3 Month Battle Plan (Sept-Nov)
We’re sure you’ll agree that this year has just flown by! It always does! In the last few months we’ve been working hard to continually improve Zibbet and we’ve certainly achieved a lot.
The purpose of our ‘3 month battle plan’ is to keep you informed of what features and enhancements you can expect over the coming months. It’s also an opportunity for you to make suggestions for features you’d like to see in future battle plans. We’re always listening to our members here at Zibbet and want to provide you with the high quality tools you need to succeed.
Lets take a look at what we’ve achieved from our previous battle plan. When comparing you will see that we achieved 3 of the 6 projects, however we did considerably more than we had planned in the ‘improved search’ project, plus many other side features have been added too. Here’s a list of everything we achieved:
- Launch of Zibbet Community Hub - www.community.zibbet.com (if you’re not on there yet, we’d love you to join us!)
- Improved site performance with faster page load times (lots more work will be done on this over time).
‘Share’ features added, allowing browsers to share your shop and items with their friends and followers on Facebook, Twitter, Kaboodle, StumbleUpon and through email.- RSS feeds made available for your shop
- Improvements to ‘leaving feedback’ feature.
- SEO improvements allowing Google and other search engines to find your items easier and present it in a better way to browsers, improving click-through rates to your shop and items
- Improved page to upload your item images when listing - faster uploading plus ability to rearrange images once uploaded.
- Premiums now have another 4 item images allowed to be added
- Ability for Premiums to place their items in the new Gift Guides (yet to be officially launched)
- Sale by section - Premium sellers can now put only certain section(s) of their choice ‘on sale’.
- Launch of ‘Fantastic Five’ weekly feature. A fun article that shoppers will love!
- SEARCH IMPROVEMENTS. Lots of search improvements and this is where we spent most of our
development time, as we continued to make it better and better than we first originally planned…which was definitely worth it! They include: Brand new design for search results, ability to filter results by color, price range, where sellers ship to, and categories. Ability to ’share’ your search. Sorting results by relevance increases chances of shoppers staying longer on site, plus Premium members are given a ‘relevance boost’. Search now recognizes the ‘root’ word, e.g. a search for loving, would also search for ‘love’. WARNING: Fasten your seatbelt because there are HUGE speed improvements too! - Shoppers can now search through all items ‘On Sale’. Any item that Premium members have placed in ’sales mode’ will appear in these search results.
- Ability to search within a particular shop. This will be particularly handy for sellers that have a lot of items in their shop.
- Brand new look for Zibbet. See homepage screenshot example below. This makes Zibbet more appealing to shoppers and encourages them to start browsing your shops and items!
There’s plenty of other small improvements and bug fixes, but for the sake of taking up too much space, we’ve left them out.
PROPOSED 3 MONTH BATTLE PLAN (SEPT - NOV)
In the previous 3 month battle plan we didn’t get around to completing - checkout improvements, Google Analytics, and auto upload of items to Google Base / Merchant Center (Google’s product search engine). We still plan to complete these three tasks as part of the current battle plan, PLUS the following things (in no particular order):
- Launch Gift Guides - Premium sellers can currently add their items to a gift guide when listing, however it isn’t available to shoppers yet.
- New BUY page - We’re getting this redesigned to be more appealing and user friendly for shoppers.
- New SELL page - This is also getting redesigned. We want it to clearly convey all the benefits of selling with Zibbet in order to attract as many sellers as possible to the site.
Remember, more sellers = more items, which = more buyer traffic to Zibbet and your shop. It’s in your best interest to see as many sellers as possible sign up to use Zibbet to sell their work. - Auto feed all sellers items into TheFind.com, a very well trafficked shopping site, increasing exposure to your items.
- Vacation Mode - If you’re planning to go away this holiday season, you can easily put your shop in ‘Vacation Mode’ which will have a number of customizable options available to you.
- Facebook Application - This will allow you to have a mini version of your shop, where items can be purchased, right on Facebook!
- Zibbet Widget - This will allow you to customize a widget full of your Zibbet listed items. This widget will be able to be added to your blog, website etc. People will actually be able to buy your items directly on the widget without having to come to the main Zibbet website!
No doubt there will be other little improvements made along the way. Remember, you can stay up to date with all the behind the scenes development action by following @ZibbetScoop on Twitter.
Thanks for being a part of Zibbet! We’re on the rise and looking forward to a great future! 
We’d love to hear your thoughts and comment below!
Image credit: MillaLove
Tags: 3 month battle plan, battle plan, planned features, popular posts
Wonderful!! I am so glad to be a part of such a vibrant community!
Awesome! Aftering reading this I am inspired to get out there and make my shop the best it can be. I know alot more folks are going to be checking it out with all these changes and I am Motivated!
Thank you for all your hard work and for keeping us all informed. It’s great to know we have such a dedicated team on our side!!!
All sounds fantastic!
Look forward to seeing all the changes. Thanks for all the hard work!
Wonderful, wonderful! You guys really are the best! Thank you for keeping us in the loop! xo
Holidays, here comes Zibbet!
Thanks for all the hard work guys! You’re terrific. So happy that the launch of this site is finally here!
Auto feeding items to thefind is awesome!
Nice work! Hoping for an Etsy item import (unless it’s there and I haven’t seen it yet).
So wonderful to be a part of this ‘family’, Hugs!
thanks for the info and the progress! I’d like to request that you guys widen the boxes we use when we list items. They’re SO narrow and short that you can’t see what you’ve just typed in. For instance, the tag box is so short that you have to constantly scroll backwards to see if you added a particular tag. The item description box makes it really hard to see what you’re entire description looks like while you’re typing it.
Thanks!
This is great…..just great!! I’ve said it before but it is like Christmas every day at Zibbet. Plus, I am impressed that you seriously target the most important features for both buyer and sellers.
Congratulations for the accomplishment of so much during the last three months. I’m looking forward to even more to come. The future looks very bright for Zibbet and I feel so blessed to be a part of this wonderful venue. There’s no place like Zibbet!
So great to see all the positivity flowing!
@riskybeads: I’ve added wider boxes for descriptions and a more user friendly tagging system to our list. They should be fairly quick enhancements for us to make.
All sounds great….I feel very blessed to be part of the Zibbet family ! It feels good to know you have such support and caring in the administration ! I feel FABULOUS things coming for Zibbet and it’s Zibbeters!!!
Wow! Do you folks ever sleep? You have surpassed my hopes with every enhancement you’ve made, and I’m certain you will continue to impress! I love you Zibbet!
Great plan! Can’t wait to see new improvements.
Congrats for all done and I wish you luck for the new 3 month plan.
I find zibbet very easy for use and absolutely user friendly for sellers.
http://www.zibbet.com/boutiqueaholic
Yeah Jonathan! Great job!
Will be hanging on the computer, on the edge of my seat watching during the next 24-48 hours for the new site to go live. How exciting!
Getting my fingers ready to tweet, facebook, blog, stumble, etc.
Judy
Sounds great to me. I love seeing this site get better and better.
This is all so exciting! I can’t wait! Thanks for all your hard work Zibbet team!
Wow! The improvemenst and growth coming sounds fantastic! I’m so happy to be a part of it!
This is all so exciting! I’ve taken a haitus from my business but now getting back in to it and I am excited to create more traffic thru my zibbet store! LOVE that you are adding a facebook app…that will really help me direct more traffic to this site!
WONDERFUL! It is very impressive to me how Zibbet continually reaches out to its selling community with updates, improvements, etc. I don’t recall seeing anything similar on other selling sites I’ve been involved with. As the site continues to improve and grow don’t stop doing that! We love it. Clearly you have an outstanding team at the helm.
Catheline
I don’t see anything about the Etsy importer listed. I’ve been waiting since last November and have been repeatedly told another 2-3 months. Why is this not a priority? Had I known this was going to be put off for a year or more I would never have forked over my hard earned money. I’m super upset seeing this.
Sounds wonderful, can’t wait!
Thank you for your hard works. They look wonderful!
jonathan
So great to see all the positivity flowing!
@riskybeads: I’ve added wider boxes for descriptions and a more user friendly tagging system to our list. They should be fairly quick enhancements for us to make.
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awesome! thanks!
Wow! Just love it! Jonathan, you and your team are doing a fabulous job improving this site. I thank you sincerely for all the hard work. :o) THANK YOU!
Everything looks like it is on track to wonderfulness! Although I don’t personally use it, the Etsy (or Artfire) importer would probably be a huge reason for others to continue on zibbet or to switch over… especially larger shops! I don’t want to crowd the current list, but maybe that should be listed above, say, facebook app?
Very excited about these new changes nonetheless! Holding tight for the new webpage!
Absolutely wonderful! I love all of the improvements so far and look forward to the next batch!
I can only say “ditto to all of the above” - I anticipate a huge mass movement toward Zibbet, hordes of buying public, people seeking the ultimate products for their hard-earned dollars………….I so appreciate having the “administrators (Jonathan & friends)” staying on top of this venture and continually improving the features. Many, many thanks to all of you - and particularly to fellow Zibbeters who are so giving of their expertise in create-ing/market-ing/computer-ing/suggest-ing/etceter-ing to those of us who flounder in the mist (yes, mist, not midst) of technology!
Grandmother Carolyn
Thanks for the update. Ya’ll are doing a great job! Looking forward to the “Widget” feature - have a new website going live 9/1/10
Great things to look forward too. Just can’t wait!
I commend Zibbet on really trying to make this place seller and buyer friendly. Looking forward to the next 48 hours!
I do however echo Royalmetals sentiments on the Importer tool. That would have been the cherry on the top! Great if it could be slipped in with the next implementation!
This is great to see and I’m very excited to see (and use) all our new tools!
I’d love to see the category “Eid” added anywhere that “Christmas” and “Hanukkah” are listed currently. I think it’s very important to represent the second largest religion in the world, Islam, here on Zibbet. It will not only bring in a whole new audience that we might not otherwise have reached but it will also show that we are open to people of all three major faiths.
The big Eid holiday is coming up on Sept 9th. I think adjusting the category section to include Eid would generate us some publicity that is unique to the online artist/crafter marketplaces during this holiday season that is celebrated by 1.57 billion people worldwide.
Kay
I am thrilled! Thanks so much for all your hard work. I look forward to even better things happenening as time goes on…. Keep up the fantastic job - it is greatly appreciated.
Hugs,
Jennifer
It’s great that you are so committed to improvements and so good at letting us know where things are at along the way. Some of the sites I’ve been with have been active in this way but most aren’t.
All I can say is “brilliant!” … and Thank you!
I’ve got one of those Zibbet widgets on my new blog site that asks my readers to click on the Zibbet box to do their shopping. I love it! Though I haven’t many blog followers just yet, I know this lovely little widget will improve my sales capability enormously. Thanks for working so hard on our behalf… If you want to check that widget out for yourselves just follow this link… http://woodcotdesigns.blogspot.com/ and you’ll see how great it is.
Faye of Woodcot Designs
All of this is wonderful news! Congrats and thanks to all who work so hard getting this done.
I am continually amazed at the features that are available to us. I have been trying other venues for three years now with mixed success. Zibbet has them all beat. I hope that as the Zibbet community grows (as I’m positive it will) we maintain the positive, close and personal feel it now has.
Thanks to the team at Zibbet for all your hard work.
Peace in Wood,
Scott
wow.. this site is amazing! Now if Ican only find my way around… I guess I best because I want to grow with Zibbit!
Given all the potential enhancements - this is a great list of Priority items. Nicely done. Thanks for all your consideration and hard work.
rose
Thanks for the improvements - I wish ALL of us success!
Susan
Can you add a Pet Section to the Handmade on the Gift Guide. I am Premium and have no place to put my items in the Gift Guide.
Zibbet is looking good! Thank you for all your work towards improvements and adding features. I have to admit I’m waiting waiting waiting for the importer tool also…For sellers it’s probably a huge incentive to open a shop and a huge time saver for current merchants to add inventory.
I’d LOVE to see a tool for importing listings. I thought it was in the works a long time ago…Is this something we can look forward to implementing soon? Thank You!
I am so pleased with the way the site looks and your 3-month Battle Plan will be adding some wonderful additions! I especially like the Vacation Mode, Facebook Application and the Zibbet Widget! Thanks to the Zibbet team for your continued hard work!
I am just getting started here but I am pleased with the way things are going so far. This article helped me figure some things out on how to make my shop better. Thanks.
Marvelous– I’ve just gotten started this past week, and hadn’t had a chance to look around. I do like the clear, right to the point inf on your blog, and ditto with the 3 month plan!
Best to everyone, and thanks.
I’m new to Zibbet and am excited to be here. I’m trying to make my shop look as attractive as possible and plan to expand really soon.
Thanks for the improvements you already made and for your effort to give us an even better site!
I can’t wait to get into all these new changes. I’m looking at surgery for a double knee replacement in September. I’m going to have lots of time between physical Therapy to get my shop ready for the holiday sales. Thanks for information that can improve our chances of sales!!!!
ZIBBET WIDGIT wooo weee! how fabulous!
I’ve yet to make a sale but the increased PR you guys are doing is bound to help. And pinterest! that’s massive, glad to see you are embracing it. x