Online giant serves up personalized homepages

eBay is preparing to connect with each of its individual consumers — starting from the first minute they visit the site.



The company plans to do so with a new homepage that is “designed to inspire and engage with relevant, personalized content and highlighted deals,” according to the company.



Besides positioning category navigation higher on the page and better grouping merchandise for faster browsing, the new page caters to an individual’s recent activity, including bidding, items outbid, watched, last viewed, and searched. It also features a more consistent use of modules, making it easier to read and more visually appealing, eBay reported.



“We detect recent spikes in eBay searches and correlate with external news and seasonal events. All this information funnels into our Trends System to generate the daily top trends list,” the retailer said.



The new design features horizontal image carousels stacked one on top of the other, and rows are organized by recently viewed items, those added to a list of products shoppers are “watching” and rows set aside for prod-ucts and eBay shops recommended by an eBay algorithm,



Looking ahead, the new design will spread to other parts of the website — an important move as a majority of eBay visits don’t start on the homepage, according to ReCode, which reported that on Cyber Monday, only 17% of visits in the U.S. started at the front door of the shopping site.



The redesign should be available mid-year, and the mobile version will launch by the end of 2017, the report said.