Category and Trait Updates

I have a lot in “Everthing Else” – that I would like to see a category for – Genealogy – but can only hope one day.

more pepsi and re-readlol

Sounds good! Any possibility on adding “Coffee Roast Level” and “Grinding Level” to the traits under the “Coffee” category? – Leo

@ bookbin: Sure thing, I’ll see to it that the “manuals” subcategories of Motorcycles get moved to books (or an appropriate subcategory under it). You can also move it yourself if you’d like — that won’t harm anything. Thanks for the heads up.

@ cshort: That would be nice, definitely a good idea. With what will probably amount to thousands of items moved, I’m not sure how granular we’ll be able to get in telling sellers what has been moved where, but at the least, I reckon we’ll send an system email out to all sellers about the change once it’s complete.

@ GoodDogCoffee: That sounds very reasonable. If you use the link in the blog post for suggesting a new trait ( http://www.bonanza.com/item_trait_suggestions/choose_category_form ), you can suggest that one to us today and have it approved soon.

Cool! :-)

I’m probably jumping the gun or as usual have something twisted If I already have unique identifiers done on my listings as attributes, will I need to repeat that in traits

Spring cleaning.

>>we’re actually adding a new system-wide framework for all our vintage items to make sure they can be found.<<

I won’t ask you to expand on this as you already said this will be the next blog. I will just say HURRAY!! This is the best news I’ve heard in a long time! Categories really need cleaned up!

Sounds great, but it also sounds like we’ll have to go back in and edit traits. Not a big deal. Just trying to understand.

Thanks so much for the Update! I Hope this Helps a Lot of Members!

Thanks, Bill. I think most sellers will find this to be a meaningful upgrade. We’ve been yammering about this for awhile, so this is good news. Hope you have upgraded antiquarian books! There’s a lot of junk in there!

Nice to see you Bill. Nice upgrade and was needed. Thanks so much.

@ fuzzle: No, if you already have unique attributes on your items, you’re set, you won’t have to redo any work.

@ blarney: Custom categories won’t be affected, those are setup by you…so we have no plans to mess with those

Without reading all of the above posts now – actually I have to say
suggesting traits was impossible for ME –
emphasis on ME . Obviously I’m too dumb for that.
When ever I tried to add and/or ask for a new trait – there were only suggestd traits coming up.
‘Add new trait (as in ask for)’ does NOT give me an opportunity to write a new trait in. Everything is given there.

Well, I gave up after a few trials – yet I tried it again lately, no change.
So, what’s the sense of asking for new traits that might be needed if there is no way to put one in?

I’m sure, it’s me, because obv. others have admitted traits.
But like some things here… it’s hard to find.
I never could.

and here is another one BIRDBATHS MATERIAL how come there is not IRON OR CAST IRON

Birdbath Birdfeeder Iron with Stand Bird Water Features
Category: Home & Garden >> Yard, Garden & Outdoor Living >> Bird & Wildlife Accessories >> Birdbaths
Brand Name – Evergreen Enterprises, IncWhitehall ProductsOther
Color – BlackBlueBronzeBrownGoldGraniteGrayGreenMetalOrangePinkPurpleRedSilverTanTaupeWhiteYellow Condition – New Used
Material – BambooCeramicConcreteMetalOtherPlasticPolyResinResinWood

OMG!! Where am I supposed to categorize my travel bags now? I don’t understand why that category had to be removed. It’s not redundant, otherwise there’d be another relative category for me to put it in, nor is there a problem with fraud in that category.

It’s actually a need in most cases for personal and business use, but I can’t categorize it under clothing and “other” is NOT acceptable. So, where, pray tell, do I categorize these items now? And, no, “Everything Else” is not going to work either.

How will my items get seen in search if they don’t have a true category? If you expect all of your categories to fall in line with the “everything thing but the ordinary”, then you might as well remove them all because most of the items found here are ordinary stuff you can find elsewhere. Personally, I think you should change your tag line to something else rather than alienating most of your sellers here.

The current tag line should refer more to the way business is done here rather than the types of products we sell because it simply doesn’t fit. Besides, it would greatly reduce your target audience to make everyday stuff people need in a down economy hard to find here.

I’m sorry, but what you’re doing simply doesn’t make sense to me. Geez…as if I didn’t have enough work to do and stuff to deal with. Thanks!!

Any idea when this might be completed so I can begin the clean up?? Thanks Mary

Dolls and bears do NOT belong under Crafts! If they can’t have their own category at LEAST put them under Collectibles!

Dolls and Bears are not Crafts. They are Toys or Collectibles.

@ Bill I do not have MPN as it is showing when I am listing my craft paints but do have a UPC That is not the same as Google will be looking for is it. I am unsure what to do I just found this while starting to list them. Help Please
Thanks
Pam

somewhere I seen a category for them Cindy I will see if I can find it again and bmail it to you

Where did the coins and paper money catagory go?

I agree with LadybugzDollz. Either Dolls & Bears need a separate catagory, or they will need a sub-catagory under antiques and collectibles for the collectors. Collectors don’t want to search through tons of new toys to find antique and vintage dolls and bears for their collections. It is also misleading to lump antique/vintage dolls & bears in with toys since there are so many restrictions on toys now days due to lead, etc.

I see the Toys and Hobbies catagory in my booth. When I click on it, I see 174 items that are NOT toys since they’re vintage collectibles. I also see only TWO sub-catagories; educational and pretend play/preschool. My dolls and bears are not in either.

I just want to get clarification on something related to these new item specifics. If I have assigned attributes such as Brand, MPN, etc through the batch editor SEO section, do I also need to enter them through the item specifics on the individual listings? If the item specifics shows a blank, will the attributes added under the batch editor be picked up for GPS?

I checked some of my listings (through the edit item) and nothing shows up in the item specifics sections (for example, Brand is blank) even though the item does have the Brand attribute assigned when I look at it in the batch editor.

Thank you for any clarification.

@TheHotAttic – Dolls and Bears are under ‘Toys & Hobbies’ now.

@adventures: If you’ve already assigned Brand/MPN/etc through the SEO section of the batch editor, you don’t need to fill out the item trait for that.

@sofy: We are now about 95% done with our category consolidation and trait addition, so feel free to fill out any new traits that may have become available.

@paws: While we do have items that are ordinary, it’s not what we want our focus to be on. There are better sites for sellers with ordinary items. If there is nothing to separate Bonanza from other sites, then why should a buyer bother to think of us first? Even to the extent we may not clearly differentiate today, building something we are particularly good at needs to be a constant target for us.

FYI on “why to consolidate in the first place” – The rationale behind consolidating some of our parent categories was to reduce clutter at the top level for categories whose cumulative inventory was less than 1% of all our items. By definition, if a category’s total items aren’t at least 1% of Bonanza’s inventory (Dolls and Bears was about half a percent of our total inventory), then it makes more sense as a subcategory.

For consolidated categories (like the luggage), feel free to email support if you have a category that you think should be re-added under a new parent category.

Personally, as a buyer I didn’t think the categories were cluttered. I felt like they were great. And didn’t need to be uncluttered. I have searched other sites where they were cluttered and confusing to search for items. This place has not been so cluttered I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I know I am just one seller among thousands here but I didn’t and still don’t see a reason to have “reduced clutter”. By doing so you may have made it more difficult for buyers to find what they want.

Dolls have been on the top 10 list of collectibles for years. Why would you want to put them where doll collectors would not even think to look?

I also would like to know what you consider to be the “bonanza brand”?

Vintage dolls are NOT — repeat NOT — toys. Some of them sell for thousands of dollars in pristine condition with garments.

@debdoll: I’d agree that we don’t want to get rid of categories that may grow, but we aren’t “getting rid of” D&B (as we did Real Estate and many others), we’re just moving it into the subcategories that suit it. If in the future we find that 3-5% or more of our items are listed in the D&B category, then we would certainly re-assess whether to make it a top level category. But for the time being, we are striving to keep top level categories as containers that have at least 1% (preferably 3% or more) of our total site inventory or more. Given that D&B has about half a percent on the Bonanza of today, it has not yet become a dominant category for us in 2+ years of operation.

@cshort: D&B is in Toys, but we realize there are certainly items that don’t belong as Toys, which is why we have created D&B as a subcategory of Collectibles as well. As of later today or tomorrow we plan to get the same set of item traits in both of the D&B category locations.

I think one other piece of data to keep in perspective is that 70-80% of our items’ traffic comes via Google/Bin search, where these category changes won’t make a lick of difference. Another 15-25% comes from our site search, where the difference will also be negligible. Only a very small percentage of our users (less than 5%) actually start from the “Browse Categories” page, where D&B will now be located in a different area. And again, if we find that Bonanza becomes the dominant site for D&B aficionados in the future, we’re happy to revisit where the positioning of our category hierarchy. Getting our categories arranged effectively will be an ongoing project for us.

Bill, forgive me, but there’s a fallacy in your comment that “If we find that Bonanza becomes the dominant site for D&B aficionados in the future, we’re happy to revisit where the positioning of our category hierarchy.”

What vintage doll and bear collectors fear is that, if you don’t create the category, these items will NEVER become a dominant site for Doll and Bear aficionados.

(Again, please know that I have no vested interest in this issue, since I do not sell vintage dolls and bears, but I know that these items can sell for very large amounts of money if they can be found by those who wish to buy them, and that, therefore — in my humble opinion —
it would be a win-win situation for both sellers and Bonanza for you to consider revisiting your decision.

Carolyn

Never mind. Found it.

I’m with you Pace… I kinda feel like we suddenly went from “everything but the ordinary” to “everything LIKE the ordinary” It seems like these category changes are being initiated by someone (or someoneS) that really aren’t informed on WHAT goes WHERE… or have a rather skewed view.
To me the everyday Joe (or Jane) does NOT look at a “fashion” category for clothing because WE (I’m a Jane lol) just wear regular old “clothing, shoes and accessories” !!

I have a girlfriend who often shops online. She is very fashionable and likes nice things and trendy things as well. She said she wouldn’t look for “fashion” either. If she didn’t see Clothing and Accessories, she would just leave without looking further.

Why did Bonanza copy ebay’s fiasco of categories? I just tried to add an item – no more Clothing category – lo and behold all the crap that ebay setup with their disaster is now on bonanza.

WHY? You think it’s great to have jackets only to mean outerwear? You think it’s great to not have casual outfits and sets any longer? You don’t think listing clogs/mules is great so you think they should go under mixed lots?

I don’t mind ‘reorganizing’ if the intent is helpful. This was NOT. Go read the freaking clothing/shoes/accessories board, check out the multiple threads about how everyone hates the changes, how they hurt seller and buyeres.

GEEZ. Change it back – please!