| September 20, 2008 |
 New Features for Merchants and Shoppers |
By: EveryPlaceISell
Sat Sept 20 2008
18:19:43 |
We've rolled out some new features on EveryPlaceISell to make it easier for shoppers to find merchants and provide them with more information. In addition, we upgraded the site to make it a more robust and scalable platform that will handle growing traffic and new features that we plan to roll out in the future.
Here are the new features we rolled out on Friday:
Multiple Categories: Sellers, you wanted to be able to put your listings in multiple categories, and now you can! You can put your listing in up to three categories. For example, if you offer books, crafts and toys, you can now list in 3 appropriate categories. This will help buyers find your listing.
Payment Options: We love this feature, and hope you do too! Now you can list all the payment options you accept on your different selling venues. We have included the major payment methods as well as "Other" for some flexibility. That means that if a site only allows you to accept one payment method, a customer can look at your listing and possibly find the same item being offered by you, on a different site, using a payment method that they would prefer. Plus I really like the little icons...
Keywords: You'll now find a new field in your listing form where you can put keywords pertaining to your business. The keywords will not appear in your listing, but will be part of the criteria used when someone is searching on EPIS. The keywords will also populate the meta data, making your listing much more search-engine friendly. And this feature will also help buyers find relevant listings.
Preview Page: This is VERY cool, and much needed! Now you can see what your listing will look like before you submit it. After you have created or updated your listing, you'll find a "Preview" link near the bottom of the form. When clicked, it will open a new browser window that will allow you to check your links, view your graphic image, and see if there are any changes you'd like to make. You can make changes to your form and re-preview your listing before submitting.
New Searching and Browsing Options: Ultimately, EPIS is a search engine and we believe that most people will use the search box for finding a seller or product. The search will be constantly evolving as we watch how people use it, and what search terms they enter. There are now new ways to browse listings, based on your feedback. Now listings can be searched Alphabetically. We've added an "Alphabetical Directory" to the home page and the left navigation bar, for people who may be looking for a specific seller, but doesn't remember their exact username.
Listings in categories are now sorted alphabetically, rather than by latest listing. We will keep the ability to search by "Latest Listing" so people can see at a glance what's new on EPIS. We'll be adding other methods of searching and browsing on the site in the future. If you have suggestions, feel free to let us know in the forums.
Announcements: You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this page and get the announcements delivered directory to your reader.
We've laid the foundation to add more (and even cooler) features, which we'll roll out gradually. We want to thank everyone for being so engaged in this project - your suggestions were great and thought-provoking and made for very lively discussion among the EveryPlaceISell.com staff. Thanks to everyone that helped us Beta-test EPIS - your time and suggestions were immensely appreciated. Very special thanks go to our great programmer Ranson, who churned out these changes in record time. Thanks everyone!
We welcome you to discuss these new features in the EPIS merchant forums (available only to registered merchants with approved listings), and let us know if you see anything out of sorts. One last thing - feel free to tell your friends about EPIS, put your listing widget up where allowable (there's super-secret code embedded in it, which will be explained in a future announcement) and we'll keep you posted on our progress!
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