Re-jiggering categories and BiN handling for HCM stores

Me again 🙂

OK – first of all, I added one more category, “Household and Laundry,” for cloth napkins, unpaper towels, laundry soap, etc. Also, if you check out the main HC page, you’ll now see that the text under each category is hotlinked to a search for those items. I’m hoping to make the site more browsable and also introduce items to shopperS who may not be aware of them: “Dryer balls? What are those? What are mei-tai’s? What about I-spy bags? Oh, I didn’t know HC had *toffee*!!”

So, you’ll want to be sure that the items you sell under each item type have the right tags to come up in that search. For example, under knitted items, the search for socks is “knit socks”. Just make sure those words occur in your title or tags.

I’ve also re-organized so fabric stores are now categorized under Patterns, Fabric and Sewing Supplies, leaving the Yarn category for Yarn & Knitting Supplies. Please ensure your store is showing under the correct category.

I’ll take suggestions on item types and search wording in the comments — so please feel free to give your input 🙂

In other news, I’ve changed the way I coded BiN handling for HCMulti stores. If you recall, last week, I set it up so each BiN click creates a new order. However, I wasn’t thinking about big BiN stockings where shoppers would be buying a lot of BiN items at once. It made for a ton of extraneous orders who’s items got paid for together in a different order. The seller would have had to go through and manually cancel all the extras. So, what I’ve done is changed it back to the way it was (i.e., the order for BiN’s is not created until the shopper checks out), but all of the BiN purchases can now be viewed via the shopper’s Auction, Drawing, BiN page (in their My HC pages). So buyers can see immediately if they stalked successfully, and be linked directly to their haul. Also, if someone clicks BiN, but doesn’t pay, the seller can re-stock, and no order is created. Unfortunately, this means the seller can’t flag the buyer, but please keep track of it manually, and if a shopper is a repeat offender, you can blacklist him / her and notify the helpdesk. I think this is the best compromise for now, but am still open to suggestions.

I also updated the feedback page so feedback cannot be left for orders with “New” or “Cancelled” status.

Ok — that’s it for now. Thanks everyone!