Ebay poised to roll out site-wide personalisation

By

Kate Dingwall

Published
Mar 23, 2017

After 18 months of research and testing, eBay has announced several new website features focused on creating a personalized experience for the consumer.  The new website focuses on three new features: a personal shopping concierge, a new preference-based homepage, and expedited shipping options.

Powered by Facebook Messenger, the AI-powered personal shopping bot, dubbed the 'ShopBot', will make it easier for customers to browse eBay’s one billion listings. Customers simply need to tell ShopBot what they are looking for, whether it's a specific product or if they're just browsing in a certain category. From here, ShopBot will provide them with product recommendations.

One highlight of ShopBot is the language the bot uses – eBay designed the AI to be more like a 'friend', programming the AI to use more colloquial vocabulary. This is just the first step for eBay towards integrating AI into its e-commerce presence.

“We’re focusing on the areas that I believe will define the next wave of e-commerce – artificial intelligence and machine learning, virtual and augmented reality, and Internet of Things,” said eBay in a press release, “These are significant platform shifts ---not just new features and gadgets.”

The second part of the site’s make-over is the discovery-based homepage. Using a structured data system, each customer's homepage will be curated to their individual interests. EBay curates the homepage based on the customer's browsing and shopping history. 

In an effort to compete with Amazon’s prime service, eBay has also rolled out a new shipping feature. As of this summer, eBay will guarantee that items ordered within the United States will arrive in 3 days or less. Users will also be able to filter items by delivery time – choosing from 1, 2, or 3-day delivery.