The photo above shows a load of kidrobot figures from the Simpsons. Currently, our front room has a similar haul of kidrobot figures from the Simpsons, Futurama and a load of other randoms (almost 20 in total) … all a result of my first night with the iPhone’s eBay app. This is what happens when people with no willpower get their hands on an app with a good user experience and fabricate a need to buy a certain item … or items.

The experience of shopping on your eBay app as opposed to shopping on eBay via a browser is significantly different. As with all these apps, they’re designed to be very task-focused – possibly more to do with the limited screen real estate. When compared to eBayers on their laptop, shoppers using their app aren’t distracted by other tabs on your browser, bookmark links on your toolbar, any incoming IM messages or any ‘new email’ for instance. Your screen is dedicated to your task-at-hand. In this case, shopping. The screen clutter is minimal, the call-to-actions are clear and presented as big buttons. Furthermore, I’m a great believer in the ingrained behaviour of humans when it comes to buttons (this isn’t based on any research I’ve read or testing I’ve done). But I do believe that when presented with a big button, a person’s natural instinct is to press it. Similarly, on a web page, a button will normally attract attention over lines of text and maybe even imagery (especially stock imagery). Another factor that encouraged my eBay splurge was the interaction design of the app. It was fun. It was fast. It was everything eBay on my laptop isn’t. The feedback on the interactions were good. The transitions made me want to do it again. And again.

I even remember in a few cases of my sleep-deprived night of eBay mayhem I ended up buying a couple of things that I didn’t seriously want. Aided by a good integration with PayPal, a couple of clicks later and I’d agreed to BUY IT NOW. Before you know it, you’ve got 15 emails in your inbox saying ‘You’ve Won [insert item name here]!’

But let’s not totally blame the app for my slight over-spending here. The toys themselves are so cool. They’re not even toys in my eyes. They’ve got so much character .. and they’re so cute. So there you go. Cool products + a fun and efficient user experience on purchasing = eBay shopping spree. Which I hope to not repeat again, in the near future anyway.