The Chatter Newsletter

As e-commerce matures, the needs of our customers change almost on a daily basis. Offering new products and features, and continuously improving existing ones at a rapid pace, has enabled eBay to keep abreast of members' needs.

In the concluding article of our two-part look at how eBay develops its products and features, Judy Kirkpatrick, Vice President, Product Management, and Jamie Iannone, Senior Director, Product Marketing, take us on the journey of a product on eBay—from idea to rollout.

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The journey of a product on eBay

In the first part of our story, we looked at how product ideas emerge at eBay and how they go through a rigorous filtering and prioritization process before being approved for implementation.

In this article, Judy and Jamie explain what happens after the “green-green” approval from eBay's Product Council, and how a concept turns into a full-fledged project.

The Product Requirements Document (PRD)
The “green-green” approval shifts the project into high gear. Many different eBay teams work to build the feature as quickly as possible without compromising on quality. The first step is for the Product Manager (known as "PM") to write a Product Requirements Document (known as"PRD").

Judy, to whom all Product Management teams report, explains the critical role of the PRD. "This document is basically the blueprint of any project at eBay. It spells out how members will use this new feature, what it will look like, and how other areas of the site will be impacted."

Getting the PRD right is critical to the implementation of the project, because it serves as the "instructions" that the engineering teams use to build the product or feature. Says Judy, "It's like designing a house in detail before actually handing over to the builders. You want to get the dimensions of the rooms, where the windows will be located, what color you want for the walls, and so on. The engineers who will actually build the project need these details from us in order to do their magic."

The role of the PM in creating this blueprint is to reach out to other eBay teams, and to the Community, to gather all possible requirements. For example, a PM will work with eBay's User Experience Design (UED) team to understand what members will encounter when they use the feature. Naturally one of the best ways to find out more about how a change will impact people is to talk to actual members.

Community input influences the product design
Getting input from members early helps a PM create the best design possible. During the PRD process, the PM and the assigned UED team work together to create mock-ups of how the product will likely work. These mock-ups are presented to actual eBay users, through the Voices program or in eBay's Usability lab, where User Experience researchers closely observe each step of a user's interaction with the product.

Some aspects of the design that are tested with users include – page layout, color strategy, ease of accessing information, and the feature's overall usability.

Judy acknowledges that it's an iterative process. “Users may sometimes turn our design ideas upside down, and we may have to go back to the drawing board. But they can also reinforce our original ideas. One of the most satisfying moments at eBay is witnessing a user's excitement about one of our designs.”

In addition to finalizing the look and feel of the product with input from members, the PM also works with the engineering team to define the system requirements for the product and ensure that the feature will work well for a variety of computer types, other Web browsers, and internet connections. The PRD also includes details about how the new feature will impact organizations within eBay, like Customer Support, or International teams.

Depending on the priority and complexity of a product, completing a PRD can take anywhere from a week to 12 weeks.

Enter the engineers
The completed PRD is handed over to the engineering team, which then proceeds to bring the blueprint to life. Developers put together the actual hardware and software that goes into building the feature. This is the stage where thousands of lines of computer code are written, databases marshalled, and systems integrated with one another. After the engineers are done building the product, it's handed over to eBay's Quality Assurance (QA) teams. "Their job is basically to try and break the feature within three weeks," laughs Jamie.

Working long hours, the QA engineers pick apart every technical aspect of the product to make sure that it runs the way it is designed. As part of their testing the QA team tries to simulate every possible condition under which the product could be used, and stretches the design to its limits to find any potential weaknesses.

Marketing the feature
As the feature takes shape in engineering, eBay's Marketing teams are waiting for their turn to carry the baton. This is what Jamie's teams do best – building awareness of the new product among the eBay Community. Jamie explains some of the marketing activity that gathers momentum as the project nears its launch date. “Long before the feature is live, we're already thinking about marketing elements like positioning, promotion, and reaching out to the right audience segments within the Community.”

Jamie's Marketing team creates tutorials and promotions designed to inform and excite members about the soon-to-be-launched new feature. They announce the feature to our Community through our Announcement Board, and educate members with online workshops. eBay's Public Relations is also contacted so that they can explain the benefits of the new product to the media.

The day a product or feature goes live to the site (called "LTS" within eBay) is a day of great excitement for the many people who have contributed to the project along the way—the Product Managers, the Trust and Safety policy experts, the engineers, the User Interface designers, the content writers, QA engineers, and many more. For all these people, LTS day is the culmination of weeks or months of their efforts.

"When a product launches," Jamie says, "we're all eagerly waiting to hear what the Community thinks. We're watching the discussion boards for the first posts from members who have begun using the new feature. We're thrilled when members like something we've been working on. Naturally we're disappointed when a feature isn't well received for some reason. Sometimes it happens, and when possible we rush back to work to make it right. The launch of a feature is never the end for us," he explains. "From then we watch and learn from how people are using it. We use this experience to develop ways we can improve it to meet the needs of the Community, which are always evolving."