HC Blog

A few questions / issues have been asked more than once so I thought I’d send out a quick note:

• If your store is not listed on the category page, check 2 things. First — your paid date must be within the past two months. Second — you must choose a category on your Profile page. If you chose one last night, it may have switched to the wrong category — go back to your Profile page and confirm that the right one is highlighted.
• Several of you have asked about being listed in multiple categories. There’s no way to do this at the moment. I am going to make a change for congos though (not yet, but soon). In the future, all congos will automatically be listed in the Congo category. The congos can then collectively choose one other category to be listed in. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to do this in the next few days.
• ETA — those of you who stock several different types of items — you can always change your category anytime you like. If you do a stocking with more of one type of thing, for example, you can switch your store to that category. Then switch to a different one for another stocking.
• Some HC Multi users may have experienced checkout errors this morning. I mistakenly uploaded some files that aren’t quite ready for prime-time yet. This should be fixed now. Email me if it’s not.
• Some stores are not showing the correct number of available items on the category pages. This is most likely due to stores switching from HC Multi to HC Standard. If you’ve done that in the past, I may not have deleted your HC Multi product tables, and that’s what’s screwing the code up. If this is the case, please post to this thread and I’ll get that corrected.
• The Login and Register links were not showing up well for some browsers. I think that’s fixed now, but email me at support@hyenacart.com if you’re having a hard time seeing them.
• I renamed the Soakers category to Knitted and Crocheted items, and the Web Design category has become Graphic Design. Remember, you can always email me to request a new category

Thanks!

I took this screen shot for posterity’s sake:

That’s the old Hyena Cart. Welcome in the new HC:

I’m hoping you all agree that this is a positive change.

The things to notice:

• Cleaner, more professional look. Easier to navigate with clear links at top, breadcrumb trail, and context-sensitive left-hand menu
• New category pages which list the stores in each category along with the number of items available in each store; also with links to filtered calendar for each individual category
• Privacy statement and Terms of Service
• Help section with site map and FAQs
• Improved search and search bar on every page
• My HC orders page more organized
• Small issues fixed including tabbing from id to password field in login and being able to hit ‘enter’ on search page to start search

Thanks to Andrea of Wanted Web Designs for laying out my initial design Hopefully you agree that the overall design is more appealing and easier to use (once you get used to it!)

Vendors — note that you can now find the vendor login pages either by clicking the “Login” link or under the “Sell” menu. Also, your paid date must be within the last two months in order to show up on the pages of stores lists.

Please take a moment to read through the Terms of Service. I don’t think there’s anything in there that will be surprising, but it is a living document and I’m willing to make modifications if you find anything unexpected.

HC Multi improvements are about 75% done. I’ve added shipping options and am in the middle of adding choices with pricing and quantities. I’m hoping to get that rolled out in the next few weeks with the Buy Now, auction, and lottery capability soon to follow.

After that, I’ll be working on a feedback system and the changes to make customer lives easier (persistent logins, ability to change email addresses, etc.) Then we’ll start marketing. I’ll be asking all of you for help. Our goal: to make 2007 the year of the Hyena!

Thanks so much, everyone!

First of all, I want to give all of you a huge thank you for your responses to the vendor and customer surveys. All in all, I got over 1000 surveys back and most of them contained very thoughtful and intelligent comments in addition to the numerical ranking. I went ahead and chose the two winners of the $10 in Paypal. The vendor survey winner was naturebabyknits, and the customer survey winner was azure

I have read each and every survey and wanted to share some of the highlights with everyone:

Customer survey highlights:

• First off, the customers were quite clear that overall, each Hyena Cart store is seen as it’s own entity. One store does not reflect on another. As one customer put it “HC reminds me of a mall, they have Dillards and Dollar Tree’s right next to each other, but completely separate.”
• Next, customers were overall having fun with the large number of vendors on the site. Most comments asked for an improved search and a better way to organize the stores so that people could find the items they’re looking for more easily.
• Few people wanted to see a subjective rating system of any kind but many people would like to see feedback integrated with the cart and tied to specific transactions.
• Customers gave high marks for the quality, variety and uniqueness of the products offered at HC.
• Whether or not to limit HC to handmade items was a polarizing question, with many strong feelings towards handmade goods, but the overall number coming out to about 40% against limiting to handmade items and 60% for the limitation.

Vendor survey highlights:

• 40% of vendors were not at all concerned about pricing or quality in other stores, while 60% were somewhat or very concerned
• Most vendors find the cart pretty easy to use, with a slight learning curve.
• I was happy to see that technical support was rated very well, despite my automated reply technique. A few people commented negatively on this, but the overwhelming majority were very positive about the support they receive
• The overwhelming response for future priorities is advertising.

Based on all this feedback, my top priorities for the next few months will be:

1) Improve HC Multi so that it eventually becomes the only primary (edited: only is a strong word — I won’t force anyone to switch ) HC cart. Customers really want to be able to check out with multiple items and the cart system is more similar to what they are used to. I will be adding shipping options to HC Multi, as well as choices that have costs and quantities associated with them. Finally, I’ll be adding auction, lottery and BIN capablity to HC Multi’s so they will do everything HC Standard does and more.

2) Re-vamp the HC site, giving it a fresh look and making it more easily navigable by people who aren’t familiar with HC.

3) Improve the search feature so that searches can be limited to titles or tags, certain price ranges, etc.

4) Implement a feedback system per transaction

5) Increase the initial HC sign-up fee to $35 and limit future stores to handmade goods only (neither of these changes will affect current HC stores). I will implement this starting Jan. 1, 2007

6) Make small changes to improve the customer experience including: staying logged in via cookies, being able to change email addresses, maintaining a favorite stores list, being able to purchase without logging in (only for Paypal verified purchases i.e, not auctions, lotteries, or BINs), being able to pay without having a Paypal account.

7) Add a User Agreement and Privacy Statement to the site.

8) Kick off the HC ad campaign

I’m hoping (hoping!) to have much of this complete by the end of January. Some of it may slide into February. I want to finish a good chunk of it before starting the ad campaign, but I guess that’s not 100% necessary.

After that, there’s still a very long to-do list, but these are the things I will be focusing on for the next little while.

Again, thank you so much for your input. It has helped me refocus on HC’s reason for being and it’s future path.