Community History Shapes the New Want It Now Feature
by Zigmund
eBay Staff Member

In early December 2004, eBay introduced Want It Now, a new way for members to buy and sell unique, harder-to-find items. With Want It Now, buyers can tell sellers exactly what they are looking for when they are unable to find it on the site. Sellers can then browse through these requests to discover buyers for their items, as well as get new ideas for what items are in demand.

Within the two months since its launch, Want It Now has become immensely popular with both buyers and sellers. Collectors have been using it to ask sellers if they have the one piece that will complete their collections – whether it's a rare bone china item a or a limited edition action figure. Many others have used Want It Now to look for other harder-to-find items like a particular type of car dashboard ash-tray. Sellers of such items have been happy to find buyers ready and waiting.

While the Want It Now phenomenon is still new, veteran eBay members remember its similarities and differences with another eBay feature from the dim and distant past. The Chatter team talked to several eBay teams to understand the evolution of Want It Now.

Flashback to the late 1990's. eBay was starting to grow, and so was the Community area on the site. Discussion boards were still a year or two away, and eBay Groups hadn't even been considered yet, but the chat boards were becoming increasingly popular. Members were talking and making connections at a record pace on boards such as the eBay Café and the eBay Q&A. Back in those days, there was another board that directly helped buyers and seller connect – the “Wanted” board.

The Wanted board was very popular with buyers. It was a chat board where buyers posted details about the items they were looking for. If another member happened to have the item and was willing to sell it, they could list it on eBay and point the original requester to their listing.

The Wanted board worked well for a few years. Unfortunately, it also had its problems. Because of the scrolling nature of chat boards (where older posts disappear as new ones get added), buyers' Wanted posts only showed up for a short period of time, an issue which worsened as more members used it. The amount of “spam” (unsolicited and irrelevant posts) on the board was also starting to become burdensome. Some unscrupulous sellers were asking buyers to participate in unsafe transactions outside eBay. Finally, in 2001, the Wanted board was no longer useful and was discontinued.

Since that time, the need for a feature which enables buyers to let sellers know about items they want kept growing. Over the next few years, several ideas for developing a similar feature that would address the needs of a significantly larger eBay Community, as well as provide a process that is safe and more advanced than a chat board, were kicked around within eBay.

“The company had been trying to bring back some form of the Wanted board ever since it went away,” revealed Eddie Garcia, a product manager from the Buying team who helped lead the Want It Now project. “We knew we needed to fix the shortcomings of the prior version.”

After months of research involving input from Community members, in early 2004 the team finalized the design of what would eventually become Want It Now. They wanted to make sure that this new area on the site – where buyers can provide information about the items they want, and other members can respond with the item number for matching listings – would be easy to use for both buyers and sellers. The Want It Now process also needed to be designed to protect both buyers and sellers by maintaining anonymity surrounding the post and the responses. Finally the design also needed to allow sellers to easily jump to the listing process if they saw a Want It Now post for an item they had, but which wasn't currently listed up on the site.

Along with Garcia, Susan Kim from eBay's Product Marketing team was a key member of the group dedicated to bringing Want It Now to life. Given the importance of the feature to buyers, two more appropriate people couldn't have been chosen to drive the design, as both are avid eBay buyers.

“I've purchased almost all my home furniture on eBay…even my kitchen sink!” said Kim. Her extensive shoe collection is also mostly due to eBay purchases, she shared. Garcia, who loves to buy "random pop culture memorabilia”, has used eBay to trumpet his support for the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team among his co-workers. He proudly boasts, “After Derek Fisher hit the game-winning shot in the playoffs against the Spurs last year, I went out and bought a giant Derek Fisher Foam Fish Hat to wear around the office.”

Then: The Wanted Chat Board

Now: Want It Now Today

Both Kim and Garcia knew that Want It Now would fulfill a long-awaited need for buyers. “We're always looking at how to make it easier to find items,” said Kim. “Giving buyers the ability to ask for items that they can't find on the site was very important.” With Want It Now, if buyers cannot find an item on eBay using traditional finding methods like searching or browsing, they can simply ask for it. This is actually a very useful tool for eBay sellers as well. Not only do they have access to members who are ready to buy more unique items, but they can also use the Want It Now posts to get an idea of what types of items buyers are looking for.

Garcia noted, “This opens up a world of opportunity for eBay sellers. Take sellers who make customized products, such as artists and craftsmen. They now have a tool to find leads for their services.” For example, one of the early Want It Now posts was from a member who had grown up on a farm and was looking for a large painting of a rooster for his kitchen. The post stated that the picture “should just be the chicken, no other animals, buildings, or anything else that will detract from the natural beauty of the rooster.” A short time later, a seller responded pointing to a listing that had a painting exactly like the one the poster had been looking for. Needless to add, the transaction was quickly completed.

Even armed with the lessons learned from the old Wanted board, launching Want It Now required a large amount of research and development effort. “Over 25 different teams within eBay were involved in some form,” recounted Kim. Of course, the team also sought input from the Community. “We worked closely with groups from our Voices program, and also conducted extensive surveys and usability research,” reported Garcia.

As always, the Community came up with excellent ideas. For instance, the "Good Samaritan" idea originated from our members. In the original design, only the seller of an item would be able to respond to a Want It Now post. “But the Community was adamant that any member be allowed to respond, even if they weren't the one selling it,” Garcia recalled. And sure enough, some of the leading responders are members who are not involved in the transaction as buyers or sellers, but just want to be helpful by pointing buyers to listings that match their Want It Now posts.

Another challenge was picking the right name to use. After reviewing potential names such as Wishing Well, everyone agreed on the name “Want It Now.” The team also had to make sure that the name they decided on would lend itself to easy usage by our members. To achieve this, they came up with as many statements that members were likely to use while using the feature.

Two months after its launch, Want It Now has became an amazing success. Over 10,000 Want It Now posts were made in the first 12 hours after launch and the number has grown steadily since. Like with any eBay feature, members have quickly learned to use it to their maximum advantage. This has already resulted in the emergence of some great stories to prove the value of Want It Now.

For instance one person's Want It Now post said they were looking for a 1994 Vanderbilt University yearbook. Another member, realizing he had a yearbook in pristine condition in his garage, quickly listed it and informed the poster. Naturally he had a guaranteed buyer. While the buyer was pleased about getting what they had been looking for a long time, the transaction also boosted the seller's confidence. It turned out it was just his second listing, and this got him started listing more items on eBay! Another member looking for a custom pendant to be made with the birthstones of himself, his wife, and his newborn child was pleasantly surprised at the speed at which an eBay seller pointed him to the exact item he was looking for.

Excited by the success of Want It Now in bringing buyers and sellers together, the eBay Want It Now team is already working on plans to make this great feature better. Stay tuned!

For more information about Want It Now, please check out our tutorial and Frequently Asked Questions. To go directly to Want It Now, please click here.