eBay is cleaning
up its act:
Analysts said sellers were moving to other places on the Web in search of
buyers who had grown weary of an overwhelming array of product choices on
eBay…
Ms. Whitman said that chief among the changes was a new home page design.
The company is testing simplified layouts that are less likely to confuse
shoppers than the old version, which analysts said was among the most cluttered
in the e-commerce industry.
This is naturally great news for those of us who like clean, uncluttered websites
like the NYT, Wikipedia, and Google. (And Portfolio, too.) It’s worth noting,
however, that for every clean, successful website there’s also a cluttered,
successful website: think MySpace or Craigslist or Drudge. Or the Wall Street
Journal.
I think that empirically speaking, the best bet is definitely in the direction
that eBay is moving: something in the middle, like Amazon. Amazon tweaks its
design constantly, not according to what looks good, necessarily, but rather
according to what works. And looking at its latest iteration, what works best
seems to be a happy medium: a little clutter, perhaps, but nothing overwhelming.