Earlier today, we took a look at eBay’s new ProStores site. And we had some questions - about not only the site itself, but the usability of the microsites ProStores is proposing to create for all that populist e-commerce on which it thrives. We’ve now examined the featured sites the new business unit holds up as paragons of the ProStores model. Our conclusion? If the post-launch condition of the ProStores site and testimonials is any indication, it’s not surprising eBay employees wind up with (unwanted) frogs in their lunch.

Where to start? First, with a caveat: we haven’t done a totally exhaustive heuristic review of these sites. But in fairness, we didn’t have to. Because we hit sort of shocking problems almost as soon as we arrived. Take “Cool Sneaks,” the first case study site. Not a terrible looking site - nice big logos, few different ways to navigate in, ok. We tried clicking on those nice logos - being Nike whores, we went there first. And we get this screen. Uhh, ok. So we clicked on a few more logos. 8 of the 10, to be exact. Same result. Note to Cool Sneaks + eBay: don’t feature inventory that’s not there - and if it’s not there, don’t patronize the user by telling them to conduct their search in a different fashion. We began to suspect that Gail Silverman, origin of a testimonial praising ProStores’ inventory management system, might want to think again.

But, being in a relatively patient mood for a Friday afternoon, we tried another angle of attack and decided to shop by category. Clicking on “men’s” took us to a satisfying-looking page. Satisfying, until we realized that pretty much every product-related hyperlink on there gave us that same annoying search results page. Bottom line, this site only has one usability problem: it doesn’t work.

Gamely, we moved onto the next featured site: Fake Teeth - so called on its homepage FakeTeeth.com (even though the URL is in fact faketeeth.net). D’oh. We were concerned this was actually a parody site…but suspended disbelief given that it was, after all, a featured ProStores site. And given that eBay is amazingly agnostic when it comes to product selection. We essentially gave up, however, when clicking through on the Billy-Bob Teeth link - because we got to a pretty odd looking inventory page. It’s just a long, long column of nearly indistinguishable fake teeth - with descriptions that are not clearly connected with loose groups of plastic made up to look like diseased gums. Not ideal for commerce. To take it seriously for a minute, this really isn’t the best showcase for what are - really - somewhat subtle differences in products. On a side note, we did enjoy the fact that elsewhere on the site, you can get an actual mouthgard that looks like the fake teeth sets. For all you punchdrunk boxers out there. Or waggish skate-board punks. Anyway, this site is certainly more usable than Cool Sneaks…but still isn’t the kind of clean, modular e-commerce interface we’d expect that Mother eBay would want to deliver to its sellers.

Enervated, we skipped down a few sites and clicked on Willow Wear. And became confused, because the most prominent link on the homepage says “email a friend about Willow Wear.” Ok. Searching for reasons to do as instructed, we clicked the “about” tab in the far upper right. And saw the following text:

“Thanks for your interest in Willow-Wear. In business since…, our mission is to provide the best… We will be adding extra features over the next few months, so come back regularly. You can contact us at: Willow-Wear or by phone at . We are located at: ,”

Again, a funny site to select as the epitome of the ProStores experience. Since it clearly isn’t finished, we didn’t want to spend too much time critiquing it. But one suggestion might be to not hide the Antiques & Collectibles link all the way over in a tiny left nav. The inventory list itself, once found, is definitely better organized than that of Fake Teeth.

At this point, we’ll stop our rant. And we’ll say in the face of possible criticism for being heavy handed: we get it, these are micro sites. But we still believe that an operation like eBay could help its sellers - and itself - by actually engaging them on some of the many aspects of e-commerce that depend on usability: navigation, clear inventory displays, product and site descriptions, etc. ProStores devotes quite a lot of space to search engines. Which is good - because people need to find a site in order to buy from it. But finding any of the sites we looked at won’t do much good, since they really don’t work or discourage easy buying.

All in all, a rocky public launch for ProStores from the perspective of testimonial-based usability marketing.

JF

This entry was posted on Friday, June 24th, 2005 at 5:10 pm and is filed under Usability, Interaction Strategy.