eBay Homepages vary by geography – as Auctions is a fairly geographically and culturally constrained business. Still, it is interesting to see just how dramatic the differences are:
Best homepage – the simplest by far, is Canada. The page is approaching Google simplicity, and it is abundantly clear what you have to do – enter a search term:
Here are ebay.com, Austria, UK and Sweden. Same but different.
Not left aligned: Poland, France and Singapore. The extra space is what I see in Safari. I have no idea why these render differently, but it does point to different code.
Strange colours: Australia is red for some reason, and NZ (spot the Kiwi) has bold colours, while Spain is blue.
Latin America is served by MercardoLibre, and sites seem essentially identical between countries.
Belgium asks for your language before diverting to the appropriate site:
And for completeness here is Trade Me. Some of the differences: categories are front and center, the listings displayed on the homepage are in standard format and Trade Me has advertisements and links on the top tab to news and dating sites. There are no advertisements on eBay’s homepages, despite the global online advertising market rising at rapid rates.
Lance Wiggs 