Eric
July 14th, 2008, 04:54 PM
Hi,
I realized that Stefan and I keep referring to some big changes that we are working on at datafeedr but haven't posted officially about them.
After getting a lot of good feedback about 'The Factory' (where you create and build your store), we decided to do a complete overhaul of the Factory area. We are halfway finished and hope to rollout these changes in August. Here are some of the major changes that you will see:
SEARCH
You will be able to search by many different product attributes such as the products' name, description and keywords. You'll also be able to filter your results by price, merchant and network.
It will be an entirely new way of finding products but we feel that this method will allow you to find exactly the products you want without going through dozens of pages to find them.
SUBSCRIBE TO SEARCH QUERIES
In the current system, you add specific products to your store. This is very useful as you know exactly what products are in your store. The only problem is, what happens when new products that you would like in your store are released. They should be automatically included in your store, right?
So, our new 'subscription' feature will allow you to subscribe to a search query that you create and if new products are returned in the query, they will automatically be added to your store.
Let's take a look at an example. Let's say you do a search with the following parameters:
Merchant name: Modern Bike
Keyword search: Mountain Bike Tires
Price: $25 - $80
The first time you do the search, it yields 30 results. But then 1 month later, Modern Bike releases 10 more tires that match your search. They will automatically be added to your store the next time you update your store.
Of course you will still have the ability to add specific products and you will not have to use the subscription feature, but we think that it will help you keep your store current with the newest products on the market without having to sort through your feed when you wnt to do an update.
CATEGORY MANAGEMENT
We have realized that category management, depending on the structure of the merchant's datafeed, can be a time consuming process especially when you need to move many hundreds of products from 1 category to another, need to delete many top-level categories but keep the sub-categories or just categorize many uncategorized products.
So we are completely re-doing the way your products will be organized. Now, instead of relying on how merchants categorized (or did not categorize) their datafeed, you will choose what categories the products will go into.
Let's take the bike store example again. If you have a bicycle website, you know there are specific categories that you want to have in your store. One of them is Mountain Bike Tires. So you do your search (like the example above) and just add those products to the category you create.
Simply type in the category name and you're done.
If you want to have your categories nested within other categories, just add your category structure separated by slashes '/' and you can quickly build a multilevel category structure:
Mountain Bike / Accessories / Tires
UPDATE STORE FROM WP-ADMIN
Soon after the release of the new Factory, we will also make it possible to update your store from within your site's admin area. This will make it a lot easier to keep your store up-to-date without taking up too much of your time.
These are just some of the major changes we will be rolling out soon. And if you are wondering how this will affect your current stores, don't worry. We will make it backwards compatible so you won't lose any of the stores that you have already created.
Thanks for everyone's input and feedback.
Eric
I realized that Stefan and I keep referring to some big changes that we are working on at datafeedr but haven't posted officially about them.
After getting a lot of good feedback about 'The Factory' (where you create and build your store), we decided to do a complete overhaul of the Factory area. We are halfway finished and hope to rollout these changes in August. Here are some of the major changes that you will see:
SEARCH
You will be able to search by many different product attributes such as the products' name, description and keywords. You'll also be able to filter your results by price, merchant and network.
It will be an entirely new way of finding products but we feel that this method will allow you to find exactly the products you want without going through dozens of pages to find them.
SUBSCRIBE TO SEARCH QUERIES
In the current system, you add specific products to your store. This is very useful as you know exactly what products are in your store. The only problem is, what happens when new products that you would like in your store are released. They should be automatically included in your store, right?
So, our new 'subscription' feature will allow you to subscribe to a search query that you create and if new products are returned in the query, they will automatically be added to your store.
Let's take a look at an example. Let's say you do a search with the following parameters:
Merchant name: Modern Bike
Keyword search: Mountain Bike Tires
Price: $25 - $80
The first time you do the search, it yields 30 results. But then 1 month later, Modern Bike releases 10 more tires that match your search. They will automatically be added to your store the next time you update your store.
Of course you will still have the ability to add specific products and you will not have to use the subscription feature, but we think that it will help you keep your store current with the newest products on the market without having to sort through your feed when you wnt to do an update.
CATEGORY MANAGEMENT
We have realized that category management, depending on the structure of the merchant's datafeed, can be a time consuming process especially when you need to move many hundreds of products from 1 category to another, need to delete many top-level categories but keep the sub-categories or just categorize many uncategorized products.
So we are completely re-doing the way your products will be organized. Now, instead of relying on how merchants categorized (or did not categorize) their datafeed, you will choose what categories the products will go into.
Let's take the bike store example again. If you have a bicycle website, you know there are specific categories that you want to have in your store. One of them is Mountain Bike Tires. So you do your search (like the example above) and just add those products to the category you create.
Simply type in the category name and you're done.
If you want to have your categories nested within other categories, just add your category structure separated by slashes '/' and you can quickly build a multilevel category structure:
Mountain Bike / Accessories / Tires
UPDATE STORE FROM WP-ADMIN
Soon after the release of the new Factory, we will also make it possible to update your store from within your site's admin area. This will make it a lot easier to keep your store up-to-date without taking up too much of your time.
These are just some of the major changes we will be rolling out soon. And if you are wondering how this will affect your current stores, don't worry. We will make it backwards compatible so you won't lose any of the stores that you have already created.
Thanks for everyone's input and feedback.
Eric