eBay, the internet auction giant has always stuck with the vastly popular auction model that made it a multi-billion dollar success. “Don’t Screw it up” was the thought of many at the company’s San Jose headquarters. And somehow they managed to do just that.
eBay now faces a crisis. They’re stuck. Traffic to the site has declines 11% over the past two years, and the sales volumes of eBay isn’t growing at all. Stocks are trading at a 5-year low and the company has announce a 10% layoff, taking jobs away from hundreds of temporary workers and around 1000 full time workers.
Their income now mainly comes from other sources such as ads on their site, PayPal, Skype and StubHub. They also plan on starting a new online payment service, Bill Me Later.
Seeint this trend, eBay chief eecutive, john Donahoe plans to make eBay a cleaner, safer online mall, rather than an online flea market.
eBay’s search features aren’t vey impressive. It’s search criteria and relevancy lags considerably behind google and maybe Amazon too. It gets 15% of traffic through paid results from google. Now why would anyone want to pay a competitor for business?
There has been word of new long term plans for eBay, which they believe will bring the internet auctioneer out of this big mess.
eBay seems wrongly staffed, with no technologically oriented person at it’s top structure, to improvise on the functioning of the site. Many high ranking officials have left eBay in the recent past, and the lay offs are probably going to bring morale down a bit more.
If Donahoe wants to keep the site up and running, some major changes to the entire structure of the website and organizaton.
