As part of a series of recently announced steps to improve the overall customer experience, eBay will be improving the search functionality on its site this year.
“The onsite experience hadn’t kept up with buyer expectations,” said Usher Lieberman, senior communications manager at eBay, about moves which include a reduction in the fee for listing items and a fee increase when an item is sold.
Over the past 18 months, eBay has “invested in its infrastructure,” making improvements to its backend and technology in order to improve the integration of data analytics and search functions.
Other changes include improving the relevancy of the results that a customer gets back when conducting a search for an item. For example, right now when someone types in “iPod,” 10,000 results may come, 90% of which are accessory items, even though eBay’s research shows the person is most likely looking for a actual iPod.
“EBay has always collected a tremendous amount of data, but the company hadn’t employed [them] to [their] full capability previously, particularly in search,” Lieberman said.
In addition, the default sort option for searches will switch from “time-ending soonest,” referring to auction times, to “best match.” Sellers with higher customer ratings also get better search exposure.
