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Did You Know eBay Has A New Playground?

Posted by Carlos Valdez
July 3, 2008

$Come see ebay\'s playground$
I recently was looking around in an online forum and saw a thread talking about eBay playground. At first I had no idea what they were talking about since I have never heard of eBay having a playground. So I looked into it a bit more and what I found is surprising.

You may not know this, but most if not all websites have a testing environment. Meaning they have an area where they can do all their testing of new features, additions, etc.. Once they have fully tested a feature or addition in the test area, they then push it out to the live site. This testing area is usually not visible to the public. But in this case eBay is letting us take a look into their test area, which they call their playground.

Here is what I eBay has to say about their new playground:

The eBay Playground is a separate eBay site that lets you experiment with new features we’ve come up with, before we consider introducing them on the regular eBay site. Although a few features you’re used to are not available on the Playground, bidding and buying are real. The main difference right now is how you find items. We’d like you to take a look around, run on the Playground, and give us feedback.

Just click here then click “Enter Playground” and either type your search into the search box or select a category to browse.

Almost everything you can do on the regular eBay site, you can do on the Playground! This means that the bidding and buying processes are exactly the same.

However, our new search engine gets more information from listings to give you better matching results for your search terms. Not only does the engine search titles of listings, it also checks categories, item specifics, and common spelling errors, abbreviations, and similar words.

When you get a list of search results, you can:

refine your search with navigation options on the left side of the page

click a “More choices” link to select multiple options

narrow your search by adding terms to the “Narrow this search” box near the bottom of the left side of the page

change the values in the boxes at the top of the search results list to narrow or expand your results

We built all this new stuff hoping to make the entire site like the Playground. But the Playground, together with many other tests we’re running, is designed to make sure that these changes improve your buying experience. By testing first, we can incorporate your ideas and make adjustments before we introduce the changes to everyone.

Click here to see their Frequently Asked Questions Page.

I’ve taken a look and do see the changes they mentioned. From a buyers point of view I think these new features are great. I find what I want much easier and faster. Sort of shopping on eBay with a google search result.

From a sellers point of view I see we are going to need to be more focused all our listing details. Meaning, making sure to use the right keywords in our title and description, entering in actual postage amounts, entering a clear return policy, and making sure we increase our DSR.

I’m very glad to see that eBay has made their playground available to us and asking us for our option. I’m sure there are many more changes to come. Let’s all home they are for the better. I for one see this new playground a step in the right direction. Leave a comment an let me know what you think.