Information Architecture of eBay Ads

1. Principle of Front Doors

Assume at least half of the website’s visitors will come through some page other than the home page.

When designing a website, it is important to remember that most visitors won’t arrive on the homepage.

Most people find websites through search engines, social media, and other sources that direct them to specific pages on the site – making it crucial that each page acts as a “front door” and provides an intuitive experience for visitors no matter how they got there.

This means designing each page to clearly show the content it contains and making it easy for visitors to navigate to other parts of the site if they want to explore further.

Application

In the context of advertising experience, the proper term would be “Principle of Revolving Doors”. Unlike a more linear content-based site, advertising has a multitude of anchor points within broader selling experience. The rate of engagement is proportional to ads relevance to a specific seller work mode. Mapping out those opportunities for in-task engagement was among our top priorities.

For instance, while managing listings (the most time entrapping task for eBay sellers), sellers view sales velocity is a top evaluation criteria. Ads, being an accelerant of sales would be seen as a relevant and contextual value proposition. Similarly, ads-powered sales velocity has a reverse halo effect on inventory types, sourcing, pricing and fulfillment, all together forming a self-perpetuating ecosystem of profitability and user engagement.

2. Principle of Multiple Classification

Creating multiple classification schemes for browsing the content on a website can help improve the user experience in a few ways.

Different people may have different preferences for organizing and finding information, so by giving multiple options, you can better cater to their needs.

Some people might prefer to browse content based on topics, while others might prefer to find information based on the type of content like articles, videos or images. This also makes it easier for visitors to locate the information they’re looking for, even if they’re not familiar with the terminology used on the site.

Having multiple classification schemes allows different types of content to be organized differently and ensures all the information on the site is easy to discover and navigate.

Application

Every single study we have conducted with sellers had touched in some way on the problem of guidance. 78% of sellers (this number is higher at lower GMV segments) have voiced their frustration over lack of relevant information for majority of advertising-related tasks. Sellers do not understand the differences between ads program types, are unsure which listings to promote or how to optimize their often very limited ad spend.

Having a centralized repository of knowledge (Ads Academy) proven to be time-consuming and required multiple steps to locate and process relevant bits of information. Seller time is seller money, and indiscriminate usage of seller time would inevitably lead to poor retention rates.

Instead, we needed a system of inline guidance, contextual to the specific task in hand.

3. Principle of Growth

The architecture principle of growth says that a website’s content will continue to grow and expand over time.

This is why it’s important to design information architecture with scalability and future content growth in mind.

The content a website has today will only be a small fraction of what it will have tomorrow, so the architecture should be flexible enough to accommodate the growth and evolution of the user’s ever-changing content needs.

This means we need a forward-thinking approach that takes into account the long-term needs of the website and its users. This principle is especially important for websites focused on creating and managing content, such as news and media sites, blogs, and e-commerce platforms – all of which need robust, flexible information architectures that scale easily, regardless of how much content is added in future.

Application

An advertising portfolio is not merely the sum of its individual products. When it comes to a UX framework, adherence to consistently applied usability principles is crucial. The evolution of this framework should be perpetual by design, never reaching a static state. Industry and marketplace data continually mold the next generation of user experiences.

But its growth should be governed by a series of built-in safety mechanisms that guide its evolution. Ideally, this system should be self-regulating and resistant to shifts in product or operational paradigms over time.

In pursuit of this, my objective was to adopt the method of “templates” that would serve various iterations of existing and future advertising programs. These templates would facilitate consistent growth without causing abrupt disturbances to established user mental models. To achieve this, I introduced a novel development approach by creating a library of program-interchangeable, task-based L1 Product components.

4. Principle of Disclosure

The architecture principle of disclosure states that users should only be presented with enough information to help them understand what they will find if they dig deeper.

In practice, this means presenting users with a high-level overview of a site’s content and functionality rather than trying to show everything all at once. Techniques like summarizing content, using previews or summaries of longer articles, or breaking up content into more manageable sections are a few ways of doing this.

Application

When designing for sellers, we face a complex equation. It’s not just about generalized “seller segments” based on annual GMV. Instead, we consider various dynamic factors: specific goals, inventory type, seasonality, time constraints, budget, and advertising expertise. While “seller profiles” help focus on product needs, they may miss critical use cases.

My approach involves “lanes of traffic,” catering to sellers’ session-specific requirements at different levels. For instance, an experienced seller might seek a data summary, while a novice advertiser may fine-tune specific campaign aspects. The effectiveness of these lanes depends on crisp layering of reporting metrics, where the information is disclosed gradually, inline with seller’s demand within each specific session.

5. Principle of Focused Navigation

The principle of focused navigation says that items and content are not grouped together if they’re not related or don’t have much in common.

When elements that have little in common are placed together in the navigation structure, it’s referred to as “mixing apples and oranges” – showing users a confusing range of options that aren’t relevant to their task.

By adhering to the principle of focused navigation, designers can help create an intuitive and efficient user experience, helping visitors find the information they need quickly and easily.

Application

A considerate landscape architect might encourage the public to naturally create trails in the park by walking on them before deciding to pave them in concrete. Following this effective method, I have based the framework navigation on user insights.

Countless immersion sessions have been aggregated into objective-based patterns of user behavior. These patterns then informed the footprint and the symbiotic relationships between core experiences.

The resulting footprint would account for the IA foundation for the current advertising experience at eBay.