We are now mid-way into the fourth quarter, known in the retail sector as “the golden quarter” because of how busy shoppers can get during the holiday season. Consumer electronics are a significant beneficiary of this phenomena and many manufacturers achieve their strongest sales figures in this quarter. However, busy shoppers does not just mean crammed high streets and shopping malls across the world, but it also means that online stores are busier. This is something eBay are keen to capitalize with an update to their mobile application, designed to make things easier for shoppers using their service from their smartphone. eBay have blogged about the updates to the mobile application for both the Apple iOS and Google Android platforms, including improvements to how easy it is to find the latest offers and deals. The updated application is being made available from today, but if you use the application and there is no update yet, it will be with you in the coming days.
eBay’s main improvements to the mobile application are designed to personalize the application and shopping experience, combined with improved security and authentication processes. The updated eBay application uses what eBay’s Chief Technical Officer, Steve Fisher, recently talked about: structured data. Essentially, eBay is using machine learning and artificially intelligent systems to better understand what shoppers use the service for. The idea behind using this technology is simply to make it easier for shoppers to find the products – gifts – that they want to buy. Mohan Patt, the vice president of eBay’s Shopping Experience division, explains: “With our new eBay app, shoppers can easily navigate our vast inventory and discover great deals and best selling products that match their interests. The new product pages offers a powerful comparison shopping experience highlighting multiple choices, product reviews and content, which will certainly help shoppers find that perfect gift.”
eBay have improved the homescreen of the application by showing deals and best selling products based on the customer’s recent activity. Some of the new features include improving the browsing experience by incorporating changes to how customers can browse types of gift. Tapping on the categories section from the homepage on the Android application brings up the “browse pages” screen, which learns what categories we use. This screen shows the most popular products in each category. eBay have also worked to better integrate the community review system with the application; the idea here is to help potential customers decide on the perfect product based on unbiased opinions from other purchasers. These changes to the eBay application are welcome and should help the service and of course customers in the coming few weeks.
