eBay is the world's online marketplace—a place for buyers and sellers to come together and buy or sell almost anything! The eBay shopping cart enables shoppers to pay several sellers with one payment and also pay for items separately.

OBJECTIVE

The initial shopping cart for eBay had key requirements that needed to be met. Firstly, it needed to provide true "cart" or "basket" functionality. This meant that all inventory, including auctions, needed to be displayed. Additionally, the total cost transparency, including tax, shipping, and incentives, was important. A multi-item checkout experience was also required. Lastly, it was important that the cart experience would continue to evolve over time.

MY ROLE

I led the product design of this debut eBay feature, which included an extensive competitive audit, product scope definition, visual design, interaction design, and collaboration with engineering and product management.

Product Design, Visual Design, Interaction Design

Shopping Cart Competitive Audit:

Cart icon placement is most common in the upper right region area of the header.

Add to Cart button married to item in almost all instances.

Including a Continue Shopping button/link within add to cart flow is a great opportunity to help users looking for inspiration that most sites squander.

Including incentives, estimated delivery time and inventory status enhance the experience further.

About half of the sites make users sign in to add an item to a wishlist or to save for later.

Bulk item actions were relatively uncommon and only 3 sites included checkboxes in the cart.

Some sites call out specifically whether items are reserved and how long items are saved in the cart.

Only about half of the sites showed merch in the cart and was typically displayed on the right or bottom.

FEATURES TO INCLUDE WITHIN CART

Actions

Save for later

Pay only this seller

Remove Item

Proceed to checkout

Continue shopping

Item Details

Photo

Quantity

Attributes

Price

Max bid

Current bid

Messaging

Promotions

Merch

Special offers

Discounts

Extras

Warranties

Dontations

Find similar

Mini-cart

Buyer protection

Lessons Learned

I learned so much during my 3+ years as the dedicated Senior Designer of Cart:

Always explore all the possibilities before deciding on a course of action. Look for parallels among seemingly unrelated notions and do not be afraid to consider unconventional alternatives. Be detail oriented, deliver on time, flexible, and easy-going.

Demonstrate design leadership. Tap into discovering what makes others tick. Be open to different perspectives and adeptly adjust approach based on what uniquely inspires each person. Be open with my personal vision, experience, and organizational traits.

Maintain a solid grasp of the technical skills needed to understand constraints and opportunities for solutions.

Always be candid with peers. Contribute openly and readily share useful information. Lead by example.

—Case Study—

EBAY SHOPPING CART

Project Overview

BRING A SHOPPING CART TO EBAY