Offer Insights
Project Overview
On eBay, buyers and sellers negotiate in conversation, yet offers arrived as bare numbers. Fewer than 7% of buyers added a message, and only 30% of offers were accepted. As the sole designer, I brought offers into Messages, where they now live in every major eBay market. Then I tested whether context helps people agree, and led a vision with my product partner for what eBay should, and shouldn’t, say about price.
Industries
Marketplace
Commerce
Negotiation
Services
Sole designer, shipped
Experiment design
Vision with PM
Year
2025–2026
Сhallenge
People negotiate in conversation, but eBay treated an offer as a form: buyers sent a number and left, and sellers had to leave the chat to respond. As the sole designer, I brought the whole negotiation into the thread, with offers inline, accept, counter and decline in place, and the full offer history sellers had asked for most. It launched in the US in August 2025 and reached Germany, Australia, the UK, France, Italy, Spain and more by December.
Design Approach
Next, I tested whether context changes the outcome. Repeat Buyer, a small label telling a seller this buyer has bought from them before, lifted US offer acceptance 3.3% in an A/B test. My first concepts built on that with guidance cards like “Seems like a good offer”, but they were verdicts: the product picked the price. So with my product partner, I led a vision built on evidence instead. Both sides see what similar items sold for, how many sold and the last offer, with Accept, Counter and Decline weighted equally, and when the data is thin, the price disappears and the history stays.
Results
Offers in Messages is live worldwide: GMV from seller offers sent in Messages grew 78% year over year, and 79% of surveyed users were satisfied. Repeat Buyer lifted US offer acceptance 3.3% in testing. Offer Insights is an unshipped concept with sample data, built on one belief: a marketplace that suggests prices is never neutral, so its job is to make that influence visible and leave the decision with the people in the conversation.