Today I will be reviewing the positives and negatives of a site that millions of people all over the world have used, Ebay. For my test I will be looking for an alarm clock to purchase. Upon entering the site there is a lot going on, as with many sites specifically e-commerce sites. As I read in “don’t make me think” as users our eyes are drawn about the page and scan without reading much specifically. The first thing that jumps out is a large box at the center of screen right with a title reading “hot new deals” along with photos of furniture. Because I am looking for an alarm clock I don’t click on the hot deals box and instead find the search bar, which is at the top center of the page. This may be because when the page loads it’s directly in front of you and is easy to find and use. As I begin to type in “Alarm” the search box drops down and shows the phrase “alarm clock” in an attempt to guess my full search, also giving me the option to either search for it across the entire site or just a specific category. Along with the correct search of “Alarm Clock” comes many other terms beginning with Alarm that I do not need. After typing in half of alarm clock I select the phrase with the category”home decor” next to it. The next page that appears is the results of my search, once again I scan the page and end up following the pictures of different alarm clocks down the center right of the page. On either side of the listings are advertisements, some for other products on Ebay, others of outside companies. I scroll down the page looking mostly at the photo of the item and the price. Because I have a good idea of the type of clock I want I find my way to the left most side of the page at the top. Here I find the options such as price range, color, and style. I select the check mark next to the color black and the page changes slightly in the center to only display black clocks in the photos. I then select modern under the styles option and a similar result occurs with the items listed. I continue to scroll down the page until I find a clock I like. After clicking the blue name of the product it takes me to another page with details of the clock, including price, shipping cost, delivery time, and a description of the product from the manufacturer. I see more photos of the clock and decide I want to purchase, so I tap the large blue “buy it now” button. The page I am then brought to is a conformation page outlining my total costs shipping address, which is already filled in from having used cite in the past, and my payment type. Then in blue at the bottom right hand corner is a button that asks that I confirm the purchase.
I went into the review of this site thinking that any tools that helped me to find my product should be considered positives, and those that were confusing or misleading be negatives. That being said the site is more over positive, Right away when you enter the site you can find the search bar, which is the most important tool when you already know what you want to buy. At the same time if you are simply in the mood to buy something there are plenty of windows that advertise deals and special products on the site right now. While searching the auto guess is pretty spot on if you’re looking for a fairly normal product, like I was, and the ability to choose a category is a great addition to get you to the product you want even faster. Once you have searched for your product the results are the most dominant things on the page, each clearly showing the price and photos of each product. By far the best tool on the page is the narrowing of the search through the options that I mentioned like, color, size, cost, and material. When there are millions of products for sale on the website the more detailed the search options the quicker that you can be connected to the product that you want. Finally the buying process is easy to do and works with the user step by step, stopping them any time that something is filled out incorrectly and waiting until all fields are confirmed.
The biggest problems with the site for me were based in formatting. While the search bar was easy to find it would have been more difficult and taken longer to locate the search bar, many important links to categories are in plain black text that doesn’t specifically denote a clickable link to someone that is simply scanning the web page. Along the same vain of reasoning, the search option tool on the left side of the screen are plain black. I found myself scrolling down through the page and viewing the listings for a time before going and changing the settings to get me closer to my desired look.
Overall the site performs very well and is easy to use as a means of finding and buying products from all over the world, as well as comparing the prices of items from different distributors. This seems only to make sense with a website that is so well known and used. There are specific reasons that some sites fail while others make million each year, and it has a lot to do with the interface.