As eBay celebrates its 20th anniversary, UK chief operating officer Sarah Calcott discusses the marketplace’s plans for the future.

The online marketplace, which has 18 million visitors to its UK website per month, turns 20 this September.

It’s a very different retail landscape to the one eBay entered 20 years ago, with the company now facing increased competition from the likes of Amazon, Etsy and online retail start-ups.

Speaking about how eBay is adapting against its competition, Calcott tells Retail Week: “We want to improve our mobile experience to make it simpler, more engaging and more personalised.”

The focus on personalisation is one that eBay plans to push throughout all its retail platforms, whether it be on desktop, tablet or mobile.

“The luxury of our platform is that we have created a community” says Calcott.

“We have huge amounts of data as well as the capabilities to gain real insight from it and are working to use this insight to serve our customers in the best way”

Sarah Calcott, eBay

“We have huge amounts of data as well as the capabilities to gain real insight from it and are working to use this insight to serve our customers in the best way.”

EBay began using this data to create personalised homepages in 2013, giving shoppers the option to include saved searches on their profile and receive emails when items of interest were in stock.

The ongoing evolution of the etailer’s shopping experience will be one of the primary focuses of eBay’s new senior marketing director Gareth Jones, who joined the online marketplace last month from Compare the Market.

“Gareth is obsessed with customer experience and is looking at how can we can bring our customers back to our site and attract new shoppers as well,” Calcott says.

Calcott also discussed eBay’s recent split with Paypal, saying they had “a great working relationship” despite being divided into separate businesses earlier this year.

The split, says Calcott, also allowed eBay to give its full attention to significant projects that will be unveiled in the coming months.

While it is a time of significant change for the etailer, Calcott is confident about the future.

“We are a business like no other, providing a platform to buy and sell for customers varying from stay-at-home mums right up to high street retailers,” adds Calcott.