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Sports auction templates
EBay keeps users up on the bidding -- even when they're not logged on.
BEFORE JULY 1999, EBAY USERS WHO WEREN'T at their desks were out of luck. If they were at their PCs, they were notified by e-mail when they'd been outbid. If they weren't, they'd never know. That's why eBay introduced a service to alert customers via pager or cell phone when someone bids on items they want.
But with the service that eBay initially rolled out, if those mobile users wanted to respond with a higher bid, they had to scramble to their PCs, hoping they hadn't already lost out on that coveted gewgaw. So in October 1999, just three months after eBay started offering one-way e-mail alerts, it began experimenting with a two-way wireless system.
It wasn't easy. "The wireless world is like the Net in the early '90s," says Todd Madeiros, eBay's director of business development. "But the wired world adopted HTML and HTTP pretty quickly. With wireless there are a lot of different protocols -- WAP, WML, HDML -- but there's no standard."
That's why eBay adopted 2Roam's wireless publishing platform [see page 78]. Today, a bidder can use a cell phone, PDA or any other wireless device equipped with a microbrowser to log on to the auctioneer's wireless site. Each page request goes to 2Roam's Catalyst server, which identifies the device and pours the appropriate data into one of 15 templates.
Building these templates -- which vary according to screen size, microbrowser and number of keys -- is a collaborative process. "We'll look at, say, the latest and greatest Samsung phone," says Madeiros. "Then we work with 2Roam to figure out how our content should look on it." EBay tries to make the user interface as consistent as possible from one device to the next, within the constraints posed by those different screens. "The home deck will look similar from one device to another," Madeiros says, referring to the screen users see when they first log on to the service. "But if you do a search, one type of device may return five results while another might return 10."
Whatever hardware bidders use, they can browse listings, perform sitewide searches, place bids and track the status of auctions. Submitting a bid from a tethered desktop or laptop requires users to complete a one-page form. On most wireless devices, that same form is broken into several pages. Once a user fills out and transmits those pages, 2Roam compiles them into one form, which it sends to eBay. There, it's processed just as if it had been submitted through a PC. The only differences are that wireless users can't list items for sale -- to do that, they have to log on to the regular Web site -- and they can't view the items they're bidding on. (Wireless doesn't render pictures well enough, at least not yet.)
EBay won't say how many of its users access the site on the wireless Web; Boston-based consulting firm Yankee Group says the numbers are still small. But according to Media Metrix, auction buffs who connect wirelessly spend just as much time on the site as when they're at their computers.
Most are connecting via Web-enabled phones, thanks to marketing agreements eBay signed with wireless carriers. The company has a marketing partnership with Sprint, for example, which lists eBay as one of the primary menu options on users' handsets. "Their universe is large -- 5 million voice users," Madeiros says. "And part of their strategy is to educate users that this wireless Web infrastructure is up and running."
That kind of placement makes Sprint happy, too -- it gives customers another reason to stay connected to their phones. Because, more than sports scores or stock tickers, finding out whether that antique whatchamacallit is finally yours could be the wireless Web's true killer app.
Jenny Oh is a freelance writer in San Francisco.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Standard Media International
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group
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