Online auction giant eBay (News - Alert) is not satisfied with being the biggest online auction site in the world. The company wants to grow and tap into its users’ minds to see how it can further improve, and has already begun implementing some of the suggestions given by the users. Its home page, for instance, has changed, for the first time since 1993, and the search engine is now better and faster, the company says.

 

As the competition on Internet marketplaces increases with the big-timers like Yahoo!, Google (News - Alert), and Microsoft taking interest in online sales, eBay finds itself forced to come up with innovations and improvements to maintain its market leading position. Although the company is currently number one in the world, the competition is getting tougher every day.

 

Hence, eBay is taking measures to see that its customers remain satisfied and keep coming back for more. According to an Associated Press report, John Donahoe, president of eBay Marketplaces, said the company will focus on keeping the sellers with questionable business practices off the site. He was referring mainly to those sellers who sell items at eBay at amazingly low prices (sometimes even a penny), and then charge exorbitant fees to mail the items to buyers.

 

This phenomenon is more particularly prevalent in lightweight electronic goods, such as mobile phones, where vendors charge unbelievably low prices for handsets and then charge $15 for the shipping. In fact, the process of helping buyers avoid such practices started a year ago, when the company asked buyers to rate the shipping costs charged by the sellers on a scale of 1 to 5.

 

In 2008, the company plans to use this data in a more constructive way by not letting sellers with high complaint rates appear in the first page of the search results. Other factors, such as promptness and response to queries, will also be ranked.