ShopWindow Developments Notification

[GeorgeGaz]

Hi Guys,

Since the launch of ShopWindow last year we have received a great response from you all and we now work with some fantastic affiliate partners across a variety of sectors.
To further enhance our offering, and ensure we continue to provide you all with a market leading solution, we are looking to deliver a more structured journey through to the sale for your users, resulting in increased click through and increased conversion rates.

Entertainment Sector

To take this forward we are going to begin development on an ‘entertainment sector’ within ShopWindow. To achieve this, we have reviewed some of the key entertainment categories in our tree and their current placement as listed below:

Books & Subscriptions (Parent)
Adult Books (Child)
Audio Books (Child)
Bookclubs (Child)
Books (Child)
Magazine Subscriptions (Child)


DVD & Video (Parent)
Adult DVDs & Video (Child)
Blu-Ray (Child)
DVD Rentals (Child)
DVDs (Child)
Film Downloads (Child)
HD DVD (Child)
UMDs (Child)
VHS Videos (Child)


Music (Parent)
Cassettes and Vinyl (Child)
CDs (Child)
Music Downloads (Child)
Musical Instruments (Child)


Video Gaming (Parent)
Console (Child)
Console Accessories (Child)
Retro Games (Child)
Video Games (Child)

Our research consisted of both an independent usability study on ShopWindow and research into the comparison marketplace. From the results obtained, we have identified the current structure of these categories is not the optimum for users, and therefore will be reordering these categories as below:

Entertainment (Parent)


Books (Child)

Magazine Subscriptions (Grandchild)
Adult Books (Grandchild)
Audio Books (Grandchild)


Music (Child)

CDs (Grandchild)
Instruments (Grandchild)
Cassettes & Vinyl (Grandchild)
Downloads (Grandchild)


DVDs (Child)

Adult (Grandchild)
VHS (Grandchild)
BLU-RAY (Grandchild)
HD-DVD (Grandchild)
Downloads (Grandchild)


Video Gaming (Child)
Accessories (Grandchild)
Consoles (Grandchild)
Retro Games (Grandchild)
Video Games (Grandchild)


As mentioned, the reorder of these categories will enhance your product offering through the use of ShopWindow and allow you to further engage your users with more relevant, organised content. We have also tidied up the names of the categories where applicable (e.g. Musical Instruments > Instruments). This change is the first stage in us delivering a more refined solution for the entertainment sector. As the project progresses, I will be updating this thread to ensure communication and clarity.

How much work does this mean for you?

Depending on the level of customization within your ShopWindow, we do not foresee there to be much required from you to accommodate this change.
Due to the nature of Web Services, the changes will take effect immediately once set live, and on call will be presented as restructured.

Timeframes

We anticipate the category changes to go live around the end of February. We want to provide you all with sufficient notice to ensure there is minimal disruption to your activity and ensure a smooth transition for all.

We would greatly appreciate your comments and suggestions so that we can create the best possible experience for your users.

We are really very excited about this development and hope you are too.

Regards
George Fletcher
ShopWindow Support

[GeorgeGaz]

Hi Confuscius,

The naming of the categories is not final and is still under review. I have noted your concern that there may be a large number of categories named Accessories but each one will have a parent that would define the type of accessory on offer.
Just to clarify, these categories named Accessories will not be twinned and therefore when the user clicks on the link for say Video Gaming > Accessories they will not be directed to the same place as if they had clicked on say Photography > Accessories for example.

Regards
George Fletcher
ShopWindow Support

[authcode]

Great. Assuming the one thing that wasn't going to change is the category tree I recently spent a few hours creating a database driven category tree to speed up my site and reduce SOAP calls.

Are you going to provide an updated csv file for this new category structure to coincide with the change over?

Merchants seem to already have enough problems putting their products into the correct categories. Does it really matter how a user finds a category when what they find in it doesn't relate to the category anyway? Perhaps the categorisation of products should be reviewed before the categoristation of categories?

[chartfieldconsultants]

I suppose it all comes down to what you want to use ShopWindow for. I personally find one of its weaknesses is that it's poor on concepts that cut across vertical areas - the example I've cited on here in the past is pampering, where categories that a shopper would lump together, like scented candles and soaps, are far apart. While entertainment isn't the one I'd have gone for first, it's probably one of the most important ones.

So I, for one, welcome this change. I have a couple of caveats - for example, I hope the ID numbers for the categories don't change as, if they stay the same and I've understood things correctly, then unmodified, non-rewritten, out-of-the-box URLs remain the same. And I still think it would be of great benefit if there was an easy way we could build our own category tree by defining our own relationships between existing categories (and giving them whatever names we want, I suppose). But in general, I'm all for this.

In fact, I'll say it again explicitly:

I welcome this change.

It's a lot more productive for the long-term future of the ShopWindow application than yammering on about merchant logos.

[GeorgeGaz]

Thanks for the feedback guys, it is all duly noted :)

Authcode, we are in the process at the moment of trying to improve the category mappings, which I am sure you can understand is a lengthy and on going process. Standardising datafeeds requires a two pronged approach and whilst we are improving this behind the scenes we would like to optimise the front end also so that it can handle this data in the best possible way.

ChartfieldConsultants, thank you for the positive feedback :)
In response to your inquiry I would like to inform all ShopWindow users that we anticipate that the category IDs will not be changing. Where possible we are going to try to minimalise the impact that such developments will have on you guys as this will ensure a smoother transition.

Anything that we feel may complicate the change we will post on here and get your thoughts.

Regards
George Fletcher
ShopWindow Support

[Amoochi]

As my main website is an entertainments portal, I don't actually see how the updated version of the categories will enhance anything to be honest.

Firstly, looking at the Video Gaming category, I find that far too limited for the vaste amount of products it includes and having personally spent a lot of time looking through it for various games and console items, it's actually pretty difficult to find anything without going direct through the search feature.

Surely it should be at least broken down into the 4 main categories of PC, Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo for games and into the main 3 main categories of Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo for consoles.

But to me, looking at all the entertainment categories, I find it very restricted in terms of categories and you only have to look at sites like SimplyGames, Play.com and pretty much every other entertainment media selling site, to see their category structure and to see how they break them down. On ShopWindow, clicking on the DVD category basically gives you a list of every DVD included by all the merchants, meaning clicking on the category is a waste of time as the only way your going to find what your after is by doing a search using the search feature. The same is with music, books and games.

I'm not trying to be overly critical, but I find the navigation of the shopwindow far too limited, without having any decent practical application needed to find most products without going direct through search.

Obviously I am a massive supporter of ShopWindow and want it to be the best it can be, but is any of this actually relevent, when merchants can't even put their products in the first place, can't provide the most basic of logo's for their stores and in a lot of cases as has been highlighted by people, can't make proper descriptions, product images, prices and titles. We could have the best navigation system in the world, but without the merchants doing their bit, it's futile.

[amarath]

Hi Amoochi,

Thanks for the post - and no your not being over critical.

Its funny you mention the points about the gaming categories and their structure, as I had this same conversation this afternoon with my team and Paul (our Head of Development). We will be reviewing this is the manor that you have identified, however we will be taking into consideration the use of refine bys and the impact that they may have on this.

Regarding the usefulness of the change, we are aiming to provide more control over what the user first sees when landing on each of the pages.

I dont want to go into too much detail at the moment however once we have made headway on this I will be PMing a select group of key posters on this forum for their input and advice.

Cheers

Amo

[Confuscius]

Amoochi - you forgot to mention the merchant who until today was paying zero commission on a TV advertised £500 laptop - another 'accidental' merchant mistake until an affiliate notices it! The good news is that the product is in the right category! Time for a break.

[cmuk]

Hi

I am new here and have just been directed to this thread by George.

I agree with Amoochi that the client software navigation can be frustrating because of the lack of individual categories at a lower level.

At http://www.cmukshop.com/ - I am trying to create a category menu that reflects the wide variety of products available in each category, such as individual musical instruments. This doesn't seem to be possible at the moment.

Thank you
Simon

[Andy]

On the "accessories" issue.
I have developed a database driven category menu, 1/2 for the same reason as Authcode, but also to add a certain amount of functionality and control.
Anyhoo, I noticed a fair few "Accessories" categories, granted all childs but still, it didn't do what I wanted it to do.

So, I renamed all Accessories categories with "{ParentName} Accessories"

this allowed for better use of the category name in URLs, breadcrumbs, on page headings etc.

[Andy]

Is this live yet or will it coincide with the release of V2?

[GeorgeGaz]

Hi Andy,

This is not currently live but we are planning to coincide it with the release of V2.
It is currently in the review/development stage and so we are still open to any further opinions that any affiliates may have :)

Cheers

[gunneradt]

does this mean deeplinks to searches/products will change?

[GeorgeGaz]

Hi gunner,

No this will not change deeplinks as the category ID's will remain the same. A new category (with new ID) will be created for the parent (Entertainment).

Regards