eBay Hacks, 2nd Edition

Clarify Your Payment and Shipping Terms

Reduce the chances of deadbeat bidders and unhappy customers by overcoming the limitations in eBay’s listing page design.

There’s a great deal of comfort in familiarity. For example, I find solace in the knowledge that there’s always a butter knife in the first drawer on the right, allowing me to stumble into my kitchen at 1 a.m. for a snack without having to undertake a full-scale utensil search. Move the knife—or worse yet, the drawer—and I’ll spend many subsequent nights cursing the change, even if the new location is ultimately more convenient when I’m actually awake.

I find that computer software invokes the same feelings, which is, I think, why people are often reluctant to upgrade (and give up all the bugs they’ve gotten used to in favor of a bunch of new ones). But visitors to web sites such as eBay don’t have that luxury; when a change is made to the site, it immediately affects everyone who uses it.

A few years ago, eBay completely redesigned the standard auction page, the page that shows the price, photos, description, and other details of any particular item you happen to be selling or bidding on. Most of the changes were significant improvements, such as the preview photo [Hack #70] and the adaptive title block [Hack #64] that shows different information to the seller than to, say, the winning bidder, or to the unlucky bloke who was just outbid.

But there were also sacrifices; problems with the design that remain to this day. ...