Feature update – managing your items

The eagle-eyed sellers among you will have noticed a few slight changes to the wording in the item management section of your accounts. These changes weren’t unnecessary fluff, but aimed at making item management clearer and to pave the way for today’s update! And what an update it is; not only quick re-listing, but the ability to use an existing item as a template for a new listing. I’m gonna use the rest of this post to walk through the new features and cover the basics of the other item management features, if you’d prefer to get stuck in; go straight to the  re-list an item page.

Quick re-listing

Any sold items will appear on the re-list an item page, with a button beneath them. Simply click on the button below the item you want to relist, and you’ll be taken to a confirmation screen:

Tell us the quantity you’d like to re-list, click the “Re-list item” button and you’re done; the item is instantly re-listed and added back into your shop! We treat re-listings in the same way as standard listings, so the re-listing fee  is a 20p x quantity and a re-listing won’t expire until it is sold.
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Improving Coriandr’s search

Over the last week we’ve been working hard behind the scenes to improve Coriandr’s search. Our aim is simple enough;

“make it easier to find the right things, quicker.”

As a marketplace, our opportunity to provide a great shopping experience starts with the search. The idea that gangs of buyers could be roaming the vaults of Coriandr, lost and alone, unable to find the one item that would complete them, is a very sad thing indeed! So much depends on the search doing it’s job well.

So, what are the plans?

• Make it easier to search. We’re going to be making some alterations to the way the search page looks and behaves. None of the existing search criteria will go, but the ease with which you can search for keywords, add tags, and generally browse through all the items on offer will be vastly improved. › Continue reading

Summertime feature update

Hooray for friendly gremlins with spanners!

During the last few weeks we’ve been busy tinkering away with some of the “behind the scenes” code over here at Coriandr HQ. That’s all very well of course, but it’s not very exciting for everyone else out there,  so now (with the help of our friendly neighbourhood tech gremlins) we’re turning our attention onto some much more fun feature updates!

Something that has (in hindsight) been missing from Coriandr is it’s community features… We don’t give you any way of interacting with each other’s shops; of letting each other know how fantastic you think each other are; even of letting everyone know what your favourite items are! All that is due to change over the next month. There are two big dates coming up, the 8th May and the 1st June.

8th May (v1.1)

• Order communication. To make order communication easier, we’re adding both a convo shortcut and the email addresses of each user to the order details page. This information will only be visible to the two people involved in the sale, but will help massively when dealing with those last minute, but important, order questions.

• Favorites. Why, oh why wasn’t this here sooner?! You know how it works; if you like a item or a seller, add it to your favourites! You’ll also be able to share your favourites via email, and even use them to build a Coriandr Seedling!

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This month, I will mostly be making…

I’ve been pretty quiet since the start of year, busy making plans for 2009 and Coriandr’s future. As we’re steadily approaching the end of January, it’s probably about time I started sharing these plans!

For my part, I’ll be introducing lots of new features, and improving both the visual design and usability of Coriandr. Whilst some of these new features will simply bring us in-line with what everyone expects from a marketplace nowadays, there are also some fresh new ideas that will really make Coriandr stand out from the crowd for both buyers and sellers…

This month I will mostly be making;

Featured Seller spotlights – Links to these mini interviews will become a permanent part of the front page. Each spotlight will be a custom built page highlighting a specific seller, and initially will run for a week before cycling to the next spotlight.

RSS feeds – Every shop will have it’s own RSS feed. If you’re unsure what RSS is, click here for an excellent explanation. I would love to expand this feature to include RSS feeds for product searches too. i.e. Search for “blue necklaces”, then subscribe via RSS to get updates everytime a new product matching “blue necklace” is added to Coriandr. This might not be viable with our current server setup however, so I’ll keep you posted.

Help section – I know, I know. The help section has turned into my perpetual “it’ll be ready tomorrow” promise, but it’s different this time; honest! All of Febuary will be free for everyone if I haven’t added at least 10 FAQs to the help page by the end of this month!

Shop policies – Sellers will be able to specify their own terms and conditions regarding refunds, shipping, etc. with the information appearing as part of the seller info box on item and shop pages.

Personal blog links – A lot of people end up putting links to their blogs in their profiles or on their shop welcome pages, so why not help out?! The blog links will appear alongside the “seller info” box visible on shop and item pages.

Image editing – When uploading a listing image, you will be asked whether you’d like to edit the image (using an external service) before uploading it to Coriandr. The photo-editing won’t be anything fancy (resizing and cropping for the main part) but hopefully this will be a welcome feature for those sellers without access to image editing software on their computers. The services we’re currently reviewing are Picnik, FotoFlexer, Snipshot. If anyone has used these services before and has something to say, please let me know! 

That just about wraps it up for January’s feature update. Technology aside, there are a few more upcoming changes worth mentioning, but I’ll cover them a little later…