Re: Is there a rationale behind Ebay Express' decision on how to display the categories filter on a results page?

Preston Smalley (eBay), Cory Chandler (eBay) and I (Marti Hearst, UC Berkeley) put
together a tutorial on faceted navigation interfaces for CHI
2006/2007.  We talk about the design of eBay express explicitly in
that tutorial.  See

  http://flamenco.berkeley.edu/tutorials.html

There are many changes to the category selection mechanism, not just
the positioning of it, and all were done for usability purposes.

Marti Hearst

> Date:         Wed, 30 May 2007 18:23:17 -0300
> Reply-To: "Mario E. Santoyo S." <[email protected]>
> From: "Mario E. Santoyo S." <[email protected]>
> 
> Good afternoon to you all,
> 
> Does anyone knows, or can point to a paper, why does Ebay Express decided to
> reposition, within the results page, their categories filter? Instead of
> using the commonly known solution of having it placed on the left side of
> the results page?
> 
> My guess, and the rational behind why we are inclined to use this approach:
> 
> It was done to enhance the resulting products visibility and reduce
> cognitive overload; with this new position they earn some lost page space,
> and while the user is scrolling their full attention is aimed at the
> products and not derived to other links/venues (ads, site's other features,
> etc).
> 
> Please keep in mind I am leaving out on purpose the fact that the chance on
> lading on such a result page on Ebay Express' is minimized to their
> "Category decision" page which appear each time the results for a given
> search are part of more than X categories (
> http://search.express.ebay.com/__?_nkw=dvd&_from=R40&_nd1=0); therefor, this
> position decision shouldn't be a major complain for them since the vast
> majority of their users won't need to choose a category within the results
> page.
> 
> Ebay Express' new way:
> 
> http://search.express.ebay.com/items/dvd_W0QQ_nkwZdvdQQruZ
> 
> Amazon's old way:
> http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/104-5406100-5156745?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=dvd&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Go
> 
> Best regards, and thank you for any pointers,
> 
> Mario E. Santoyo S.
> 
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