What's New & Next

My how the holiday season flies by when you're fixing bugs! All sorts of developments have been happening lately and I've gotten a bit behind in announcing them... so let the catchup begin!

New Features & Bugfixes of Significance

• Checkout 2.0. Mark has been ...ahem... politely informing me for the last month that many sellers have hoped that we might take some steps to make checking out easier. They are finally getting their way, with more than 10 small and large checkout improvements put into place this evening. Some of the more significant improvements include: removing one of the three screens (shipping) from checkout for repeat buyers offers; clarifying the payment screen; eliminating the need for buyers to choose between Paypal or GC on the first cart page; and calculating shipping based on the offer's shipping location (rather than the user's home location). I'm hoping to soon squeeze in a couple more improvements still, like a custom invoicing system, but these first steps should be a fine start for an easier & faster buying experience.
• HTML is default. One of our more common feature requests was to make it so that when new buyers visited the site they'd see the seller's listings in HTML when possible. It has now been made so.
• Billing screen improvements. Not only was the Bonanzle fees page ugly, but it was also confusing and it failed to do some pretty basic things (like list past fees paid). It's gotten a face lift, and soon will have the option of automatic billing added so you don't have to remember to visit it every month.
• Remote chat improvements. All four chat clients (Gmail, Yahoo, MSN Messenger and AIM) are now available. Sometimes. Sometimes MSN and AIM still go on vacation ('tis the season!), but we're certainly drawing closer to having them work regularly.

Coming Soon to a Marketplace Near You

• More checkout improvements, like those listed above.
• Automatic billing and optional enrollment in affiliate program (drives traffic to your items from bloggers and other sites) for those signed up with automatic billing. More details to come.
• Hopeful unveiling of that one plan to get a thousand more buyers per day injected into site (in 1-2 weeks?)
• More social features, when Bill gets to choose what he wants to add.

A Word of Caution

USPS has been quite the dullard lately when trying to calculate shipping rates -- sometimes taking long periods to calculate shipping, sometimes not calculating rates at all (I've checked on our end, and all is well in the request we make to USPS). In cases where shipping can't be calculated, buyers can still make an offer to seller, but can't buy items immediately, since USPS won't tell us what shipping price to charge. Tales of woe in trying to use even USPS' own site lately are well chronicled (on our forums and elsewhere), so especially during this busy holiday season, I'd recommend flat rate shipping prices (or UPS) if it is possible. I'll be continuing to monitor the availability of the USPS services over the next couple days to see if it improves, but lately their availability has been quite spotty indeed.

Congratulations to November Referral Winners!

Watch them go! User NameReferred Users CountTheir Awesome BoothGift Certificate Value knkracing1190Legos Plus$200 KimsKorner142KimsKorner$100 Cindy'sCloset67 Cindy'sCloset's booth$25 Carolyn25 Carolyn's Booth $25 thetlcshoppe16 The TLC Shoppe $25 Alilbirdy2 16Digital Designs and More$25 Thanks for spreading the word guys and gals! You're way more popular than me, Mark, or any of our friends. I applaud you for that. Bravo. Contest results are now verified, please email [email protected] to arrange for help in checkout when buying your Bonanzle loot.

The Ascent Continues

Thanks to all the buyers and sellers, new and old, who have told their friends and customers about their new home on Bonanzle! Traffic continues to grow daily -- we're now consistently averaging more than 10,000 unique buyers and sellers visiting per day. You continue to write the story of one the most successful grass roots marketplaces ever created, and we thank you all for your total radness.