Jay Meydad's Life Mashup

While doing a search on eBay I noticed an invitation to try their new search at the Playground. I took the plunge and immediately liked the new experience and that fact it became cleaner, more visual and with better search refinement controls – just like how a product search should be (see Like.com, thefind.com, PriceGrabber.com and others).

Here are a few additional observations on the new interface:

• The active search criteria is clearly displayed above the result set. The user does not have to guess which options are on. In the old version it was more difficult and less clear – the user had to look at the drop downs located at the long left column (often this required scrolling). In the new interface, it is also very easy to remove a criteria using the red [x]. One things that would be a nice addition is the ability to add multiple options from the same category where it is applicable (for example – Brand or Technology)

• As can be seen in the image above, a new mode for viewing results was added called “Snapshot”. It displays a tile of product images and when mousing over an image additional information is being displayed — just like Snap’s Snap Shots. This makes me wonder – is “Snap Shot” becoming a generic term (and verb) similar to what happened to Xerox and Google…?

• The “Refine your Search” left column was redesigned and is now cleaner, shorter and displays most of the options above the fold line. This was achieved by moving some of the less frequently used options into a popup window (although some design work is still required to make sure all options are visible and there is not need to scroll), the usage of cleaner controls like the price slider (very popular on travel search sites like Kayak and Farechase) and simple controls instead of check boxes and drop downs.

Bottom line – Kudos to the eBay team for creating an improved search experience. My only suggestion to you – add a “Filter by Color” option where applicable (Clothing, Shoes, Accessories and more).

Update: Renee VonBergen, a sr. manager for buyer experience at eBay, corrected me – a color slider is available in certain categories. The direction is really good but could be improved:

• It would be helpful to see it on more products – some people pick their cell phone or guitar by the color
• If you pick a color that returns no results, you get to something that is similar to a dead-end. In this case it would be helpful (for both eBay and the user) to get recommendations to similar products (”We could not find green shoes but we have blue ones”)