eBay

eBay's major purpose is to host online auctions no matter what it is and to make a profit from user fee's and added extras such as image charges.

The target audience is from 18 onwards, obviously there are restrictions such as buying goods with a age restriction of 21 like children.

The user starts by typing in the deisired product, then they have the choice depending on the type of auction: 'Buy it now' or 'bid', if you cannot make up your mind or are awaiting something, you can watch the item to see how much it goes up or whether it has been bought out.
If you do choose to buy or bid on an item, it will take you through a series of pages constantly making sure you mind has been made. Once you have got through them, you can then contact the buyer about postage or pickup information, or if you bid on the item you can continue watching it in 'My eBay'.

eBay forfills its purposes to an excellent standard, because most of the selling, advertising and contacting is down to the user, and eBay is very user friendly. with that said, over the years I have become almost eBay'aphobic when it comes to seilling, there is always something I have got wrong or not informed the buyer of flaws of the product. The actual selling process for me is not very user friendly atall.

The benifits of the service are the fact that there are few limitations to what you buy and sell, and there is more privacy over items that you might be to embarressed to buy in shops. Also the extreme scale of the items on there, you are very unlikely to not find an item.

Limitations of the service are you can't buy illegal goods, towns, organs and counterfeit merchandise.