Problem

eBay has thousands of flexible pages that are used for a variety of use cases including: browsing eBay categories, hosting content for specific holidays or seasons, highlighting trends & interests, and other ad hoc pages.

These pages were built for flexibility of design and easy, quick deployments to the website. In order to achieve this, the pages were built to host various types of image banners containing custom content with links. This was great for the original intent of flexible pages, but over time it became difficult to maintain a standardized user experience. Furthermore, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) suffered from slow page load times (due to massive images) and the lack of crawlable text.

Solution

The Verticals Product Team in coordination with the SEO Product Team spent time identifying top use cases for eBay’s flexible pages, then set out to build integrated content modules to support these use cases. By building dedicated modules, the teams were able to create a standardized user experience, and build content designed for improved SEO in order to improve eBay’s ranking search engines.

The new modules built for the flexible pages are:

Deals Strip - Exhibits top deals on eBay for a specific category
Sales & Events Strip - Displays ongoing Sales & Events on eBay
Visual Categories - Presents eBay Categories in an engaging manner
Collections - Showcases groupings of curated eBay items
Guides - Promotes interesting and informative content relevant to eBay categories and inventory

The solution for improving the flexible browse pages took more than simply identifying the problem and isolating specific modules to build. It also involved coordinating business units across the globe to adopt new formats for their merchandised content and swiftly introduce the specific content types on thousands of curated pages. In order to simplify this process, the teams created a project that details specific templates and patterns for utilizing modules on flexible pages. This effort involved multiple product teams, all business units, merchandisers, the design team, as well as the creative and marketing teams. The various parties developed the proper page formats and guidelines with a combination of their expertise in eBay and verticals along with data from current and past page performance.

The Magic

The Before - Home & Garden Category Page from Q4 2015

The After (Desktop) - Home & Garden Category Page from Q3 2016

The After (Mobile) - Home & Garden Category Page from Q3 2016

Metrics

I cannot share these. But it was a positive improvement in SEO Visibility globally.

MacroFuel Food Store Launch Goals

We launched the first version of the store in early February 2016. This first iteration had 2 focuses:

Giving access to our Kickstarter backers to re-order MacroFuel.

Expanding our customer base in a controlled manner by requiring referrals for our new customers.

This proved wildly successful! We not only sold out of our inventory in under a month, but we also discovered who our most passionate customers are so that we knew who to reach out to for continued feedback on the product. The overwhelming interest gave us the data we needed to restock our supply, and retool the store for a broader launch.

Learnings and Improvements

The second version of the store launched less than 2 months after the initial launch (at the end of March). We restocked our inventory, and I retooled the store to allow anyone to purchase MacroFuel without a referral in order to scale the business. We also expanded the referral program to allow new customers to receive a discount on their first purchase, and referring customers to receive discounts as their friends use their referral code. We are working to emphasize referrals in our shopping experience in order to take advantage of word-of-mouth marketing.

The revamped store also focuses on highlighting the discount rates available when purchasing in bulk. This new offering has proven extremely effective, with over 50% orders placed including two or more bags, and over 30% of orders placed including four or more bags. This data shows that our customers appreciate the bulk discounts, and that many customers want MacroFuel on hand at all times as a staple of their diet.

What’s next

I will continue to iterate on the store to improve the shopping experience. It is currently optimized for Desktop, Tablet and Mobile shopping, but there are definitely some further improvements that I can make for the mobile shopping experience in terms of adjusting the checkout process to be better suited for mobile.

Moreover, with the introduction of bots, so we are aiming to make future versions of the store accessible via Facebook Messenger and Slack.

Additionally, we want to introduce subscriptions for MacroFuel. This opens up the opportunity for deeper discounts for our repeat customers, and ensuring that our most loyal customers always have a full stock of MacroFuel at home!

Stay tuned for more updates regarding MacroFuel - Fuel your life.

Buy MacroFuel now at the Online Store or on eBay. Learn more about MacroFuel on our website.

View this post on Medium.

eBay Flexible Page Search Engine and Design Optimizations