Relentless Simplicity - The Bonanza Blog
EcommerceBytes 2012 Sellers Choice Awards
Ina Steiner of EcommerceBytes recently posted their 2012 Sellers Choice Awards. This annual survey, now in its fourth year, has become an increasingly relied-upon tool to help sellers compare the strengths and weaknesses of the top online marketplaces. We would like to thank everyone at Bonanza who took part in the survey -- for the second year in a row, Bonanza was the third most widely used marketplace for the survey respondents -- Bonanza trailed only eBay and Craigslist. I think this speaks to the power of what our community has created by making newcomers feel welcome, while encouraging your friends to dip their toe in and become our next newcomers.
I've always liked this Auction...er...EcommerceBytes survey for a couple reasons. The top reason is that I am a self-avowed "data lover," and any time that someone can put hard numbers behind a squishy subject, my inner scientist does a series of triumphant fist pumps. 
The second reason I appreciate the survey is that it gives new marketplaces a chance to get their due (usually for being more customer-centric), while more mature marketplaces can flex their strengths (more traffic, profitability, advertising). Sellers can then weigh the pros and cons relative to their... (continued)
Bonanza White + More Sale this Thursday through Sunday!
What would peanut butter be without Jelly? If you answered "Peanut butter" you are right! What would a White sale be without a Bonanza Rush? If you answered, "boring," you are right again! We agree, so starting this Thursday at 7am PST, Bonanza will host a multiple category, multiple day White sale Rush. Shoppers can save up to 50%!
We will be featuring:
- Inside the home
- Women's shoes and clothing
- Men's clothing, shoes and accessories
Sellers with items in the following categories will be eligible to participate:
Inside the Home
Women's Clothing, Women's Shoes
Men's Clothing, Men's Accessories, Men's Shoes
Sellers who wish to join... (continued)
Hello, 2012
Well since we haven't blogged since last year (that joke somehow never gets old. Maybe cuz we only get to a little while every year), I figure it's high time that we fix that!
The Bonz team has been spending the holidays on a well balanced diet of features and bug fixes for our selling community. We've also been able to squeeze in a handful of improvements for our buyers.
The CEO trying to do his part to "clean up the ranch" on FIFI day
One of the highlights for us has been some recent "find it, fix it" (FIFI) days. The idea for these days is that the entire programming and design team (plus whatever you call me) just spend the day using our site in the same way an average seller or shopper would. The only rule is that you have to fix any bug (or "poor experience") you find -- on the spot. On FIFI days, we turn off our usual bug tracking system, and just go to work trying to improve the quality of Bonanza in ways both large and (more often) small. A wee smattering of the stuff we got done during our two FIFI December... (continued)
Kill SOPA, save America's Internet and American jobs: ACT NOW, bill goes to the House TOMORROW
There is a bill being considered by congress currently that could seriously jeoparidze the functionality of the Internet in general, and the livelihood of this site in particular. It's called SOPA. Here's the scoop from Tiffiniy at American Censorship:
"Tomorrow, the US government will vote to have broad powers to block any site. SOPA would not only hurt free speech, it will choke off the internet workforce and its readers by taking down entire websites. Today is the only day we have left to have our voices heard. It's time to pull all stops - please make a call right now to protest censorship. Your call matters. If you don't call, SOPA will pass. If there is one call per minute into every one of our representatives, we have a chance of stalling SOPA enough so it dies for quite some time. Please call Congress now and tell them you oppose internet censorship and stifling the internet. If you own a site, you're in the best position to spread the word. Please post this call widget. If we're really going to stop SOPA, we need you to get involved. If you write emails or have a blog, or if you... (continued)
Is Shopping Therapeutic?
Bonanza Gift Ideas
According to the New York Times it is, and who are we to disagree? Because we are nothing if not the nurturing types, we have been working all year to add and enhance features that
help you discover the perfect gift that is sure to please even the hardest to please (yes, dad, we're looking at you). Here is a short list of some of our favorite ways to shop:
Bonanza Gift Guides
You can shop for gifts within a cetain price range, or you can shop one of our special gift guides that are specific to tastes (Fashionistas, For Teens, Sports Fans, For Teen Girls, etc.). As far as the gift receiver is concerned, you will look like the most thoughtful and creative gift-giver ever (and don't worry, we won't say a thing).
Seller Coupons and Discounts
Who doesn't like a deal? Shoppers will find savings of 15% and up by shopping our sellers' special deals! Sounds good right? But we have gone one step beyond awesome. We have organized the discounts by categories so you can pinpoint the intersection between "item you want" and "item that's a smokin' deal."
Bonanza Flash Sales (Rushes)
A couple times... (continued)
Cyber Monday Rush Bonanza!
This Monday, November 28th, from 7am-5pm PST, we will be hosting the largest Rush sale in Bonanza's history, Cyber Monday Rush Bonanza! Over a half of a million items are eligible for the Cyber Monday sale across ten of Bonanza's most popular categories. Shoppers can save as much as 50% off of normal prices. Are you thinking what I am thinking? This is going to be bigger than Cabbage Patch Dolls and Tickle Me Elmos combined! The sale can be previewed here.
If you are a seller and you want to get in on the action, you have until this Sunday at 7am PST to join. Just visit your Rush page (from your main edit/new item page, click on the "Sign up for a Rush" tab) and follow the prompts to sign up. Feel free to use the above graphic to promote on Facebook, Twitter, your blog, your corporate jet, your hot air balloon, well....you get the message.
Black Friday/Cyber Monday, Are you ready?
Fun fact, Black Friday will be upon us in 15 days and Cyber Monday is only 18 days from today! In 2010, Cyber Monday sales topped over $1 billion (16% increase over 2009)! By now most Bonanza sellers have listed available inventory and are eagerly anticipating a bump in business and sales and rightfully so. We have prepared a quick list of some basic last minute tasks you can easily complete in a short time that will help you capture the attention of holiday shoppers:
Offer free shipping
Consumers like free shipping. If you can offer free shipping you should do so and you should makeit clear in your listings as well. If you are not able to offer free shipping on all your items then perhaps you have a few items that you can feature free shipping on with an attractive price (aka loss leaders).
Gift wrapping available?
What a great way to get your kids involved! If you have the ability to gift wrap your items then why not offer this as an option? Perhaps you can also include a greeting card as an option offer to include a message for the recipient.
... (continued)
Free Shipping Day, Sign up Now!
Recently Auctionbytes blogged about FreeShippingDay.com and how merchants can register to be included in this one day promotion which will net them free traffic. This is the first year that FreeShippingDay.com will be opening up their platform to specific marketplaces. We spoke with their Project Manager, Simon Jobman who clarified the requirements:
Merchants need to offer some type of free shipping. It doesn't have to be on every item and there can be a minimum order amount. Orders placed on 12/16 need to be guaranteed by Christmas Eve. Last year 75% off the clicks onFreeShippingDay.com went to merchants offering free shipping on every order.
While Bonanza is not currently listed as a category, they will add us as soon as we have a minimum of 50 merchants who sign up for this free service (lets impress them overachieve!). You can sign up for this promotion here.
Many thanks to AntiquesRGreat for bringing this to our attention.
Holiday Advertising @ the Bonz
Happy (gulp) holidays everyone! That's right, we're already seeing an increase in holiday displays and cheesy Christmas music at our favorite retail stores, so it can only mean that it is the time of year when sales start to catch fire. Ole!
This year we've been brainstorming on how we can effectively raise awareness about Bonanza to shoppers during the holiday season, and as usual, we have arrived at "advertising" as the solution, but "lack of funds to dedicate to advertising" as the problem.
Yes indeed, it's that time of year.
After a bit of collective head scratching, we realized that the most fair & effective way we could fund our 2011 holiday advertising campaign would be by generating a new revenue stream: targeted ads at the bottom of Bonanza search results.
I'll admit, initially we were pretty resistant to the idea of allowing ads in our search. But as we started to look around at our many ecommerce brethern, we noticed that nearly every single one (including our friends at Amazon) are now employing ads at the bottom of their on-site search. The reason, it turns out, is that these sites have realized that when they can't deliver the results a... (continued)
It's a Renaissance Bonanza!
With the arrival of Fall we also mark the arrival of the 3rd Annual Renaissance Faire on Bonanza! Like Christmas in July, the Renaissance Faire is a product of the Bonanza community, where sellers come together to offer deep discounts on their items for the entire month of October. This is a great oppotunity to network and also to create another channel to market your items.
It's still not too late to join and there is no experience necessary. There are many hands to help. If you are interested in being part of the 3rd Annual Renaissance Faire, you can sign up here.
Special thanks to momspennies, CindyBear, AllThingsVintage, PurpleIris, and the many other volunteers who have spent so much time and energy orgainzing this event.
We've got a new look!
The eagle has landed.
After a few weeks of development and fourscore rounds of testing, we’re very excited to present our community with one Bonanza refreshed. In fact, this update goes beyond cosmetic changes, as we have also added true international support while streamlining all paths to slope toward our sellers’ exquisite wares.
Given the magnitude of these changes, I’ll break this post up into bite-sized morsels to briefly cover the assorted changes and the rationale behind them.
New Homepage
As promised in my previous blog, we have updated our home page in order to give every single user an experience that is relevant to them. This was a change that we put quite a bit of thought into, because from an aesthetic standpoint, we liked the old home page. But the feedback we heard repeatedly from new users (and even some old ones) was that, while the page may have looked pretty, it was hard to find stuff to buy on it. Our data backed this notion up, as we found that almost all of our home page sales were driven through search, rather than navigation. Simply put, what our... (continued)
New Look in the Works
Hello our Summer-savoring sellers! I believe we have officially saved up enough topics to warrant a discussion of what's new and coming here at the 'ranch, so without further ado...
Riches and treasures untold await in every category
New Home Page Coming
Exact release date is currently unknown, but will be sometime in the next 1-2 weeks. The goal with our new home page is to present buyers with the items and sellers that are maximally relevant to them. While we love that our current home page allows us to showcase our community, it's largest failing is that it tends to fall short in communicating the breadth of inventory we have across categories like Collectibles, Books, Jewelry, and etc., since the hand picked list affords only a small amount of space to present items. Also, it doesn't do much to highlight our individual sellers.
In discussing how to improve this situation, we realized that our best bet was to let the shopper tell uswhat they are interested in, and give that to them. Thus, in addition to showing our user's hand picked creations, we'll be letting every buyer select which category (or categories) they are most interested in,... (continued)
Bonanza and Google Attributes - A Winning Combination
Join us for a live seller webinar as your host Phaedra Stockstill and presenter Judy Oglesby takes the mystery out of Google Attributes. Judy will tell us what attributes are, how they can boost your GPS ranking and much much more. Stop stressing over your attributes! Join us for this information packed webinar and master the Google Attributes beast.
| Date: | Wednesday, August 24, 2011 |
| Time: | 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM CDT |
Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www3.gotomeeting.com/
Personalization Debuts...And Soon!
Having put our personalization algorithm through its paces as an experimental feature over the last month, we are excited to announce that the eagle has (almost) landed, and we will be launching our full-fledged personalization experience within the next few days. But, until then you may ask yourself...
"I think she'd like some field mice."
"No, Arthur! You have to think like a human, not a great owl!"
"Oh my, you're right. Maybe some leather Coach, then?"
"Yeah, now you've got it buddy!"
How does it work?
Bonanza does not have the item depth possessed by Amazon and other big box stores. We have built our brand on having a diverse, eclectic collection of "everything but the ordinary." The good news is that it means we have millions of items you can't find anywhere else. The bad news is that we usually only have one or two of them, so traditional item recommendation algorithms, which rely on tracking a user as they move from item to item and connecting those items together, aren't a realistic possibility for us.
So we decided to slice the problem differently: rather than mapping items to items, we will map people to people. What... (continued)
Bonanza Transition
Hi Gang,
Alex wishes the team "so long" as he departs
with a few choice gifts from the office
Just a quick post to let everyone know that our own Mr. Alex Berg has decided to bravely venture forth and create his own new company. After having been a part of Bonanza as well as numerous other startups over the last 10+ years, I applaud Alex for having the go-getter spirit to give his own (yet to be unveiled) company a go. Here's what he has to say about it:
"It’s with tremendously mixed feelings that I write to let you know this will be my final week at Bonanza.
"I’m leaving to start my own company – a near lifelong dream. While I’m very excited about it, leaving, as they say, is hard to do. Bonanza is without question the most amazing community I have ever been a part of.
"I’m very proud of what the team has been able to accomplish in past year. The site has improved leaps and bounds and the business is doing better than ever. I just love seeing record months in the middle of summer – it’s a great sign for future growth and... (continued)
Recent Posts
- EcommerceBytes 2012 Sellers Choice Awards
- Bonanza White + More Sale this Thursday through Sunday!
- Hello, 2012
- Kill SOPA, save America's Internet and American jobs: ACT NOW, bill goes to the House TOMORROW
- Is Shopping Therapeutic?
- Cyber Monday Rush Bonanza!
- Black Friday/Cyber Monday, Are you ready?
- Free Shipping Day, Sign up Now!
- Holiday Advertising @ the Bonz
- It's a Renaissance Bonanza!
- We've got a new look!
- New Look in the Works
- Bonanza and Google Attributes - A Winning Combination
- Personalization Debuts...And Soon!
- Bonanza Transition
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