Hand Picked Lists 2.0
At Bonanza Labs, we've been laboring over a fun challenge for some time - building a product catalog that is at once both vast and shoppable. These two objectives are often at odds with one another. Having a bounty of merchandise means that Bonanza is a site where you can find the unfindable. From dragon belt buckles and George Nelson clocks to handcrafted jewelry boxes and vintage apparel, Bonanza sellers have something for everyone.
But when it comes to browsing, this breadth of inventory can become a real challenge. We want to make Bonanza a place where you can not only find something specific, you can also discover something great -- something you didn’t even know you were looking for. Right now Bonanza provides a well-tested (and well-regarded) finding experience that's great when you know what you're looking for, but we still have vast room for growth in the buyer browsing experience.
To be successful we need consumers to think of Bonanza as more than a store they occasionally find when Googling for a specific product. We want consumers to think of Bonanza as a business and brand that celebrates their individuality; the kind of site that helps them serendipitously discover something great.
What am I leading up to? We have seen how well hand picked lists (AKA ‘HPLs’) let our savvy users pluck the most interesting merchandise from our catalog of 3+ million items, so we are going to up the ante. We’ll soon be enhancing our hand-picked lists to promote select HPLs as ‘Collections’ and merchandising them throughout the site. What are Collections? Collections are souped up HPLs that fit a style, theme, or purchase occasion that correlate with our shoppers’ preferences. For example, we might have a Collection on retro home décor, vintage apparel and accessories, or even a Collection of cool antique maps. The goal of Collections is to help shoppers discover items tailored to their personal style and to expose them to merchants and categories they might not otherwise find.
Collections will be presented to shoppers in ways that extend beyond the homepage and increasingly will be personalized to user preferences in an effort to get the right products in front of the right customers.
Collections will launch in a week or so. More to come!
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34 responses to Hand Picked Lists 2.0
Sounds very progressive – can’t wait to see it roll out
Still can get my handpicked list to work. Bummer
hey, Hey, HEY- NOW you’re talkin – This sounds GReat!!!
@candlesandmore – if you’re having difficulties creating a hand picked list shoot a quick email to support (address below). They’ll help out and get us a bug report if need be. Thanks!
[email protected]
Sounds AWESOME!!!
Thanks so much for selecting my HPL ‘Limeade’ for the Home Page Showcase! I am thrilled it was selected!
Soon we will have a new creative avenue – Collections!
This sounds like it might make it easier to promote the site as a whole by using the Collections to target people and specific interests from our blogs, Twitter, Google organic, etc.
Sounds like a GREAT idea!! Plus, ‘Collection’ HPL’s sound like lots of fun to create…Now I won’t get ANYTHING done around here!
Sounds wonderful and fun – can’t wait!
A great idea to spread the joys of Bonanza to our customers. I would love to hear more about how the items are going to be ‘picked’. I hope the ‘little guys’ will be included, as they have wonderful unique items to share that many of the large booths do not. NMB
sounds good
Another great step forward. Keep up the good work…
Hmmm….. (stroking my chinny-chin-chin)… sounds interesting. Will be looking forward to see what this is going to be. My mind is not quite getting the idea.
Well I’d LOVE to see a Collection of Fabrics for sure, but then I’m prejudiced to such! LOL! When I do a HPL, I Enjoy doing so VERY Much, I think THIS is going to be WONDERFUL to incorporate into HPL’s! Good Going!
So… now we are going to call it the same thing Artfire calls theirs ????
Don’t know anything about Artfire, but I like the concept.
Guess it is time to start working on some HPLs.
Alex: Will the collections show up on the “Buy” page?
hm. ??? Thinking like Indizona.
What’s going on now is not about unusual items, but only color themes.
That’s too easy.
I bumped in to the Collections questions while finally having the time to make an HPL tonight – none of the suggestions were color themes …haha!
Now it makes sense after having read this blog. Great idea. Perhaps the collections will not be constricted by the needs of the Home Page rotation and structure …i.e. light backgrounds, single items, no writing, no flesh, no black, perfect cropping etc. etc. …?
Being baffled by it – the Collections choice – I figured I would choose “Items that dazzle – This list is Gorgeous”
There is a box to describe one’s experience with a collection – where will that publish? And related to that, would one with experience with a collection still be limited to only include “one” of their own items? Or could that be increased just a tad, to say 2 or 3 in order to give examples, and so forth?
My question, too. I was sadly disappointed with my last HPL, since I was only able to list 1 of my items. I could very easily make a ‘collection’ of 15 of my own items, with others free to add their own. We need more details.
@irishhonebac – Collections won’t be featured on the ‘Buy’ page this week, but I imagine they could in the future. This will be just our initial launch this week. We’ll make adjustments based on analytics and feedback of course.
@EclecticStuff – no changes to the homepage are presently planned. And yes, it looks like you did find a bit of the Collections experience live already. The question you mentioned is to help us get an more of idea on the ‘intent’ of the list.
Collections are, in essence, promoted HPLs so they’ll be governed by the same rules when it comes to the number of items a merchant can include from their own booth.
Love the Improvements and Promotional Level of the HPL ideas.
Also nice new Pic Alex!
It’s a “Win Win” on the improvements Alex…Nice Job.
sounds awesome keep up the good work Bonanza
<3
Please remember to include antique and vintage items other than clothes, shoes & handbags! I see so much apparel featured here and very little for antique and vintage household items. Thanks!
@Alex …it looks like you did find a bit of the Collections experience live already. The question you mentioned is to help us get an more of idea on the ‘intent’ of the list.
So what is written in that box will not publish?
@EclecticStuff – corret. That answer to that question is not shown on an HPL or Collection.
I agree with topnotch. It’d sure be nice to see other things besides “clothes, shoes, and handbags”.
Bonanza bills itself as “everything but the ordinary” but you’d never know it by looking at the home page HPLs.
What IF we could specify the “purchasing occasion” or type of shopper we are targeting in the HPLs/Collections we create? ie “High School Graduation Gift Ideas.”
I’ve Googled for gift ideas many times and I never get helpful results. I would be THRILLED to find a Bonanza collection of “4-year-old Birthday girl gift ideas” or “Get well/Care Packages for hospitalized children” (With all of the great minds we have at work here on Bonanza, who knows what all we might come up with LOL) . . . But it could result in Bonanza becoming the only GOOD search result for these types of vague/random shopping queries. And who WOULDN’T be a loyal customer for LIFE after finding great answers like that!
Oh, and if that IS what the “Tell us about your experience with these sorts of items:” field is for, then my new idea is to re-write that statement
Maybe it’s just my NOOB confusion, but I don’t understand what information Bonanza is wanting here or, for that matter, how this info will be used to make this concept work effectively. (I only want to provide VALUABLE info!)
Still scratching my head. . .
BTW I think this has the potential to be great! So keep up the good work!
So, if they won’t be on the home page, where will they be?
@Fab_Findingz – thanks for the feedback on the experience-related question. I’ll see if we can get that updated to make it clearer.
@cshort0319 – Collections will appear a number of places across the site and in email. Some will launch tomorrow night (like a Collections main page similar to our ‘Buy’ page), some will come very soon (like increased email marketing), and others will be a bit later.
Good morning. Will you be tweaking the “Collections” feature so the items featured are REALLY relevant to the Item being viewed? Some of the ones I viewed were not even close to being akin. I am thinking Collectables Category might be a issue if items are randomly picked from Collectables? And is there a way to keep Users from trading “nominations” to sway what appears?
Opted out for the time being.
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