Improved navigation on OMINS-based websites

August 15, 2008 – 4:53 pm

We’ve implemented an optional new feature for all OMINS websites which allows easier navigation and searching through categories.  Based off the Trade Me feature, you can now drill down through categories to help narrow your results.

The following screenshots show this feature in action:

Fig.1: In the iBuy Games category, you can see all immediate sub-categories.

Fig.2: Clicking on the Games sub-category, you can now see further down into the category tree.

Fig.3: Clicking on XBOX 360 brings you further in again, showing you the remaining level of categories.

(click to enlarge).

This feature is available for all OMINS users right now (naturally :) ), and can be turned on or off in your Promotion Group settings.

Additional features:
Along with this great feature, we’ve also added the ability to give your categories descriptions.  These descriptions will display whenever a visitor enters a category and can help to explain what that category contains.



New bulk-update pricing panel

August 6, 2008 – 12:52 pm

A very common task when selling products is updating or adjusting your prices.  To help with this, we recently upgraded our pricing system to use a new pricing panel.  This panel allows you to update your product prices, and all the prices on it’s auction rules in one easy place.

(click to enlarge)

However, today we’ve extended this panel to work with multiple products at once!  This means you can now update the prices from multiple products on one, easy page.


(click to enlarge)

A short guide on how to make use of this is in our support forum:
http://snipesoft.net.nz/support/viewtopic.php?p=820#820



OMINS now fully supports listing on Sella (and is the first to do so to boot!)

August 6, 2008 – 10:10 am

As part of our commitment to e-commerce in New Zealand, we’re always looking for ways to help our clients sell their products.  This can come in the form of a new feature, advice on sales techniques or supporting new places to sell.

It’s with this is mind I’m happy to announce that OMINS now fully supports listing on Sella (www.sella.co.nz) (and is the first to do so to boot!)  You can have Sella-only listings and multiple Sella accounts just like you can with Trade Me.  And naturally, this is all part of the standard system and available for no extra cost.

We’ve put together a short guide on how to list on Sella using OMINS.  You can find this at our support forum:
http://www.snipesoft.net.nz/support/viewtopic.php?p=819#819

About Sella:

sella.co.nz is a brand new classified and auction site from the team who brought you finda.co.nz and wises.co.nz.

We’ve been very impressed with the experience of integrating into Sella.  They quickly had our feed integrated without any hassle.  This is the sign of a professional outfit and we wish them all the best for the future.

What about Zillion?

We’ve contacted Zillion several times in the past about integration, and while they showed interest and have agreed to integrate, we haven’t heard from them in a while.  If you’d like to list on Zillion through OMINS, we recommend contacting Zillion (http://www.zillion.co.nz/help/contact.php) and registering your interest.



New Help pages

August 3, 2008 – 8:44 pm

We have made some new help pages to go with the updated product / auction rule pages:

quick guide to setting up a new product:
http://snipesoft.net.nz/support/viewtopic.php?t=276

A guide to auction length and timing of auction using OMINS:
http://snipesoft.net.nz/support/viewtopic.php?t=280

The new auto adjust (advanced feature) instructions:
http://snipesoft.net.nz/support/viewtopic.php?t=279
(this shows how to create new highy dynamic buynows and $1 reserves that can will automatically adjust prices and the number of items listed based on sales or average prices)

An couple of examples of a buynow setup and a $1 reserve setup, these also contain examples of the new auto ajust features in context:
http://snipesoft.net.nz/support/viewtopic.php?t=281

We have also added a new trademe tip, The 25% Theory:
http://snipesoft.net.nz/support/viewtopic.php?t=277



OMINS updates

July 21, 2008 – 6:31 pm

One of the benefits of being an OMINS user is constant updates.  Whether they be for performance, features or usability - we’re always looking for ways to improve the system.  Often we’ll push small updates to the system daily!  Of course, since OMINS is a web-based system, there’s nothing for users to download, configure or install.  The updates are just automatically available!

It’s with this in mind that I would like to mention a couple of major updates.

Performance improvement

Last week we had a bit of a performance hunt and tracked down many places that weren’t as optimised as they could be.  As a result, we’ve increased performance across the board!  This is especially noticeable for people on slower connections or those accessing from overseas, but everyone will benefit.

Product setup work-flow improvements

One of the things we learnt while developing Easy Lister was that ease-of-use is very important to users.  We found many people were unsatisfied with current auction software, and wanted something powerful, but easy to use at the same time!

It was with this in mind that we took a step back and looked at the OMINS product setup workflow.  We found many places where we could not only make it easier to use, but add functionality at the same time!

I’ve outlined a few of the changes below.

Pricing control panel

One very common activity for anyone selling products is price adjustment, especially when you’re selling the same product on multiple platforms such as TradeMe and your OMINS e-commerce website.

While OMINS employs a powerful inheritance system for pricing, it’s now easier than ever to update all your prices at once thanks to a central pricing panel for your products.  Blue prices means that price is inherited, which means that if you change the main prices those will change automatically also.

(click to enlarge)

Set auction timing

OMINS has a couple of ways to set when you want your auctions to list.  Not only is there a powerful “timeslots” feature which is fantastic for $1 reserve campaigns, but you can also simply set which times you want the auction to list.  This makes timing auctions easy!  And of course, no need to leave your computer on to list since OMINS is web-based.  Save power - keep New Zealand green! ;)

(click to enlarge)

Auto-adjust Pricing

Auto-adjust is a brand new feature we’re adding to OMINS which allows automatic pricing or listing number adjustments based on sales history and performance.  This is fantastic as it removes the need to micro-manage your prices or listing numbers and lets the market price itself!  I think the screenshots explain quite well how these features work. :)

(click to enlarge)

TradeMe fee breakdown

Finally, we come to a new feature which will certainly come in handy!  OMINS has always shown how much a listing will cost you, but we’ve now expanded on that to bring you a full breakdown of why it will cost that much.  This fee breakdown is updated dynamicaly whenever you make a change so you can see how much it will cost you at any time.

Summary

As you can see, there’s quite a few great new features coming to OMINS in the next week or so and these are just a sample!  We’re looking forward to the feedback from our users and we’d love to hear what you think of these features, or any other great ideas you have.  Let us know!

P.S…

Keep an eye out for more information about our seamless integration with the top auction sites.  Just a click of a button and they’ll be there with no extra work!  No exporting to XML, no manually uploading, no need to download and install extra software… just fully seamless integration as you’d expect from a whole software solution.



Easy Lister on temporary hiatus

July 11, 2008 – 2:22 pm

We started Easy Lister with a goal - to offer a cheap, easy-to-use alternative to the currently available listing tools.  We have had great support from many people who were tired of the needless complexities of other software and wanted something that works for them - not the other way around.

However, with a recent explosion in interest for OMINS, we just don’t have the time to properly support Easy Lister or it’s users.  Therefore, we have had to make the tough decision to put the release of Easy Lister on temporary hiatus.

Can’t you release Easy Lister without support?
We could, but we’d rather not.  :) Great support is an important part of being a Snipesoft customer, and if we don’t feel we can live up to that we’d rather wait until we can.

What should I use now that Easy Lister is delayed?
Of course, we’d love for you to try out OMINS and see if it is right for your business.  Please feel free to contact us for more information and a free trial.

When will Easy Lister be released?
Due to the growth in interest for OMINS, we are currently looking into expanding our team.  This will allow us to continue to support current and future OMINS clients, and may also allow us to re-open Easy Lister development.  Watch this space! :)



Bling it

July 8, 2008 – 7:09 pm

When I was at the eBay conference a couple of weeks ago I noticed a really handy looking product, it is a application called “bling it”. What is essentially does is quite simple, it lets you remove the background from any digital photo and add either a pure white background or even better some kind of patterned background, then easily resize and add your own watermark.

Many will know the benefits of using an application such as photoshop to do this, it really makes the product look professional and more appealing and will genuinely get you better sell though and prices, I used to use photoshop to do this on my photos. However it is a bit cumbersome and time consuming.

“Bling it” seemed to be designed for one thing only, preparing photos of items for website or auction site listings. It looked very quick and quite simple to move though the steps of removing the old background adding a new one resizing and adding your own watermark, since it is designed specifically and ONLY for these tasks, I could easily see that it would take only a fraction of the time using this to prepare a photo than it would using something like photoshop.

Another benefit over photoshop or other image software is this application costs US$49.99 instead of the hundreds that photoshop charges.

There is a 14 day free trial so I recommend anyone who finds themselves taking digital photos of products for auction or website, give this a go on their trial I wish i had this when I was selling online.

you can download or buy it here: http://www.blingit.us/

It is a desktop application, however they do have a Windows and a Mac version.



TradeMe fee increase (no, really…)

June 23, 2008 – 3:57 pm

Just a heads up about a TradeMe update that could be potentially quite costly for some sellers.

OMINS customers that want to update their prices can either use the bulk pricing updater, or else we can run a script to quickly update your entire product catalogue.  Send an email to support to request this.

Of course, this will only affect you if you set the reserve price manually.  Products that use the advanced pricing inheritance feature for reserve prices won’t be affected.

23 June - Reserve fee to apply in general categories

A 25c reserve fee will apply to auctions where you choose a reserve price that is higher than the start price, effective from 1 July 2008.

This change is designed to offer a better buying experience by encouraging sellers to be transparent about reserve prices. As a result, buyers will know that any bid has the chance to be successful.

No fee applies when you keep the reserve price equal to the start price, or when listing a car or other vehicle.



OMINS - the power of search

June 21, 2008 – 7:58 pm

As time goes on and as a business grows, it generates more and more information.  Information about sales, information about customers, information about products…  The list can seem endless.

Therefore, one of our top priorities when designing OMINS was how to deal with this data.  How to make it easy to store, but more importantly how to make it easy to retrieve when you want it.

The most obvious solution to this problem was building OMINS around powerful search functionality.  Allow the user to not only quickly search for data anywhere in the system, but also allow them to construct advanced searches based on almost any condition!

Furthermore, once the user has constructed a custom search they can then save this search and recall it later.  As only the search conditions are saved, and not the data itself, recalling the search will always return the most up-to-date data.

After implementing this model, the benefits became apparent very quickly. We found we were able to easily use it as a base of many other features in OMINS, a couple of which are outlined below.

Reporting:

Because they are built using the search functionality, we are able to quickly create or adjust reports as needed.  It also allows us to provide standard reports which can be further refined or expanded by the user based on almost any criterea he or she wants at any time - live!  The end result is a very powerful, system-wide reporting system.

For example: Want to see the profit report for all your products?  No problem.  What about just the products that are currently in stock?  Easy.  How about only products that sold in the last week of February?  Piece of cake.

Emails:

Once again, emails are made very powerful in OMINS thanks to the search functionality.  They can be constructed and sent out based on almost any event in the system!  This is accomplished by using a previously saved search (see above).

For example: A user could create a new saved search that found all customers in the system who have bought a product off TradeMe in the past week.  They can then create an email thanking those customers, attach this email to that saved search and schedule it to run weekly.  The end result is a simple “thank you” email going out automatically to all of your TradeMe customers.  Easy, but powerful.

A few further examples of emails provided standard in OMINS:

  • Daily tracking number mailout for all sales sent that day.
  • Scheduled payment reminders to customers who haven’t yet paid.
  • If a previous customer has been bidding on or watching one of your TradeMe auctions, OMINS can send a link to that product on your website allowing the customer to buy it directly without waiting for an auction.
  • Many more. :)

For the techies:

All of this powerful search functionality wouldn’t be possible without good infastructure to support it!  That’s why we built OMINS on enterprise-level software such as the MySQL database server.  This gives us infinately more power, performance and flexibility over entry-level software like Microsoft Access.

Of course, as we’ve said before, being web-based helps a great deal too. :)  Desktop software just doesn’t allow for the kind of flexibility or power needed to provide these features.

Summary

As you can see, by taking advantage of search we have been able to make OMINS both easy to use and very powerful.

Not an OMINS user?  Leave us a comment telling us how you manage your business data!



Easy Lister is (almost) alive!

May 16, 2008 – 3:52 pm

Another update on Easy Lister - we just listed our first auctions entirely through Easy Lister!

We’re actually ahead of schedule (when does that ever happen!), and we’re just testing a few last minute things and adding a bit of polish. Once that’s done we’ll release it for beta testing and you can all take a look and help us make this the best (and easiest :) ) listing tool for TradeMe!