 eBay Changes Header Design to De-emphasize Community
January 13, 2012  * eBay Changes Header Design to De-emphasize Community 
By: Ina Steiner
Fri Jan 13 2012
013:32:13 When you get tens of millions of visitors to your website every month, you think long and hard about changes you make to the design and navigation of your website. This week readers noticed that eBay has rolled out a change to its headers. 
Previously, the headers at the extreme top of the page on the right side read: My eBay, Sell, Community, Customer Support, and Cart. Now they read: Notifications, My eBay, Saved, Sell, Customer Support, Cart.(The change may not appear to you when using certain browsers such as Google Chrome.)
Now when signed in to eBay, you can hover over "Saved" at the top of every page and see all your saved searches and sellers, making it quicker to get to items you're interested in.
But what's more interesting than what eBay has added is what it has taken away - the Community link. In fact, if you don't have eBay's two announcement boards or the discussion boards bookmarked in your browser, it's difficult to figure out how to get to them. Don't despair - they're found at the very bottom of the page.
The links are not provided on every page - but they are located on the home page and on listing pages. However, it's very difficult to find them - they are located in a large gray box at the bottom of the page in the fifth column of links.
This is only one of many changes eBay has made to de-emphasize community. While the rest of the world believes in the power of social networking, it seems eBay is making it more difficult than ever for users to connect with each other. Comments (3) | Permalink   | 
