eBay said it will change the Product Finder feature in Books, Music, Movies, and Video Games categories due to "community feedback and careful observation of buyer behavior as they browse these categories."
eBay had rolled out Item Specifics in the categories and had recently eliminated the lower level categories (a process it calls "category rollups"), replacing the subcategories with drop-down menus for item specifics. With the new change, eBay will replace the drop-down menus with links, so genres, subjects, platforms, etc., will be visible on search pages and listings pages. "This change to Product Finder helps buyers by combining the flexibility offered by Item Specifics with a more familiar category-like interface. We hope this change will assist with any browsers that have had difficulty using the drop down menus to find items in this area."
Some eBay merchants selling in categories that were rolled up have been complaining of added headaches in the listing process and lower sales due to buyers having difficulty in finding subcategories they had typically browsed under the old system. This latest modification to the system appears to be an acknowledgement that buyers had difficulties with the new pull-down menu approach, but eBay is not reversing the category rollups.
