A test of a new item page -- your questions answered

Earlier this week, a few members started seeing a very different looking Item page that is currently in the earliest stages of testing.  Although only a tiny fraction of eBay visitors are being directed to the new page, links to the new page have been shared on the forums, and interest has grown virally.  (Read a sample discussion on our Auction Listings forum.) A number of good questions have been asked by members, so the Chatter team met with Subha Shetty and Scott Loper of the Buyer team to learn more.  I'll share their responses below. 

First, though, I thought it would be helpful to touch briefly on testing at eBay. 

Some of us don't like change, but often eBay's tasked with re-thinking old approaches and re-architecting old code out of necessity, so that the site can scale as large or as fast as the current growth of online buying and selling.  Couple that with the ever-changing needs and expectations of the marketplace (in particular, the expectations of online shoppers, as we've heard our executives discuss), and you have a lot of innovation required to keep the site healthy and up to par with what our buyers and sellers expect.

Developing eBay's infrastructure (the core areas of the site like Search and Checkout and the Item page, etc.) was once likened to "changing the engine in a Ferrari while you are speeding down the freeway at 120 miles an hour."  In other words....it's a challenge.  To make change without the outages and major issues that old-timers will recall from eBay's early days, eBay's engineering process has adopted a rigorous testing protocol.  A key development is the ability to introduce new designs and code to a very tiny fraction of eBay traffic without impacting the whole marketplace.  Engineers and product managers can see what happens in a real, live environment, and collect data that help them pinpoint where they need to refine their changes. 

Given the complex nature and scope of change happening, there are almost always several tests happening on any given day or week. There's much more to share about testing on eBay, so stay tuned for a future blog article dedicated to this subject.   

Now back to Subha Shetty and Scott Loper (we took their picture together earlier yesterday) and the new item page tests...

Question:  Why is eBay developing and testing a new item page?

Answer:  The redesign of the item page is an extension of an overall redesign of the eBay site in general. We’ve been working on other major areas such as Finding, the Home Page, and eBay Checkout. The item page redesign project is over a year in the making with significant amounts of up-front research with both buyers and sellers.
Keep in mind, this is an early test. Members can expect to see changes over the course of the testing period (several months).  Also, the features currently seen in the test may or may not appear in the final version.  And we may introduce more new features that haven’t been seen yet.
The goal right now is to collect helpful data from the tests, get important feedback from the community, and iterate as appropriate before deploying to the wider eBay Community.

Question:  Some items viewed through the new item page contain a red warning message in the Meet the Seller section indicating the Seller has a low Detailed Seller Rating (DSR rating.)  What is the purpose?  This is especially confusing when the Seller has 4 stars.

Answer: The purpose of the message is to indicate to buyers when the seller has a very low DSR score compared to all other eBay sellers. This happens a small percentage of the time, and only the lowest performing sellers are flagged.  Some sellers may notice they get flagged when their DSR shows 4.1 out of 5, for example. This is because a 4.1 score is actually very low compared to other sellers.
We've seen the comments from members, and we realize this may seem counter-intuitive based on how the stars are represented when a buyer leaves feedback (e.g. Shipping time, 4 = “quickly”). However, it’s important to note this is a relative ranking. The overall goal is to reduce the number of bad buying experiences, the bulk of which are caused by sellers with the lowest DSRs.

Question: Why are items from other sellers being promoted on a seller's listing? Can sellers opt out of this? 

Answer:  There's a lot of confusion and concern about this on the forums, so we're glad to get the chance to clarify.  There are two separate issues here:

1) Currently, on closed items that have already ended, we do show two rows of similar items from other sellers.  We do not show these two rows on active listings, though -- some people have been a bit confused about this.  Actually, this is similar to the merchandising we do today on completed listings.

2) There's a new "Related Items tab," and from there, we do show similar items from the item's seller and other sellers. We use logic to determine which items to show based on a number of variables. Having a wider selection to choose from means a higher chance of showing relevant items, and consequently a better buying experience.

Currently, there is no ability to opt-out in the test. This type of merchandising is something online shoppers have come to expect, although we understand this is a critical area and we need to do it carefully.  Sellers should keep in mind that their items are also appearing on other sellers' listings, so everyone is getting an increase in potential exposure.

Question:  Why is the new item page slower?  Some people are reporting that the overall performance of the page is not as good as the previous one.

Answer: Since this is a test, we’re using a different part of the eBay system to host the page. Limitations in the system mean a slight delay in performance during the testing period only. The new design will actually run as fast, or faster, than the current one when we launch it to our core production environment.

Question: When do you plan to release the new design to everyone?
Answer: Right now we are in the very initial phase of testing, as we mentioned.  We’ll be gathering data and community input for quite some time.  While any broad launch is still several months away, we’ll be sure to update the Community as the project evolves.

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The Chatter team would like to thank Subha and Scott for their time, and we look forward to more updates on the new item page as this project evolves.