The goals
- To increase annual C2C GMV (22% target).
- To make it easy for sellers to discover and list items around their households.
- To apply emerging technologies towards a clear, revenue and customer-centric outcome.
Find and Sell
eBay Light
My role
Concept creator and designer. Key Product track for C2C Selling team.
2015 | eBay San Jose, CA
Context
Imagine walking through your home today, each room holding memories and possessions. Among them, $3,400 worth of hidden market value lies dormant - items you no longer use or wish to upgrade. This tale echoes the experience of a typical U.S. household around 2014.
In my project, I embarked on a mission to peel away the layers of friction that obscure these hidden gems within our clutter. I sought to make their value easily discoverable, to breathe new life into the consumer-to-consumer market.
Technological advances, like eager companions, awaited purposeful application. I wove together multiple tech streams into a seamless, user-centric journey—one that ignited the vision and influenced multiple downstream decisions for Consumer Selling Product.
Opportunity
!
5.6M
New C2C sellers over first 12 months stemming from seamless listing experience.
!
$440M
Projected uplift in annual C2C GMV after the first from program launch.
!
$50M
Direct C2C selling revenue uplift in the first year.
5 key areas
Re-thinking the key aspects of a typical consumer seller’s journey from the standpoint of Ease, Fun and Efficiency.
1
Gamified search
Through emerging hardware capabilities we want to make it exceedingly easy and fun to locate and identify common items through voice, photo or live scan. There’s also an incredible potential for AI to identify items with new levels of accuracy or through an engaging follow up with the user.
2
Instant item-to-catalogue mapping
Our data revealed that associating an item with the correct category tree was not only confusing but also time-consuming for sellers. The solution lay in automating aspect-based category placement, addressing this persistent challenge.
3
Image auto-cleanup
Our data revealed that item images with a clean background experience a 42% higher conversion rate compared to identical items with cluttered backgrounds. To swiftly adopt this technology, eBay explored acquiring a group of small startup companies specializing in this feature.
4
Structured Data powered listing process
Timely and contextual seller guidance to support on-the-go listing flow. This specifically addressed pricing and listing format guidance which C2C sellers often viewed as an entrapping and frictional step.
5
Connecting sellers to buyers in real time
Local buyers who had a specific item on their watchlist receive a notification once the seller has published the listing. Buyers are able to respond with an instant offer which is instantly communicated to their buyer.
The impact.
The direct influence of this project extended to eBay’s auto-background removal, in-flow seller price guidance (accounting for the bulk of item specifics, such as color, model and condition) as well as deeper investment in local shopping.
The learnings: Design with Purpose.
Before you do anything, ensure that the problems you’re embarking to solve are real and are grounded in actual human needs. Juxtapose those needs with product goals and make the overlapping area the center-point of gravity for your design solutions.
Next: Sell your past purchases
You may have fallen out of love with some of the things you’d bought on eBay before. We made it easy for you to redirect their market value towards new purchases.