eBay has launched a new initiative to help “sow the seeds of innovation” with community input on new products and features before they go live on the site. The “Garden by eBay” is a new area on eBay.com that allows community members to try out new products and features and give the team working on the initiative feedback on suggested improvements and changes. The experimental space was designed to encourage eBay users to contribute to the growth of initial concepts to fully “grown,” ready-to-launch products and features.

“We really wanted to give users a better way to become involved in how we roll things out to the site,” said Josh Ramirez, senior product manager, eBay’s Search Applications. “Because of the way our marketplace is designed, one small site change can have a cascading effect on our buyer and seller experience. The Garden by eBay is a fun way to get the community involved in making decisions that may impact how they buy and sell on eBay.”

The Garden idea stemmed primarily from the search team wanting to solicit user input on a new search experience. Rather than roll it out site-wide or go with the standard A/B testing, the team wanted to partner with users early on in the development process to deliver an experience that best meets the community’s needs. The team believes that allowing eBay members to opt in to experiment with the new experience at this stage of development will help them innovate faster and more efficiently.

When I first heard about the project and asked to cover it for eBay Ink, I was incredibly enthusiastic to learn that I was going to be able to sit down with the entire eBay Garden team to learn more about it. You can meet the team in this video I put together here…

“The new Garden by eBay represents a new collaborative conversation with the eBay community — a chance to listen to their thoughts on upcoming features, and to bring them closer to our own innovation process,” said Christopher Payne, eBay vice president, Search. “By seeding the Garden with streamlined search, we’re asking for the community’s input on improving one of the most important areas of eBay.com.”

One of the new features that the community members will be able to try out is a new “streamlined search” experience intended to make it easier to browse and view search results. This new search feature will let users compare auction and Buy It Now listings side-by-side, quickly refine results based on items returned in a result set and return to the search box without having to scroll up to the header. As Garden participants provide feedback on the experience, the features will grow into an improved experience — before it goes live to eBay.com.

Here, the team talks about why they’re excited about the project and what it means for eBay both internally and externally…

I’ll have more behind-the-scene video conversations with the eBay Garden Team in future posts but for now, please check out the Garden by eBay today at http://pages.ebay.com/garden.

You can also read more about the project at New York Times blog, Bits.

Cheers!
RBH