posted on February 19, 2005 08:57:20 AM new
Right now I'm using eBay's cross-referencing gallery, and it is set up almost perfectly for my needs. However, I'm sure that eventually they will begin charging for this service and, as always, they will be more expensive than you are. So I took a closer look at your four gallery design choices and found to my dismay that I wouldn't be able to use ANY of them, and here is why:
1) I don't always want an image with the cross-reference. I am assuming that you take the image from those that I list with the auction (rather than from eBay's 35-cent gallery). But there are times when I don't have an image that would work well as a captioned representation of the item. eBay's system lists the title in each gallery box, even if there is no accompanying image, and that is exactly what I often want.
2) Three of your four gallery styles jump around constantly. The Marquee moves too fast to read the information. The Lottery and Memory Game distract with a lot of images that don't even have anything to do with the auction items on offer. I find this annoying and confusing. Your fourth style, Basic, would work better if the auction titles were with each image in the scroll, rather than just captioning the single image in the left-hand box. (And that would work, of course, even if there was no image there.)
3) I am not interested in cross-referencing ALL my auctions, just those that are similar in type to the auction the buyer is looking at. It is easy enough for the buyer to click on my entire auction list if they are intrigued by the cross-referenced items, but I believe it is too distracting to have everything thrown at them at once in the gallery.
For me, the ideal gallery would have 6 static items (each labeled with its auction title) to be hand-picked by me and updated as needed, as earlier cross-referenced auctions end. Would you consider providing something like this?
