eBay has become notorious for changing fees repeatedly over the last few years so much so that many of eBay sellers simply began jumping ship. I see some sellers have returned just for the traffic that eBay brings their business. eBay is the giant when it comes to online auctions and its more than just getting traffic to the site that makes it huge its being able to get those visitors here and converting them to buyers.

Giving credit where it is due is sometimes hard to do when a company leaves a bitter taste in your mouth with its continuous increasing of fees but I think it is time that they are given credit for something they are doing now that I think is a very valuable move on their part.

eBay has a project underway that allows users to opt in to participate in the new changes in the website development and it is being termed “Garden by eBay”.

What on Earth is Garden by eBay you might be muttering to yourself right now the same way I did when I saw the announcement which didn’t fully impress me much at the time, but now I have seen it in action. Kudos to the web developers at eBay or whomever is to thank for allowing us to take part in the new features.

At the Garden of eBay you can opt in as I said earlier to a few options and give feedback that goes directly to the individuals working on that project. Do you know what that means? Yes, they are really listening to your feedback unlike when you simply send them a suggestion and your one of thousands if not millions of emails going to the same dark hole of unread or unseen emails that never get a response.

Granted I am not sure they can contact all of us back or have too much interaction but knowing that your feedback is getting to the right department is a huge change by itself.

If you haven’t been to eBay lately just drop in and take a peek at the new look. It’s lighter and faster. Not that it ever really stopped me from using eBay but it had become cluttered somewhat.

Areas they are changing that you can opt in to during their testing include:

• Streamlined search
• New Homepage Concepts:

Concept 1 – Fast and Simple

Concept  2 – Simple and Engaging

Concept 3 – Rich and Robust

• eBay Simple Lister
• Diamond Ring Designer

Some of these probably aren’t for you to worry about but now is your chance to take part and speak your mind on their “improvements”. After they implement changes I always hear complaints about how terrible they are so be sure to go by, test them out, and report your feedback.

Read more about the announcement here.

You can visit Garden by eBay here.