listings active days/weeks later unaltered?
Until ebay grasp that abuse of their search system is the problem, not changing the system to block listings and innocent sellers in the process, they will continue to fall short of their obligations to us.
And having staff who listen and understand we dont work for them, but vice versa, will go a long way to getting things sorted.
Just who the hell comes up with this crxp??
….Seriously…..