eBay joins our homepage test

Posted November 20th, 2008 at 4:00 pm by Tapan Bhat, Integrated Consumer Experiences

 17 Comments / Filed in: Trends & News

As many of you know, we’ve been testing a new Yahoo.com homepage since September. We chose a random fraction from our millions of users in four countries to play around with the new homepage and give us feedback on the new features.

As expected, we’ve gotten a wide range of reactions from our testers -– the good, the bad, and the ugly. We’ve heard every word and have made some changes accordingly. For example, in the latest version, we’ve added a Mail link to the “Yahoo! Services” area so that people can get to their email faster. We’ll keep making changes and updates like this throughout the testing phase, with the goal of making this new homepage the ideal starting point for everything people want to do on the Internet, whether it’s on or off Yahoo!.

On that note, I want to highlight a great new application that we’ve just added to the homepage test. Demonstrating how we’re opening our homepage to third-parties to make your life simpler, we’re adding a new eBay application to the “My Applications” dashboard area. It will provide an “eBay Anywhere” experience, letting people quickly monitor their eBay buying and selling activities, including checking recent bids or getting reminders about auctions that are about to close. They can also as search for and find new eBay items right from within Yahoo.com. You can read more about it on Ebay’s blog here.

We’ve pulled together this screencast to introduce you to the new eBay app, and take you on a tour of the newest version of the Yahoo! homepage test. It might also satisfy the curiosity of those of you who haven’t yet had a chance to play around with the new site.

If you’re in one of our test groups, we really rely on your feedback and hope you know how important you are in helping us build the best possible site. We’ll keep testing until we think we’ve got it right. So keep the feedback coming!

Tapan Bhat
Senior Vice President, Yahoo! Front Doors, Communities and Network Services

Tagged: ebay, news, open, yahoo! homepage

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17 Comments Add your own

eknirb | November 20th, 2008 at 4:43 pm

Finally started to see it on IE…but not FF. Then it disappeared. Then it came back. Then it disappeared. Now, it’s gone from IE..but has now showed up in FF.

Huh?

I like it…just LEAVE it there! Please.

Also; can you eventually drag drop modules..or delete those you dont want (like stocks and horoscopes.)

Couldn’t you use a Sports and News module? Calendar?
And you should be able to click the module again once open..it order to close.

Brian | November 20th, 2008 at 10:05 pm

I found this tutorial very helpful, and you chose quite a charming voice for the video.

doldo | November 21st, 2008 at 12:38 am

cool, but cool is not enough when do you deliver it to market globally … next week, month or when… please communicate more clear.

Dawn Edmonds | November 21st, 2008 at 10:48 am

I do not like the new home page and I do not wish to change. You need to ASK people if they want to take part in a new home page or leave them with what they have. I do not appreciate this change.

dfgsdfg | November 21st, 2008 at 2:37 pm

WOOO HOOO another over burdened slow loading powerhog yahoo site.

dfgsdfg | November 21st, 2008 at 2:38 pm

This looks alot like media room……hm.

Aaron | November 21st, 2008 at 3:32 pm

How do I get back to the old yahoo site? This new one blows. I am about to switch full time to my google account if I have to use this crappy page.

Aaron

Rob | November 22nd, 2008 at 4:43 am

I think its pretty sad that Yahoo is helping driving yahoo memebers to ebay rather than keeping folks on Yahoo servers and promoting Yahoo stores more.

I also think its sad that yahoo actually had a healthy and thriving auction site, and rather than reopen the Yahoo auction site to bring more site traffic to yahoo home page, you chose to plug ebay with these new ebay apps (who is a major competitor to virtually all yahoo stores).

Chris | November 23rd, 2008 at 8:02 am

I love the new website. It is great that eBay is now on that page. Maybe this could be the start of somthing. It my work eBay and Yahoo working together to help fight off Google

Ginger | November 23rd, 2008 at 8:28 pm

I loathe the new homepage. It looks like the so-called table of contents of “women’s” magazines. I don’t want a bunch of new features (read delete the ones I use and replace with “entertainment” options). Is your target audience a bunch of twelve-year-olds? Do you think entertainment is the only thing your audience cares about? The space devoted to news has shrunk so much you may as well delete it altogether–replace it with a blog about the latest Michael Jackson debacle.

Cody | November 29th, 2008 at 2:26 pm

If you do not like the new yahoo home page, and were selected to be a lab rat, you can get the old page back by clearing your cookies.
Yahoo customer service will tell you there is no way to go back to the old home page. They are not being truthful.

Michael | December 1st, 2008 at 8:50 am

I personally like it. Keep up the good work yahoo.

Mark Jacob | December 27th, 2008 at 6:23 am

I have had Yahoo attempt to cram this crummy new homepage down my throat and I hate it. Like the majority of commenters (search the web) I think Yahoo must be crazy to try to force this on people without asking. When it first happened I thought my browser was infected with a browser hijacker. After all these months and what must be thousands of complaints Yahoo has still not addressed the concerns of its users. And Tapan Bhat, you will never “evaluate the behavior of returning users” as you posted on YodelAnecdotal, because most people you force this on will either (1) clear their cookies and web cache to get rid of it or (2) NOT RETURN. Although it doesn’t surprise me that Yahoo “support” either lies or doesn’t know how to get rid of it, since they are uniformly incompetent and generally useless. So to conclude I say “Go Yahoo, great job alienating and chasing away formerly loyal users.” I’ll be giving out a gmail address in the future.

Walter | January 11th, 2009 at 9:06 pm

Ihad this running on FF but needed to reinstall my OS the other day and would like to get back to the beta page…is there a way to get back to the beta? Tried the m.yahoo.com url but just landed me on a plain-jane yahoo page.

Thanks

Walter | January 11th, 2009 at 9:14 pm

One more comment… after using the new beta for the past month – I’m having a hard time going back … it’s just such a cleaner layout for me. I’m using a HTPC off of a 42″ screen and have to scroll..scroll…scroll…to see the relevant news and stories…the new layout has better placement.

Would like to see something done with the services sections though…I’ve always felt that Yahoo never did the best job plugging or advertising it’s new services.

Thanks and hope the input is helpful

Jacques Snyman | Website Design | June 8th, 2009 at 1:13 am

I like the idea of eBay being incorporated on the Yahoo! homepage, as it makes the life of the end user so much simpler when everything is right at hand. Expect eBay and other online auction sites to become even more popular as the current economic autumn turns into winter.

abrcity | November 2nd, 2009 at 4:13 am

congrats,this will help the two websites to encrease their sucess,
looking foreward for more great news like this