eBay balance
Outcome – 4 months post-launch
Gross merchandise bought with eBay balance.
Share of checkout using balance to pay, exceeding projections.
Savings to eBay from reduced payment processing costs.
Project brief
Context
eBay balance launched as part of a broader plan for a digital wallet that drives platform usage and an improved customer experience, giving sellers a quick and easy way to use or withdraw their earnings.
Problem
Sellers want choice when it comes to their earnings and payouts on eBay. With payout process changes and the introduction of eBay balance, the potential for confusion and need for education was high.
Solution
Through several cycles of research, leadership reviews, and iteration, we refined key moments in the experience that drove feature awareness and education for eBay balance and Payments changes.
End-to-end work
Research showed poor comprehension around the old funds summary. A shift to one amount that sellers can immediately use or withdraw simplified the hierarchy and tested well.
With the removal of scheduled payouts, we created additional entry points from higher traffic pages to the Payments experience to make it easier for sellers to withdraw their earnings.
Cross-functional collaboration across the buyer experience helped me identify areas that drive feature adoption where it's most contextual.
An educational tour guides existing sellers on their first visit to the new Payments experience — driving feature and process change awareness.
Project timeline
Get a high-level overview of key milestones and setbacks throughout our design marathon.
February
Kickoff: the team meets to discuss UK requirements and revisits research completed for other markets.
March
UK-specific discovery and concept work begins. The business compresses launch timeline.
April
Team completes MVP prototypes for research. Directors review designs. First handoff to engineers.
May
Business strategy pivot. Design must iterate and re-align stakeholders through director reviews.
June
Leadership challenges us to pursue a more ambitious Payments experience. Design team pressure cooks all new concepts. I do a top-to-bottom rewrite of value props.
July
Team presents a bolder direction, which LT team loves. We re-test concepts, feature naming, and value propositions across markets.
August
I organize and lead content strategy workshops with product and marketing. We have ongoing progress reviews with leadership across eBay.
September
Executive LT reviews lead to product pivoting on a key feature function. The team makes final design, brand, and content iterations — hands off to ENG.
October
I work with marketing to finalize external and admin communications. eBay balance launches alongside free selling in the UK on Oct 16.
Craft work
I worked with brand, legal, and research to refine naming, document constraints, and test options. Testing showed sellers intuitively grasped or could guess what eBay balance was by the name alone.
I refined key value propositions and simplified content patterns through several rounds of research and leadership feedback, connecting customer benefits to business goals.
