Yesterday’s enthusiastic response to the post on Sports fans’ must-see auctions, made us realize we hadn’t told you about some recent changes we made to the Sporting Goods category, so we thought we would fill you in. As it turns out, the Sporting Goods category is very popular with our eBay sports enthusiasts, who swarm to find the latest items for their favorite pastimes.
You can go directly to the Sporting Goods area here, or take a look at the photo, below:
As you can see, the entire page is more streamlined, and the rotating billboard at the top (in the photo above it features cycling) rotates through various seasonal sports to give you a look at exactly what you are searching for without any fuss. Aside from the billboard, there is a seasonal item section calling out the season’s most popular sport (in the above example, it’s golf). If you compare this image to the old page (which you can view here), you’ll see the new page has less clutter and showcases more seasonally appropriate items.
It is quite interesting how this redesign came about. I got the backstory when I spoke to the product manager who was in charge of re-imagining the page. He said they first focused on four specific sports in order to understand what shoppers look for, and how to help surface these items more easily. Specifically, the team focused on golf, cycling, hunting, and fishing.
After various months of research, including visits to sports enthusiasts’ houses and interviewing folks who participate in particular sports, the product team came up with the new design. They found out, for example, that shoppers looking for hunting and fishing gear care a lot about the latest items that are coming to market, which sometime indicates a reduction in price of older models of brand new goods. This type of savvy shopping is typical of many sports enthusiasts (and eBay shoppers, generally).
Getting back to the page itself, you’ll see we kept the left browse navigation, which allows you to drill down to a specific subcategory in the area in which you have the most interest by clicking on that specific category (Cycling, Hunting, Fishing, etc.). If you are not sure what subcategory your item belongs to, there is a section in the left navigation called “All activities,” which is organized alphabetically. Just search for the right activity, and away you go.
The team kept the Popular Categories section, but made some nice improvements. First and foremost, they provided visual navigation, in the form of silhouettes, so you can easily identify categories. In addition, if you mouse over the silhouette, you’ll get a list of the most popular sub-categories for even easier navigation directly to the subsection you want. You can see this under the Golf category in the picture, below:
Clicking on a sub-category link (for example, Clubs, in the above example) will take you directly to a search results page, where you can browse and/or further refine your search till you find exactly what you need. As the marketing slogan says, “When it’s on your mind, it’s on eBay.”
A lot of work has been done to create a better experience for our shoppers. Please visit the page, and leave feedback in the area indicated, to tell us whether or not you like the page. We welcome constructive criticism, and look forward to providing you with a great experience when you come to eBay looking for your favorite sporting goods.
Enough computer (or mobile device) time – now get out there and get active!
