The more we test, the more we learn

Ever since Jeff King announced the Finding Playground, our test lab for trying out what works best for people finding stuff on the site, debate has been raging in our discussion forums, notably on the Search discussion board. Jeff and Josh Loftus have both been posting actively, answering people's questions and explaining what we're testing and why.

From the clamor of people expressing their opinions about the Playground, it's clear that Finding is something we need to approach carefully. And that's precisely why we launched the Playground: so we can learn from the Community what works and what doesn't, before making it available widely. Yes, trying something new can be annoying, to say the least (like trying on new shoes that don’t "feel" right – at first). As Josh says, "Even though change can be exciting, it can also be a little disruptive."

The good news is that we're learning fairly rapidly what's working and what isn't. We got a pretty candid perspective from Josh about the reasons why we're testing so carefully on the Playground (watch the first video right below).

A little later, Josh also told us about the Finding team's … well… findings from the Playground. As we test more, we’re getting a better idea of the direction in which Finding is headed. For instance, we're learning that showing "landing pages" selectively is better than showing them always. 

What are landing pages? Well, if you search "vintage" from the home page or the header on eBay today, you see this landing page: http://buy.ebay.com/vintage. We show that page instead of the search results for "vintage" when you type that word into the search box   (http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?satitle=vintage). We do this because buyers are typically more successful at finding what they want after narrowing their search by a category.
On Playground, the new experience will use a self-learning system to determine when to show landing pages.

The more we test things like this, the more sure we are whether something works or can be tossed out. Watch Josh's second video to get an idea of what we've learned.