Michael Dearing is the poster boy for eBay's latest controversy.

Vice President of Marketing & Merchandising, Dearing is responsible for "Category Rollups," which have significantly changed how buyers search and browse items on eBay. To say that many eBay users are unhappy about the recent changes would be an understatement. Not only have buyers had to change their searching and browsing behavior, but sellers have also been inundated with changes in how they list, and are going through a painful transition, and even, some report, significant declines in sales.

eBay buyers have two ways to find items on the site: searching and browsing. Searching works well when users know exactly what they want. Browsing works well especially for window-shopping and for collectors, who may happen upon an item serendipitously when browsing.

Browsing involves "drilling down" into categories and sub-categories. But since eBay "rolled up" some categories, this approach is much more limited. For instance, under the Books category, there is now one combined "Fiction & Non-Fiction" sub-category, with no additional lower sub-categories underneath. Users must look at the "Product Finder" in the left column of the page to search by attribute (Item Specifics), one of which is called "sub-category."

On April 8, Michael Dearing participated in an online Town Hall Forum to discuss Item Specifics and Category Rollups. At that time, he said, "If there were ever evidence that Item Specifics or category rollups had harmed the business, we would immediately reverse the decision."

Last week, AuctionBytes had a chance to sit down with Dearing to discuss his views on categories and Item Specifics and asked him if that statement were still true. Dearing reiterated his commitment that if Item Specifics hurts a business across the board in a category, eBay will go back to the category structure in that particular category, although Item Specifics will remain in place.

Dearing said the evaluation process will not be done in a day, or even weeks, it may take several months to evaluate. "We listen to all feedback, but site data shows data from people that are not writing in." The jury is still out on whether the changes were positive in the Books and Pottery & Glass categories, Dearing explained. But Item Specifics has proven to be as or more successful in certain categories, such as Footwear, Apparel and Tickets, both before and after the category rollups.

To evaluate the success of Item Specifics and Category Rollups, Dearing said he looks at the following metrics: Average Selling Price; Gross Merchandise Sales; Success Rate (sell-through rate); and Number of Bids.

While Dearing said he considered Item Specifics to have been successful in Apparel, eBay is making modifications to Item Specifics in the clothing category. "We are optimizing Item Specifics in apparel," Dearing said. "The names can be improved, as can the size scales." But the change from category structure to Item Specifics has been harder to adapt to. The drop-down menu structure (found in the left column of search results pages) has been harder for buyers to adjust to, he said. While drop-down menus work, "links are more effective in browse-heavy categories, it's more intuitive." Dearing did modify the Clothing and Books categories' Product Finder to the "links" approach.

Some users have suggested that eBay break the site into two distinct parts - one for Antiques & Collectibles, and another for Mass Merchandise. When asked if eBay had ever considered making such a change, Dearing replied, "Yes, we have considered, but no, we won't do it. We know that sellers in all categories share a common buyer base and migrate across categories. Buyers use the same search engine and results, and it works."

Many users have suggested eBay consider contracting experts on a temporary basis to help them sort out the Item Specifics and attributes, particularly in areas like Pottery & Glass that require special expertise. Users say buyers search and browse for items differently even within a main category. For example, within the meta-category Pottery & Glass, collectors might search by company, color or type of item. "We take feedback from many sources," Dearing said, "including industry experts and community feedback."

But some feel that that although eBay asks for feedback from users, they aren't listening to their advice. One user suggested that eBay consider creating a "Sandbox" testing environment to preview and play around with proposed changes, similar to the area eBay has set up for software developers. Dearing said they had created a demo version of every category to show how Item Specifics would work. eBay had taken a random sample of several thousand buyers and sellers to try out the demo version. (When asked if users had tested the demo in an environment where categories had been rolled up, Dearing said no.)

One popular feature that was a victim of the recently implemented changes was "Going, Going, Gone," which eBay eliminated from the site. This had allowed buyers to limit browse results to only those items that were ending in the next 5 hours. It was an extremely popular feature that buyers used to look for bargains they might find at the last minute, and sorted results simply by clicking a text link at the top of the page in a highly visible location.

Dearing said eBay took away the feature because they are trying to align Search and Browse, and the Going, Going Gone function does not exist in Search. They are still evaluating the effect of removing the feature. eBay has instead placed an "Ending in 5 Hours" option in a drop-down menu on the left Product Finder column, and is evaluating its placement.

Summary
In the Keynote address at eBay's user conference held last week, Senior Vice-President of eBay's North American Business Jeff Jordan said that category rollups in many cases did what they were supposed to do, however, they haven't worked as well in other categories.

For the many users who are posting in eBay's discussion forums that Category Rollups are hurting their business, the bad news is that eBay will not give up Item Specifics and, according to Dearing, eBay will take months to evaluate whether to roll back down the category structure.

If eBay's goal is to change user behavior in how they buy and sell on the site, it's a mixed review at best.

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Other articles about these topics that have appeared in AuctionBytes include the following:

eBay's Item Specifics: Coming to a Category Near You!, March 21, 2004
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y204/m03/abu0115/s03

eBay Criticized for Timing of Category Rollups, March 18, 2004
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y04/m03/i18/s01

Collectibles Dealers Protest eBay Category Changes, June 10, 2004
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y04/m06/i10/s02