Star Apps: eBay's Steve Yankovich

eBay's Steve Yankovich When an Apple rep at first contacted eBay about developing a proprietary iphone app back in 2008, the latter hadn't even heard of the iPhone or Objective-C. But seeing the potential of mobile software, a number of eBay employees believed that developing a mobile app would profit the global commerce and payments leader in the long run. In early 2009, they began raising funds for the formation of a mobile-specific group and commissioned an outside company to build the first eBay app. Many software releases later, the software has helped the largest online marketplace blast off into mobile commerce, as eBay's mobile income has increased 33x from $600 million in 2009 to $13 billion in 2012--with a forecasted $20 billion in 2013. Download.com chatted with Steve Yankovich, VP of New and Innovation Ventures at eBay Inc., who, as the VP of eBay mobile (2009-2012), played an integral role in the success of the original eBay app. Here he also discusses his other favorite shopping programs and whether the m-commerce leader would ever compete in the iphone app marketplace with software of its own. How has the eBay app changed shopping habits? The users who started using our mobile app are more active than users who don't. They love that we're letting them buy in the moment--in a convenient way and at a great price. Also, sometimes they'll find an item on mobile and later buy it on their computer, and that's an even bigger percentage. Also, people often share what they bought, when they buy mobile, because they're doing it in front of others much of the time. Someone goes, "You got it on eBay? Let me see." And the next thing that person is known by you becomes an eBayer. 4.3 million users last year came onto eBay through mobile after having never been an eBay user before. It's that viral thing. What are your selected shopping apps? I don't shop on other people's programs when I'm doing mobile shopping, and there are two reasons. One is: I believe in our marketplace. The other is that you can't make commerce simple enough on mobile, because when persons are using the app, they are, in fact, mobile; so you have to make the flow very fast. Most commerce sites can't get it done. The registration process alone can lose customers just. As for registration, we're making it as short as we can. With the new eBay software for iPhone, you can prefill some of your information by scanning your driver's license. After that we persist login for six to nine months. It's the same thing for PayPal.