Gazza's latest post

[e_nviable]

Have you seen it ? (In eBid News)

Sooooooooo that's what's been going on

e

[raindropsies]

Heres a paste of it

Hi Everyone,

This is Gazza checking in to let you know what's been happening at eBid over the last couple of months or so..

Well, it's been a hectic time to say the least. We've been keeping pace with our rapid growth, tweeking, updating, ripping up and starting again, you name it we've done it over the last couple of months. As we have grown over the years we have made more and more additions to the site's software and there comes a time where you can't bolt anything else on and have to bite the bullet and roll things back to basics and rebuild from the bottom up. That is what we've been doing over the last 3 months and is the reason you won't have seen too many new additions to the site in that time.

I'm glad to say we're done now and are currently testing everything, although you won't see any drastic cosmetic changes when we launch the updated site, we will be much more scalable and capable of future growth and large influxes of new users won't cause the outages that soem of you may have experienced over the last couple of months.

As some of you will know we have a long list of objectives that we try to keep up with and that list has been growing whilst we worked on the new software but don't worry we are already back on the case and are currently working on :

1) Most importantly we have commenced work on a complete new redesign. Our intention is to become one of the top shopping destinations in the world and this requires a layout that is as close to perfection as possible.

2) Offline listing software. We've been let down very badly just recently with the programmer of our Ninja Lister software and instead of battling on we have decided to cut our losses and have started from scratch again. We have decided to include an import facility into this now to allow data files from other online sales sites to be imported into eBid.

3) API. This was nearing its completion until we had to divert everything over to the rebuild of the core eBid software. Now we are back on course we can expect the initial versions of this early in the new year.

4) Printable invoices / packing slips. A simple but needed addition will be one of the first in the coming weeks.

5) My Gallery folders. We will be adding a folder hierarchy to My Gallery to allow you to store your photos more conveniently.

6) Shipping discounts for multiple items. Although discounts can be added to invoices we will be adding automatic calculation of multiple items to enable users to checkout immediately without having to wait for an invoice.

7) UPS and Fedex additions to the US shipping calculator.

Whilst we have been burning the midnight oil we haven't been idle with our increase in advertising. Our online activities are growing month on month, our online spend has gone up by 400% in the last 3 months alone and we are also starting to feel the benefits from some of our first forays into offline advertising. In fact I've attached some examples of this to this post, billboards and radio sponsorship.

Gotta dash now, more testing to do.

Myself and Mark would again like to thank everyone who has supported eBid from day one up until now. Without you we would be just another dot com casualty.

Gazza

ps. If you didn't know, we are offering a cash prize of $2500 or local equivalent to the seller who lists the auction that takes us onto the 2 million mark. As of now our count is 1,931,854 auctions. Good luck to everyone. We will let you know the winner the second we hit the 2m mark

[JanetB]

I always knew they were working hard in the background
~Jan~

[moonwitch]

Wow!! - they have been busy

I'm a bit concerned about this item on the list though

"1) Most importantly we have commenced work on a complete new redesign. Our intention is to become one of the top shopping destinations in the world and this requires a layout that is as close to perfection as possible."

I hope they didnt get the 'changing rooms' team in

[e_nviable]

Wow!! - they have been busy

I'm a bit concerned about this item on the list though

"1) Most importantly we have commenced work on a complete new redesign. Our intention is to become one of the top shopping destinations in the world and this requires a layout that is as close to perfection as possible."

I hope they didnt get the 'changing rooms' team in

....... and especially not Laurence L-B

e

[raindropsies]

Now that I have read it the only one that concerns me is #6, but then thats just me who don't understand thing that teccy

[ejean9]

wooohoo...do ya think they got all hot and sweaty while they were working hard

[JanetB]

Now that I have read it the only one that concerns me is #6, but then thats just me who don't understand thing that teccy

I'm with Sarah on this one - #6 sounds a bit worrying to me, everything else looks in order.

~Jan~

[lofty100e]

I hope they build in the fact that "postage not known" does not mean zero postage.

Number one also worries me, each time they have tinkered with the site like that it has meant large scale re-lists to accomodate the new auction width or set up that has changed in some way.

Just though I hope they leave well alone untill next year, the idea of changing things around in the busiest time of year (hopefully) is not good.

[e_nviable]

wooohoo...do ya think they got all hot and sweaty while they were working hard

Down woman ! DOWN ! Control those hormones, for goodness sake !

Here ...... have a couple of my tablets ......

e