Suggestions for Dealers

[bearcat]

Today I was contacted by a dealer who told me they would be discontinuing the use of my classifieds. A reason given was the "fact that your website is so time consuming to maintain." This particular dealer has close to 200 ads from 2 showrooms on my site.

I feel a number of changes need to be made to the script to make it more friendly to dealers who have to place a large number of ads. I also don't feel that any of these changes would be difficult to implement.

Keep in mind that for many or most of us, dealers will be the majority of our ads, and in one form or another constitute the major portion of our income from the classifieds.

a. Ability to upload multiple jpegs. If your ad allows for 8 pictures, right now the person placing the ad has to run through the process of uploading pictures 8 times if they want to show off that many. That seems needless. I would like the option to lasso a group of pics and upload them as a batch.

In addition to this, and something that should be done in any case, we should have the same view of the images during the initial upload that we do when modifying images, where you can see the thumbnails all laid out in whatever order they will appear. That way you can fix any problems with the image order or selection of images quickly.

b. Placing free ads and renewals. I personally feel this is is one of the more frustrating aspects of the script when dealing with multiple ads. Right now, when placing an ad, you have to run through 4 separate pages.

1. category selection
2. ad
3. images
4. verify personal information
5. verify package

Number 4, verifying personal information, is really unnecessary. At the very least, we should have the option to turn this off. If there is a real-world concern that people placing ads have the wrong email address, then you can do a visible login with their email showing or something like that. Along the lines of "Welcome username at [email protected]!"

Number 5, verifying the listing package, is really unnecessary with free ads, with free renewals, and as part of dealer packages where one fee covers a certain number or unlimited ads. The option should exist to turn this off for a given listing package.

c. Ad management. I suspect this was an oversight, and one that could easily be corrected. Currently, you have no way to arrange your ads when you view them on the page to browse your own listings. You should be able to group them by title or expiration, along with the default of when they were placed. You can do this as a browser when viewing categories or search results, you should be able to do it as an advertiser viewing your own listings.

In addition to this, I would also like to see the option of a search function for ads. Scenario: If you are a large car dealer selling Fords, Lincolns, Mercurys, and BMWs, you may want to group all of your listings by a particular car make. You would do a search on "Ford," and get back all of your Ford listings, so you can quickly check what Fords you have up on the site against your personal inventory.

Edit: I probably should have titled this "Suggestions for a Dealer-Friendly Interface."

[Lhotch]

Originally Posted by bearcat

a. Ability to upload multiple jpegs. If your ad allows for 8 pictures, right now the person placing the ad has to run through the process of uploading pictures 8 times if they want to show off that many. That seems needless. I would like the option to lasso a group of pics and upload them as a batch.

One of the problems faced when designing a script like this is that you have no specific audience. In other words its used for small mom & pop classifieds sites and on the other extreme huge auto classifieds sites. Its difficult to make it suit one without hindering the other and vice versa. Compromises invariably have to be made somewhere along the line, at least initially until a better idea of what people want can be implemented or streamlined.

I think a multi-upload would be a nice feature to add. I know some sites have a field with a browse button and after you select your file from your local machine the form updates and ads a new button and continues to max allowed uploads or until the user simply choses to upload whats there.

Certainly sounds simple on paper and probably wouldnt be terribly difficult to implement from a programming standpoint, so why hasnt it been done? One thing that comes to mind right off the top of my head is that scripts have a max execution time and if this time limit is exceeded the script fails. By default PHP has a server wide setting of 30 seconds. Due to the wide variations to hosting that people use some can override this setting and some cant. If people are allowed to upload 8 photos and do it all at the same time on a host where this time cant be altered you could very well run into a situation the script will time out. Even if a user does have control of this php setting most user wont know about it so it could create a lot of confusion and headaches.

Originally Posted by bearcat

In addition to this, and something that should be done in any case, we should have the same view of the images during the initial upload that we do when modifying images, where you can see the thumbnails all laid out in whatever order they will appear. That way you can fix any problems with the image order or selection of images quickly.

A stepped checkout process and a final proof of the ad before placement have been brought up in the past and I agree they would be nice. I know the whole checkout procedure is slated to be updated but due to all the different supported payment types it could be pretty labor intensive.

Originally Posted by bearcat

b. Placing free ads and renewals. I personally feel this is is one of the more frustrating aspects of the script when dealing with multiple ads. Right now, when placing an ad, you have to run through 4 separate pages.

1. category selection
2. ad
3. images
4. verify personal information
5. verify package

Number 4, verifying personal information, is really unnecessary. At the very least, we should have the option to turn this off. If there is a real-world concern that people placing ads have the wrong email address, then you can do a visible login with their email showing or something like that. Along the lines of "Welcome username at [email protected]!"

Number 5, verifying the listing package, is really unnecessary with free ads, with free renewals, and as part of dealer packages where one fee covers a certain number or unlimited ads. The option should exist to turn this off for a given listing package.

Verifying personal information at checkout was something I actually questioned quite some time ago. The reason for it is that certain payment providers require certain information and the verify personal info page gives people the option of altering info just for the payment aspect without having to edit their profile.

I would assume with a new stepped checkout system a lot of doors and flexibility will open up.

Originally Posted by bearcat

c. Ad management. I suspect this was an oversight, and one that could easily be corrected. Currently, you have no way to arrange your ads when you view them on the page to browse your own listings. You should be able to group them by title or expiration, along with the default of when they were placed. You can do this as a browser when viewing categories or search results, you should be able to do it as an advertiser viewing your own listings.

In addition to this, I would also like to see the option of a search function for ads. Scenario: If you are a large car dealer selling Fords, Lincolns, Mercurys, and BMWs, you may want to group all of your listings by a particular car make. You would do a search on "Ford," and get back all of your Ford listings, so you can quickly check what Fords you have up on the site against your personal inventory.

Edit: I probably should have titled this "Suggestions for a Dealer-Friendly Interface."

A search or filter as well as perhaps even an export feature (ie to cvs, or even pdf file) for users certainly would be helpfull for people who place large amounts of ads.

With the new module system some doors have opened in terms of ease of adding functionality to the scripts. It doesnt seem like many people have taken advantage of it but the module system allows people to build modules that tie into the core code without actually changing the core code. This means that a module can be written and usually implemented with very little if any code changes making upgrades much easier since you dont have to worry about a lot of custom code in the script files.

In the end when creating a script of this magnitude there are many programming hurdles that need to be overcome. Script limitations, server limitations and complexity to code and support all come into play.

[civ]

Almost every single "server limitation" concern can be overcome though with a simple feature toggle in the admincp. It would require that both the current method and the more improved method be included, but Eric's a married man now so he's smarter than ever.

That verification of personal information during checkout really does need to go though - if other payment methods use it, they should be changed to act like the Linkpont module works. It asks for billing information (name/addy) when it asks for the CC info - this is the way it should be done IMO. Many people (myself included) would not want their billing information used in their public profile (which is what happens with the information you put in that personal information verification step).

[bearcat]

Originally Posted by civ

That verification of personal information during checkout really does need to go though - if other payment methods use it, they should be changed to act like the Linkpont module works.

The context was for free ads, or memberships where a single payment gives a set number of ads, in which case no cc information is given. In those cases, there is no reason for a dealer to see that same page 200 times if they want to put up 200 ads.

[bearcat]

Hi Larry,

I want to thank you for your responses. I'll just add a few quick comments:

Multiple Image Uploading - I don't know if server max execution time would be the only obstacle, but I'd still like to see this as an option in the admin panel with the recommendation of resetting the PHP times. I think this is an important enough area to experiment with. Particularly for places selling homes, apartments, commercial properties and so forth, you frequently encounter a dozen photos or more. Putting up each photo one by one in those cases seems needlessly tiresome.

Address Verification and Listing Package Removal - I take it a stepped checkout process, due in version 3.2.0, would hopefully allow for this? That would be great!

Ad Management - I hope they consider this, as it seems like an oversight. They offer the ability to arrange listings by a click in the search results. I'm guessing the typical frame of reference is individuals to small dealers posting 1 to maybe 20-30 items at a time. But many of us see ads from larger dealers and brokers--whether it be cars, motorcycles, boats, real estate, and so forth-- who have 50-200+ items they want to list.

I like the use of modules. Maybe for the multiple images uploading? It also seems a natural for the Import Feature described here

Import feature

as that is very much an add-on feature that I could see as potentially being much more complex than the suggestions made in this thread.

Thanks again