posted on November 21, 2000 03:22:32 PMtwinsoft: Okay, I'll certainly grant it depends a lot on what you're selling, and how much one depends on urge purchases. There are a lot of products out there that no one would think of looking for, but might love to have.
Occasionally, something "different" shows up still within a search, sometimes making me think of looking for those too, or realtering one of my existing searches. I know this is still not terribly spontaneous, but it is less time consuming....
I guess I'm not much of an impulse buyer, and/or joined eBay when categories were already becoming large. If I recall, when I first heard about eBay, I went there already knowing what I wanted to look for first, so search was natural, it worked, and I never looked back.
The few times I started browsing categories were enough to keep me from doing it any more than maybe four times in two years, due to there being both too many (sometimes overlapping) categories, or too many things in some categories.
I mean when the first page of a category shows nothing but items that have less than two hours to go, I don't get much time to decide whether I really want those first page items (and feel comfortable with the seller's FB, etc. ), and also means there are dozens of other pages -- and don't feel like clicking lots of pages just to find the items I really want to see.
Still, the fact I so I'll scarcely try to category browse does demonstrate a problem. I tried it just now, picking an interesting auction from my current favorite search, then clicked on the auction's category, and found 2382 items in that category, but of the first page of 50, only 5 auctions have 7 bids among them. (Hmmm, has eBay stopped sorting categories by end date? I can't even click on the column titles to sort on those columns either. )
The only non-search I really do is View Seller's Other Auctions, but some sellers have a mighty huge number of active auctions too.
Anyway, eBay should be a buyer's paradise right now, but to me, search is the only useful and efficient way to navigate it. eBay is sort of the Mall of America of all antiques/collectibles "malls." You can find it all there, if you're willing to take a lot of time and wear your feet out looking.
I'm not sure this is a resolvable problem, though it is "tweakable" if for no other reasons than they could fix search to work faster and have more sensible categories. What, for example, is "Toys, Bean Bag Plush" that realistic diecast aircraft models appear in? Yes, they're cousins of "toys," even though they are models and not toys, but it's the "Bean Bag Plush" that puzzles me everytime I see it -- why isn't a "Bean Bag" simply part of "Toys" too, instead of being explicitly mentioned? Other model planes appear under some "advertising" subcategory in some other top-level category. My point is that, if I didn't rely on search, it would never occur to me that "Toys, Bean Bag Plush" is a place I should look.
I sympathize with sellers trying to pick a category for an item, because where do you put some items that aren't entirely this or that, or "resemble" two different things. eBay did do sellers a favor allowing items to be in two categories, though.
You know, maybe for the heck of it, I should browse several layers in across all the top categories just to see what's there. Of course, I could be spending quite a lot of time doing so.... Naturally, though, I see sellers would love that -- except that if buyers get sick of spending that much time on eBay, they might get tired of it....
Like I said, while eBay could do a lot more to fix its own mechanisms, I don't know how the above volume-prompted conflict can be resolved.
How would you propose splitting eBay? I mean into what and what? I'm curious.
[ Edited because I'm tired and wasn't always entirely clear. Of course, I may have just made some things even less clear.... ]
[ edited by dc9a320 on Nov 21, 2000 03:35 PM ]
Naturally, though, I see sellers would love that -- except that if buyers get sick of spending that much time on eBay, they might get tired of it....