Last Week's Town Hall - Introducing Philipp Justus and the Finding Team
Posted by Ninad on June 06, 2007 at 03:02 PM in General | Permalink
Last week's Town Hall (see Ryan's pictures of the event) will go down in my memory as having the most questions that left our panelists going, "Hmmm. You know, I don't have the answer to that right now, but I'll find out and get back to you." The questions asked in the Town Hall showed once again that members often know more about some aspects of eBay than anybody else.
For instance, take this question that was asked in the Town Hall: "Why can't you send a follow-up response to a member's question in My Messages?" According to the question, if a member sends an email and the seller responds via My Messages, they are prevented from contacting the member again via My Messages, unless there's a second question from the member. It did leave our panelists scratching their heads, as the functionality that the questioner was requesting seemed very reasonable. I saw several people furiously taking notes to follow up with the Product team that designed My Messages.
Another question was from a caller who said he had been listing poker chips without any problems until recently, but a few weeks ago his listings were taken down. He wanted to know if listing poker chips violated eBay policy. The question nonplussed even the policy gurus in the room, who wanted to look more closely into the caller's specific situation.
Another question that momentarily threw the panel was cleared up quickly. The question was whether a buyer's bid retraction history had been removed from the newly designed Member Profile page. After some consternation when almost everyone thought that the bid retraction history information had been inadvertently left out from the newly redesigned Member profile page, it was pointed out that it was available under the Feedback as a buyer tab (see picture below). Phew!
A key highlight of this Town Hall was that Bill Cobb, President of eBay North America, introduced Philipp Justus, Senior Vice President of our auctions business, to the North America Community. Before coming to the US, Philipp previously ran eBay's Europe business. Philipp said he was excited to be in his new role, saying "I'm new to North America, but not new to eBay." He outlined his team's objectives and emphasized that improving the "user experience" on eBay, both from a buyer and seller perspective, was a top priority.
Many of the panelists were familiar faces from previous Town Halls. Griff, playing emcee as usual, lost no opportunity to plug his favorite event of the year, eBay Live!, which (in case you forgot!) happens next week. Bill Cobb was once again the host, and Jim Ambach from Product Management, and Matt Halprin from Trust & Safety were on hand to answer questions about their areas. This Town Hall also had a couple of additional new people - Jeff King and Josh Loftus from the Finding team. "The Finding team?" you're probably asking. "Don't you mean the Search team?" Bill Cobb asked Jeff King that very question, and I was tickled by Jeff's response. He said, "Why do you think Disney called its movie 'Finding Nemo' instead of 'Searching for Nemo'?" Jeff went on to explain that a buyer's goal on eBay is to "find" a great deal for themselves, not just "search" for it. A sense of discovery, of excitement, goes with "finding."
Jeff then spoke about some of the projects in the works to improve the Finding experience. A tiny percentage (about 1%) of buyers is already seeing some of the new Finding features, as part of an extensive test. Based on their experience, Jeff's team will analyze the test results and keep optimizing the Finding technology. One of the test projects includes displaying an intermediate page to buyers when they search, so that they can filter their searches even more by relevance.
Bill asked Jeff a question that's probably on most sellers' minds: "What can a seller do to improve search for buyers?" Two words summarized Jeff's answer - Item Specifics. Jeff pointed out how sellers utilizing Item Specifics (and getting them right - that's important too) were leveraging information more relevant to buyers' searches.
I could go on and on about the other questions and answers that were shared in the Town Hall, but instead I'll point you to the Town Hall archives, which will soon be updated with a transcript of the Town Hall. You can also listen to an audio archive. And don't miss the next Town Hall, which will be held with a live audience next week - at eBay Live! Don't miss it!
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