Preparations for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

It's hard to believe that we are less than 3 weeks away from Cyber Monday and Black Friday.  We have already noticed a steady bump in traffic and sales so all hands on deck!  In keeping with tradition, we would like to announce that we are changing our search algorithm.  Ha!  Just kidding...I crack myself up!  Actually we have been spending quality time the past 2 weeks tending to bugs and improvements on Bonanza, so your buyers (and our sellers) will have the best experience possible.  

The following list is only a summary of recently completed tasks:

• Make eBay importer smarter for shipping, traits, and categories.  Our importers are getting full programmer love because importing your listings properly will mean less work for you and a more accurate buying experience
• Make our category guesser and price guesser wicked smart
• Improve our background burner
• Enhance our CSV Importer
• Speed up and enhance search results page.  Make search smarter about number queries
• Make it so that favorite booths are removed from your profile page when the favorite booth no longer exists
• Take multiple passes at shopping cart to ensure we are offering the most trouble free cart experience (also decreased checkout steps for buyers using PayPal)
• Add additional cart monitoring so we can catch any issues promptly
• Add buyer city and zip code to offer emails so sellers can make informed decisions to accept an offer from the email versus having to log in to find the buyers location
• Allow editing of shipment tracking numbers without affecting the shipped on date
• Fix the "Distance to you" to show actual distance versus "Unknown" location
• Create UK Google Shopping feed
• Fix the ability for sellers to reactivate suspended Google Shopping feeds
• Add a Google Shopping Diagnostics link on the My Bonanza > Booth Details page
• Make it so sellers that are on vacation cannot be a featured seller

Some of the projects we are currently working on and plan to complete shortly:

• Continue to investigate additional channels to advertise Bonanza's unique inventory
• Complete the ongoing system upgrade (nerdfest, behind the scenes)
• Add coupons to the home page
• Speed up eBay and CSV importers
• Optimize the editing of traits for all filtered items (bulk editing optimization)
• Allow sellers to customize their booth vacation message
• Fix spell check on our WYSIWYG editor (this is the editor you use to edit your listings)
• Continue to enhance mobile shopping experience
• Research the adding of auto-digital downloads
• Continue working on the adding of Pinterest rich pin

As a seller you no doubt have a bunch of tasks that you have been working on in preparation for the holiday shopping season.  If you are looking for a few tips, we would suggest the following:

• Review your listing shipping details and return polices.  Make it easy for buyers to make an informed buying decision from you
• Review your buyer restriction policies, you could be inadvertently leaving sales on the table ("Sell on Bonanza > Edit booth options > Payments & Purchases)
• Review your advertising settings to make sure you are at the desired level of advertising ("Sell on Bonanza > Advertise Items")
• Here is a page that will also help you zero in on additional sales opportunities

May you have much success this holiday season and beyond!