eBay • Ebay Motors App 2.0
Engaging and inspiring eBay's car community to the tune of $20 billion
The eBay Motors app for iOS, which hit one million downloads in 2012, enabled users to stay connected with their automotive passions anytime, anywhere, with features and functionality designed specifically with car enthusiasts in mind. Version 2.0 of the eBay Motors App was poised to capitalize on its success by becoming a universal iOS app that could also work on the iPad. This new larger screen size provided a great opportunity to engage more auto enthusiast customers with not only more screen real estate, but also extended functionality beyond the iPhone’s small screen.
Designing enhancements for the primary mobile experience
Based on user feedback, version 2.0 looked to address key enhancements to the experience such as keyword search on the home screen, a finder for parts and vehicles, quick glance of vehicles for sale on eBay, and access to eBay Motors blog content including videos, community and more.
A visually striking home screen provides inspirational automotive content and multiple ways to shop for vehicles and parts.
The motors theme and highly visual presentation separates the eBay Motors app from the core eBay experience.
The view item screen is optimized for mobile, presenting photos in their natural ratio.
The search results in eBay Motors provide added relevance for things like tire size and vehicle specifications.
Since eBay sells both the vehicle and the parts for it, the product page provides separate but equal paths for shopping.
Optimizing for the larger screen on the iPad
The larger screen size afforded by the iPad unlocked functionality that was limited on the iPhone’s smaller screen. I explored an expanded search experience that allows users the ability to switch back and forth between grid and list views. When customers tap on an item to view details, the View Item screen wad updated to displays images in a larger, edge-to-edge format to improve the visual experience.
The larger screen of the iPad meant we could show more content, including videos and blog articles.
The community view on iPad allowed for more user-shared photos of their vehicles to be shown, inviting more user engagement.
The shopping view on the iPad also allowed for larger pictures and easier browsing.
Conclusion
The eBay Motors app already had a fervent following from eBay’s community of car and motorcycle enthusiasts. Combined with eBay’s even larger inventory of parts and accessories, the app was set for success: As of May 2013, more than 11,000 cars and 690,000 parts and accessories were sold each week through eBay mobile apps. In 2012, eBay generated $13 billion through mobile devices, more than double than 2011. The expectation was to generate more than $20 billion in 2013.
...in terms of GMV, the eBay Motors app actually has the highest growth curve in eBay’s mobile history. What’s important to understand about car enthusiasts is that when they’re with the products they care about, namely cars, they’re by default not with computers. But they have smartphones, so we have a really big opportunity to engage and inspire car lovers with a mobile application.
- Steve Yankovich, VP of Mobile, eBay
