The online marketplace dates back to an e-commerce era involving
dial-up modems. Its leaders hope the Apple Watch will help
accelerate its transition to the new online shopping era.
eBay
How can an e-commerce company built in the desktop era get
customers to buy things from their wrists? That's the challenge for
RJ Pittman, eBay's head of product, who came to the auction and
marketplace giant in late 2013 from Apple, where he worked on the
company's e-commerce platforms.
Despite a history that dates back to dial-up modems and a
business whose sales are still made primarily on desktop computers,
eBay is "uniquely suited to jump into wearables," Pittman told
BuzzFeed News in an interview. Because the Apple Watch will be
tethered to iPhones, "several hundred million" people who have
downloaded eBay's app will be Watch-enabled, "just with the app
they have."
While the 46-year-old Pittman wouldn't say much about the
specific functions of eBay's watch app, he did say that he hoped
efforts to get on users' wrists would take the entire company
further down the line of "ephemeral" and "frictionless" commerce.
"We're thinking about breaking the barrier of websites, even apps
and downloads, and transact commerce at the speed of thought."
A specific example Pittman gave of what his team of five to
seven people are working on is notifications: When you are outbid
on an eBay auction, "you might get a little vibration on your wrist
and have an outbid notice," he said. "You don't have to do anything
to look at it and turn it away, or you can tap to bid it up and in
one tap you're in the game. It's a new level of frictionless
engagement."
Pittman did say that when eBay's app for the Apple Watch is
released ("it's coming this spring, call it a few weeks or so,
right on the heels of the launch of the Watch"), the vibrating
notifications "will be part of the experience."
RJ Pittman.
eBay
But, for now at least, the vast majority of eBay's activity will
be on screens considerably larger than even the 42 millimeters the
largest Apple Watch provides. Of the $83 billion transacted through
eBay's marketplace in 2014, $28 billion (34%) came through mobile
devices, up from over $20 billion in 2013.
The Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba had 42% of its gross
merchandise volume in China come from mobile in the last three
months of this year — about 327 billion yuan (about $53 billion)
worth, more than triple that of a year ago.
While eBay's scale is still massive — its $83 billion in general
merchandise volume (all sales done on the marketplace, of which
eBay takes a cut) in 2014 is comparable to Amazon's $74 billion in
sales — its growth has slowed. eBay's
chief financial officerBob Swan
said on a call with reporters to discuss the company's financial
results that 2014 was a "year we're glad to have behind us," while
its revenue from transactions on its marketplace grew only 1% in
the fourth quarter of 2014, and 9% for the full year.
Sales at Amazon, by comparison, rose 20% in 2014, while at Etsy
— a much smaller, much trendier entrant into the online marketplace
business — sales rose 46% to $1.9 billion. And both competitors
seem to have the wind at their backs, with Etsy approaching an IPO
and Amazon on Tuesday announcing a new system that lets customers
place orders by
pressing buttons stuck on the
wallsof their kitchen pantries or laundry rooms.
Wearable computers like the Apple Watch will add to pressure on
eBay to adapt to changing consumer habits, but Pittman also sees it
as an opportunity to rethink the basics of the business. "What I
love about this is that the 42mm screen real estate is a design
constraint, it's driving something that I'm trying to do at eBay:
simplify commerce," he said. "The watch forces you to your bare
essentials, you don't get to build a web site or app in 42
millimeters. We get right down to the most important, most useful
capabilities and put them in in a way that's only for one finger to
tap."
There is, however, an intuitively designed and habit-forming
mobile commerce product already under the eBay roof: Venmo, which
eBay CEO John Donahoe recently said is "on fire." But Venmo is part
of PayPal, which will soon be spun off from eBay into a new
stand-alone company.
eBay
overhauled its desktop designin
late 2012, introducing more and bigger images — like Pinterest —
along with enhanced personalization features, including
curated collections that rotate
daily. "What you'll see is a much deeper focus on design," eBay
Marketplaces President David Wenig
told
AllThingsDafter Pittman was hired. "We're placing a lot
of emphasis on the user experiences, and so this feels like a
natural evolution."
View Entire List ›