eBay is rolling out a new homepage on eBay.com based on learnings from structured data and artificial intelligence. The idea is to provide every shopper with a personalised and compelling homepage experience that drives them to dive into eBay and compel them to buy. Every single homepage a buyer sees will be different and inspiring to them.
As eBay CEO Devin Wenig says in the blog post that explains it all: “Using structured data — a transformative step to drive discoverability of our vast inventory, insights into supply and demand, pricing trends, among other things — and artificial intelligence, we’re creating a shopping experience that is tailored to each eBay user’s interests, passions and shopping history. With more than one billion items from new, to nearly new to vintage, we’re making shopping on eBay all about you, instead of a one-size-fits-all approach.”
This video will give you a better idea of what they’re doing:
Get a look at our new discovery-based homepage, powered by AI & built on structured data, to help consumers find their perfect. #ShopTalk17 pic.twitter.com/xjGv46lzTR
— eBay Newsroom (@eBayNewsroom) March 20, 2017
As a seller, you likely don’t see eBay’s homepage that much and rather head immediately to MY eBay or the like. Ir would be interesting to know how many eBay shoppers use the homepage too. As many as 20%?
But any attempt to infuse and ignite the homepage with personal relevancy to individual shoppers is very much welcome. Let’s see what happens.
2 Responses
I think it’s a high figure – many buyers start on the home page and then search, and then refine. The app opens on the home page and so does a web based browser.
is this based off the same artificial intelligence that suggests
“you regularly buy parts for a ford mondeo, so here are parts for cars you don’t own….”?
I imagine it is, because even in the featured video, it suggests many, many tea kettles.
perhaps “average customer” does indeed have a tea kettle fetish, resulting in numerous tea kettle purchases on a regular basis and of a varied nature… but…. using my flawed and old fashioned human senses, i believe that ebay has suggested a million tea kettles to her, because she once bought a tea kettle on ebay.
now in possesion of a working tea kettle she is presumably happy with, her tea kettle needs should be filled for the forseeable future, if she’s a canny shopper who put a lot of thought and effort into it, she’s probably glad to not have to look at lists of tea kettles again for a while.
same goes for wall clocks.
and backpacks.
in fact i dont think it’s suggested anything useful to this buyer at all that she doesn’t already (and recently) own.
I’d go so far as to suggest this video was made by people who are more interested in bright colours and fun shapes than usefulness of the thing they made.
but what do i know, AI and structured data are the future. Devin keeps telling us so. look how wonderfully colourful it is.