Ebay Updates Site To Be More Personal, Pinterest-Like

EBay (s ebay) showed off a new redesign with better product pages, faster payments, improved searches and a new home page that looks like a Pinterest board. The biggest change is a news feed driven home page that displays big product pictures that are selected for a user based on their interests and past shopping behavior. You can take a look at some of the new changes here.

The new home page helps boost browsing and discovery on eBay and helps the online marketplace stay ahead of Pinterest, which is becoming a favorite place for finding new products. And since its built on top of eBay, everything can be purchased from the news feed. Users can edit their interests for the news feed and look for particular products, which will be reflected in their home page.

The news feed will also consider what a person has searched for, browsed and purchased in the past. And in the future, it may also incorporate more local products that can be purchased nearby. And users can start with general profiles like sports fan to get a taste of different looks.

The news feed is a reflection of your interests, your passions, said Mark Carges, eBays CTO. Only we have the depth of consumers insights to enable personlized feeds like this and only we have the breadth of selections, the worlds inventory, to satisfy everyones tastes in real time.

The redesign coincides with eBays new logo and is meant to highlight how the company is evolving to stay on top of shopping trends, which are turning toward a convergence of mobile, online and offline shopping. And it shows how eBay is utilizing its vast stores of data to create a more personalized experience for consumers.

The product pages now feature bigger product images, less clutter and more information up top. Users can easily link their PayPal account to their eBay account to enable one-click purchases, instead of the four-step check-out process in place now. EBays search experience has also been updated to provide better relevancy and more rankings and more consistent navigation from page to page.

EBay, which now has 350 million product listing, said it is also expanding launching eBay Now, its same-day local delivery service, to New York after it first launched in San Francisco and will expand to more cities soon.

By Ryan Kim, gigaom.com