Writings

eBay Should Resolve to Slim Down

Yes, half the world has the luxury of decent internet connectivity. However, there are still plenty of us rural users still using 1990's technology to connect with the world now in 2006. It's really quite ridiculous, but that's another rant. Either way, I am of the firm opinion that more bandwidth does not mean sites should have more bloat to compensate. I still prefer lightweight sites. The best sites load on dialup in seconds and instantly on a broadband connection. eBay fails greatly in this respect as one of the slowest sites I have used. Some times it is great; other times abysmal. I just lost another auction for my Grandmother a few minutes ago, and it is quite irksome. I waited until there was exactly one minute left and clicked "Submit Bid" leaving plenty of time for the confirmation page to load. It turns out the confirmation page took nearly that entire minute to load, but the auction hadn't ended yet. I clicked to confirm immediately as the button appeared, but alas the auction ended (and probably just one or two seconds before my request was received)

There are many solutions to this, and there are a lot of things eBay can do to improve its user interface. There are some nice UI widgets in it's "My eBay" interface, but it could still use a lot of work. eBay could learn a thing or two from Google. It could gain a lot by taking a page out of gmail's book and using some AJAX as it is popularly known, but I will get to that in a minute.

Aside from total size in bytes, the interface itself is bloated. eBay is an interactive site where people buy and sell things. Thus, it is important for there to be a lean and intuitive interface that does not get in the way of what users want to do. Again, I point to Google's success in this area. The information and functions could be presented more clearly and neatly than they are right now. This interface has not changed much at all as long as I've used eBay; it's time for an overhaul.

Even on the technical end the eBay site is not user friendly. I'm sure the informaiton about an item can be expressed in less than 40KB. I took a simple average from a few pages. And yes, seller descriptions make this number variable, but this accounts for a very small percentage of the total. The rest is archaic and sloppy code full of inline CSS, javascript, and esoteric table definitions. To eBay's credit, the page isn't very image-heady, but then again the entire menu at the top of the page consists entirely of images, nothing but a waste of bandwidth. The 40KB item view page is only part of the problem anyway. Add to that whopping 243KB of Javascript includes. That's not only a waste of bandwidth, it's a really bad way of doing generating a page. It always seems that when I'm viewing an eBay page there are dozens of HTTP requests being made to half a dozen eBay subdomains. It's a mess. With the HTML and Javascript alone (no image), the page takes about a minute to download. No wonder my bid wasn't processed in time.

What eBay really needs is to use some Javascript that will improve the user experience rather than the tangled mess it currently adds to each page. It should take only moments for a bid to be made and confirmed. Imagine this: you are refreshing the page waiting for that last magic minute. Then, you type in a maximum bid and click Submit bid. Immediately, in the same area where that button was you are greeted with a message and an option to confirm bid. You click to confirm. The page doesn't reload but you immediately get feedback in the form of a message informing you that the bid is being processed. A moment later, the area changes and a message indicates that your bid has been made. There could even be an option in that area to refresh the status and make another bid if necessary. This could all be achieved with asynchronouse javascript which has been masterfully used by such online applicationas as Google maps and gmail.

The above example would provide a much leaner and friendlier user interface. It would save both time and bandwidth. It would allow people to bid quicker which would also make them bid higher. There is no reason for the user to wait for two pages to load before there bid is processed and for them to get feedback informing them of that. Rather, clever javascript could be used to submit the bid, get a response that the bid is confirmed and the current status of the auction, and all without loading a whole page with all its useless includes and extraneous images.

The bandwidth savings along would be phenomenal and likely would account for the cost of implementing such a system. And of course the old three-page process could be retained for users with older browsers. Backwards compatibility is still possible. But with 300KB item view pages, eBay already assumes that everyone has broadband.

In summary, this is the year 2006, but eBay is stuck in the past. We internet users want fully interactive interfaces, immediate feedback, and we most certainly don't want to waste our time waiting. eBay needs an overhaul in its design and function. It should take advantage of such newer technologies as CSS and Ajax to make it truly user friendly. Sure it is a costly endevour, but it owes that to its users who are being strained by the current issues. Also, I cannot fathom how much money is being wasted on bandwidth every minute because of the excess and poor design.

I may be somewhat biased because I am stuck in the dark ages of the Internet. However my original point is valid: broadband should make things immediate, not give an excuse for excess. I'm sure there have been plenty of times also when the eBay servers have just responded slowly; I think that might have been the case this last time. Maybe if they weren't spitting out unnecessary javascript and responding to 3 page loads every time someone wanted to bid (imagine how many bids happen every second), maybe they could respond better. I was very meticulous about bidding, watching and refreshing for the last 25 minutes, time that I now see was wasted. Worst of all I let my Grandmother down who had asked me to bid on the auction. There will be others, but it really bothers me nonetheless. I really hope eBay does something to improve its UI. It really does need an overhaul. This last auction aside, half the time I've used eBay it has been slow and an inefficient process. Given that the site is interactive and used by so many people, there is really no excuse for that.