EBay Website Profile - Essay Example

 Website Profile 1.0 eBay eBay is celebrated American e-business company specializes in consumer to consumer auction business. The company is headquartered at San Jose, California, USA. The e-business giant was established by Pierre Omidyar in the year of 1995 (eBay, 2012). 2.0 Web Site Analysis eBay website uses exceptionally vivid and flashy boundary and content to attract customers. Colorful website makes people feel like this site is imperative. Their website uses flashy flying displays like latest mobile phones, games CD, electronic gadgets and many others items to attract of users first time visiting the website. Discounts offers are popped up in strategic position to attract customers. Category listing in the left hand site of the website helps users to navigate through the website. The following picture can be used to understand the website design strategy for eBay. (Source: eBay, 2012) 3.0 Usability and Accessibility of eBay Navigation aspect of eBay can be analyzed by monitoring content of home page by using JAWS screen reader. Report of the analysis is summarized in the following manner. There are almost hundred links are used for simple loading of the website and more than two hundred links are there to be navigated by users. No heading is used although it can create difficulty for blind users to navigate through the site. (Source: Buzzi, Leporini, & Akhter, 2009) Navigation is done by arranging words in sequential manner and helps users to find right item from website. The website contains graphic map to help the users to choose from various category offering. There are three graphic maps are used after “Welcome to eBay” phrase. “ws/eBayISAPI.dll?SignIn&ru=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay” is an example of graphic map link used in the website. Various items in the website are easily accessible for the first time users due to sequential structure of search result. Users can access various items in the site by putting the name of the required item in the edit field. Suppose a first time user wants to order books then he/she can search the item by putting the phrase ‘Book’ in the edit field and after that hitting the ‘Enter’ button will open huge resource pools comprising subsets (educational books, romantic books, poems and many more) for him/her (Buzzi, Leporini, & Akhter, 2009). 4.0 Visitor Engagement Customers visiting eBay website are treated as online visitor and the e-business company uses audio podcast, live chat facility for eBay vendors, real time form filling to increase visitor engagement. Visitors can open Buyer’s account Seller’s account for transaction purpose via eBay website. eBay offers various facilities (vendors can file dispute regarding the transaction process in the website, buyer can do live chat with seller, directly send email to them) to increase visitor engagement. 5.0 Blogs and Social Networking Many web experts have classified eBay as original Web 2.0 Company. The company uses eBay wiki and eBay blog as tools for knowledge sharing among online community. eBay blog helps user to promote their business and product offering to other users. Application of web 2.0 not only helped users to promote offering but enhance two way communications between vendors also. eBay wiki has revolutionized the concept knowledge sharing by creating online platform to transfer product knowledge between users (Campanelli, 2008, p. 165). Web 2.0 can be used as an alternative to integrated marketing communication to promote product by means of using digital marketing. The process decreases cost of promotion manifold in comparison to traditional advertising technique (Hof, 2006). 6.0 Visitor Retention Company’s eBay listing & store design helps them to increase visitor retention. It helps the seller to showcase the product portfolio in best possible color combination to buyers while flexible update function empower the vendor to change content in accordance with the demand of market. 7.0 Shopping Experience eBay always try to improvise in website design to compete with their business competitor Amazon. Use of catalog in the website helps customers to navigate all the products under one product category and this process not only augment shopping experience but saves lot of time also. eBay has enhanced shopping experience in four dimensional ways. 1- Condition- eBay sellers offer items in range of various conditions (used product to brand new product) increasing flexibility in offering. 2- Local- this tab shows inventory condition for particular product of local retailers. 3- Pricing- the website uses up to date pricing by taking account of median price of the product for last fifteen days. 4- Comparison- side by side comparison of the same product boost up the probability of successful auction. 8.0 Customer Transactions Protection The e-business company uses well organized and extensive privacy policy to protect customer transaction information. Privacy policy of the website covers issues like password information, credit card information and others to enhance confidence among users. Customers can select preferred communication mode by changing communication preferences in my eBay section (Collier, 2009, p. 297). 9.0 Strengths and Weaknesses 9.1 Strength The company is largest online shopping place with more than twenty seven thousand product category offering. Online payment system like PayPal has increased their penetration rate. Video calling facility helps vendors to communicate with each other in a two way manner (Kotler, 2009, p. 386). 9.2 Weaknesses Loading of the web page takes longer time with respect to competitors and clumsy pop ups might confuse first time users. 10.0 Effectiveness- Amazon vs. eBay Web Site IP Address Navigation experience Visitor Retention Rating eBay 66.135.192.87 Easy for both experienced and new users Wide variety of products make users to visit again 8 out of 10 Amazon.com 161.170.254.20 Smart cookies help to restore previous browsing history Variety of products is limited to retain new users 7 out of 10 (Source: Author’s Creation) 11.0 Internet as a Sales and Marketing Tool eBay has redefined the concept of online shopping from day of its inception. Internet is used to communicate product offering in a two way manner. Web 2.0 helped marketers to promote their offering via social networking sites. Digital marketing not only decreases communication barrier between buyer and seller but increases cost benefit also (Ryan & Jones, 2012, p. 13). Reference Buzzi, M. C., Leporini, B., & Akhter, F. (2009). Usability and accessibility of eBay by screen reader. Retrieved from http://giove.isti.cnr.it/attachments/publications/2009-A2-091.pdf. Campanelli, M. (2008). Design and launch an online boutique in a week. Irvine, California: Entrepreneur Press. Collier, M. (2009). eBay for dummies. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. eBay. (2012). Who we are. Retrieved from http://www.ebayinc.com/who. Hof, R. (2006). eBay dives into web 2.0. Retrieved from http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2006/06/ebay_dives_into.html. Kotler, P. (2009). Marketing management. (13th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education. Ryan, D., & Jones, C. (2012). Understanding digital marketing: Marketing strategies for engaging the digital generation. London: Kogan Page Publishers. Read More