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Their UI is so bad, they have to use a phony mockup app in their TV commercials. Watch the commercials where a woman sees a fashion item on the street and then
by DrScump 8y ago
Their UI is so bad, they have to use a phony mockup app in their TV commercials. Watch the commercials where a woman sees a fashion item on the street and then buys it on eBay. Just try doing anything like that on the actual site. Their entire query mechanism has had severe breakages for years. You couldn't possibly construct a search that could isolate a particular shoe or handbag or whatever without traversing thousands of dissimilar items.
Tickets are a great example. I've done thousands of ticket buys and sales alike on eBay since the 1990s. But now, eBay actually sabotages ticket searches by polluting every event with hundreds of fake "classified ads" for StubHub (which they own) so that people give up and go to StubHub instead, more than tripling their cut (at the same price point). And you can't exclude those shell ads, which don't even represent actual tickets, from your searches anymore.
And the fraud problem is very real.
- tim333 8y agoThere's good and bad in the UI. Some of the features like being able to search for items in a set price range are very handy and don't seem to be available on other sites.
- OJFord 8y agoThat's possible on all sorts of sites, including Amazon as far back as I remember.
- oldcynic 8y agoMost of their UI changes have been user hostile or added dark patterns. For instance where once you got local items and sellers by default, now it defaults to international and you have to change a setting to exclude overseas sellers. Almost everyone will want to shop nationally first. It's the same arrogant "knowing better" seen in Facebook's show recent posts constantly resetting. Picking out one feature that they haven't ruined is poor consolation. As the other commenter notes Amazon has let you break down into price tiers for years. Most sites I shop at can do this. eBay search results are better than Amazon however - but that is because Amazon's has become so awful.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago> Almost everyone will want to shop nationally first. It's the same arrogant "knowing better" seen in Facebook's show recent posts constantly resetting. A lot of people want to shop price first then see how much cost would increase by buying from someone already on the same continent. Including shipping when sorting by price is the opposite of user-hostile and they've done this since forever, most online retailers don't do this.
- oldcynic 8y agoIncluding shipping is indeed useful, but I was calling out changes, and as you say they've done that forever. Just about every change they've made in the last half decade that I can think of makes it less friendly. I would be surprised if it's a lot that prefer default inclusion of international. They made the change right about the same time they made customs fees for international automatic and unavoidable. Makes me suspect that fee is including a hidden profit element in this dark pattern.
- DrScump 8y agoIncluding shipping when sorting by price Actually, they give search results preference to items with "free shipping" (their so-called "Fast and Free" cobrand) regardless of final price to the consumer.
- ianamartin 8y agoThe fake ui for an ad seems like a pretty red herring. I’m not saying you’re wrong. That just seems like flimsy evidence. I mean, maybe they use a fake UI in the ad because it’s so good. On a completely different note: the internet of commerce things has always felt like some sick mashup EvE Online and game of thrones. Not only is scamming and awful behavior allowed, it is encouraged by the way rules are enforced. The net is dark and full of terrors