3 ms·

Surprised no one else has said this, but eBay was ugly as sin for a very long time! Even now, the pages are crowded with variant font sizes and styles. There a

Surprised no one else has said this, but eBay was ugly as sin for a very long time! Even now, the pages are crowded with variant font sizes and styles. There are offers galore as though the site competes with itself to get you to click on various things. I gotta say, it is downright horrendous to look at an ebay listing still! Look at this example from just now. https://i.imgur.com/1cjoT36.png https://i.imgur.com/1cjoT36.png I mean, it wants me to write a review for this item as though this is possibly something I would do looking at it for the first time. It wants me to "make more cash and sell whats hot" it wants me to shop with confidence and learn more what that means. It wants me to buy it now and add it to the cart. Oh but don't forget 3-year protection plan from blah for $26. Is there any site on the internet that has such a mess for a product page than this? I can't think of something worse. eBay should break up the company if it means it can create reasonable item listings. What they have now is a a travesty of a product page. This hasn't been okay outside eBay, ever.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Yet Amazon isn't better at any of this. Same jumble of fonts, ropey hostile layout, it asks for reviews on products I haven't bought, suggests I might like to sell one, take out a subscription and shows ads for competing products. They also try and make the distinction between Amazon and marketplace as vague as possible.
- nikkwong 8y ago
  Whenever I bring this up I get contested at the fact that Amazon has A/B tested the customer-facing e-commerce portion of their site down to the very pixel. If any page on the web has the incentive to go through massive amounts of A/B testing, its those product pages for sure. Yet, then I look at those pages, and think to myself... really? This monstrosity is the result? Still so confused.
  - the-dude 8y ago
    Are you aware of the 'Belcher button' ?
flyingcoder 8y ago
You’re right, the UI is dated, but the 10% fees definitely drive away users
ndnxhs 8y ago
EBay is one of the worst offenders for legacy crap. I had to integrate a website with eBay and literally 50% of the website doesn't work, especially all the developer facing bits. The entire sandbox site is running an older version that doesn't work anymore so you have to test in production. Every page you load has its own subdomain and style sheet which often requires you to log in again. The docs are full of broken links and the api is XML hell. After all that I finally got it all working and then eBay shut down our account just before the Christmas period requesting we send them thousands of receipts for all of our products. EBay needs to die, and fast.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

Yet Amazon isn't better at any of this. Same jumble of fonts, ropey hostile layout, it asks for reviews on products I haven't bought, suggests I might like to sell one, take out a subscription and shows ads for competing products. They also try and make the distinction between Amazon and marketplace as vague as possible.

nikkwong 8y ago
Whenever I bring this up I get contested at the fact that Amazon has A/B tested the customer-facing e-commerce portion of their site down to the very pixel. If any page on the web has the incentive to go through massive amounts of A/B testing, its those product pages for sure. Yet, then I look at those pages, and think to myself... really? This monstrosity is the result? Still so confused.
- the-dude 8y ago
  Are you aware of the 'Belcher button' ?

flyingcoder 8y ago

You’re right, the UI is dated, but the 10% fees definitely drive away users

ndnxhs 8y ago

EBay is one of the worst offenders for legacy crap. I had to integrate a website with eBay and literally 50% of the website doesn't work, especially all the developer facing bits. The entire sandbox site is running an older version that doesn't work anymore so you have to test in production. Every page you load has its own subdomain and style sheet which often requires you to log in again. The docs are full of broken links and the api is XML hell. After all that I finally got it all working and then eBay shut down our account just before the Christmas period requesting we send them thousands of receipts for all of our products. EBay needs to die, and fast.