Adventures in Web Design, eBay Edition

eBay is cleaning up its act:

Analysts said sellers were moving to other places on the Web in search of buyers who had grown weary of an overwhelming array of product choices on eBay...
Ms. Whitman said that chief among the changes was a new home page design. The company is testing simplified layouts that are less likely to confuse shoppers than the old version, which analysts said was among the most cluttered in the e-commerce industry.

This is naturally great news for those of us who like clean, uncluttered websites like the NYT, Wikipedia, and Google. (And Portfolio, too.) It's worth noting, however, that for every clean, successful website there's also a cluttered, successful website: think MySpace or Craigslist or Drudge. Or the Wall Street Journal.

I think that empirically speaking, the best bet is definitely in the direction that eBay is moving: something in the middle, like Amazon. Amazon tweaks its design constantly, not according to what looks good, necessarily, but rather according to what works. And looking at its latest iteration, what works best seems to be a happy medium: a little clutter, perhaps, but nothing overwhelming.