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Reptile & Amphibian
News Blog Keep up with news and features of interest to the reptile and amphibian community on the kingsnake.com blog. We cover breaking stories from the mainstream and scientific media, user-submitted photos and videos, and feature articles and photos by Jeff Barringer, Richard Bartlett, and other herpetologists and herpetoculturists.
Thursday, January 6 2011How do you like the classified changes so far? Now that the holidays are over, we're all burning off those Christmas calories as well as the midnight oil here at kingsnake.com and have rolled out some changes to our classified system that you requested. So fa,r we have increased the number and refined the classified ad categories quite a bit, and then moved thousands of ads (we hope to the appropriate categories!), we have also modified the classified searches to now be category-specific in all but the absolute header of the site. We are also looking at ways to make removing or relisting ads easier. You will see a lot of changes over the next couple weeks, but you will see even more later this spring. We are still going through your comments, and we are watching how the changes we have already made are impacting the site flow, looking for errors and issues. We should have most of the ads moved to the new categories today, if we haven't already. Please make sure to double-check the category name you are posting or re-listing an ad to, as it might have changed. One of the bigger requests was for a feedback system for advertisers. Our classified advertising system is what is known as an "open loop" system, similar to Craig's List, meaning once an ad is placed we have no idea if any response was generated to the advertiser, much less whether a sale has actually taken place, and it would difficult to verify whether a user would be entitled to leave feedback. Systems that do offer feedback, such as EBay, are usually closed loop systems where all contacts and sales take place through the system and verification that some transaction has occurred is easier to track and monitor. A system of this nature would be much more complex from all sides, more expensive for us to maintain, and more expensive to our advertisers. It would likely result in a pay-per-ad, one item-per-ad structure as well. We will continue to search for some type of feedback mechanism appropriate for our site, and we'll keep reading those suggestions. Finally, it's not often that you hear about someone lowering the cost of a service, but today kingsnake.com has reduce its classified sponsorship rates from $200 to $100 per category per year on all categories except ball python and boa constrictors, so if you like your new category, now you can sponsor it for less! To sponsor your favorite classified section click here! |
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I'll use myself for example. There have been many times where I have searched a section (particularly venomous) and ran across ads that resulted in me purchasing animals that I wasn't particularly looking for at the time. Now that the classifieds are broken down into such specific categories I find that I simply do not search the ones that do not pertain to the exact species I am currently looking for. The end result is the seller possibly losing a sale because less buyers are likely to see their ad unless they are looking for a specific species.
In addition, I think the classified layout now drastically reduces the exposure that a seller will receive.
Respectfully, Jackie
Every time we have split categories we have had some that liked it, some that didn't.
What are some of the advantages to the new layout?
Well for one, most advertisers are less likely to see their ads scroll off the front page and less likely to have to repost them every single day to keep them there.
Advertisers have nearly twice as many categories as before they can post in, doubling the number of ads they can post on site. (Turtle and tortoise people went from being able to post 12 ads a day to being able to post 66)
While this isn't a direct benefit to hobbyists, businesses that service a larger segment will see a big direct benefit.
Sponsors can now sponsor a category that is more specific to their product and can do it at half the price as before (except boa & python people)
More categories was our number one request by users and account holders.
Finally it makes browsing the classifieds considerably easier if your using a mobile phone
Our stats have show that since the change we have seen a hard, steady 15% increase in overall user traffic to the site so I suspect that over time everyone's ads will get the same exposure, though it will take a couple weeks for the system to "settle out" and give us some more conclusive data.
In the end I do think the splits will be beneficial to both users and advertisers, they always have been in the past, though we do have some fine tuning left to do on category naming and proper splits. I myself am less than pleased with the naming convention we have for Tortoises and am looking for a more logical split than geography,
but torts needs to be split, it, turtles, and venomous were literally the only remaining categories from the original category split in 1998.
We are also looking for some workable split for both the boa constrictors and ball pythons. And some gecko people have asked for 1 more split for rhacs.
People are saying "this is just a way to sell more sponsorships" and to that I'd say no, granted we may sell more in number but since the price is reduced to half the previous cost, we are predicting a net $0 gain from sponsorships, in fact we have contacted a number of current sponsors to adjust their existing accounts to the new pricing structure and we will probably see a net $ loss from classified sponsorships for this year due to those credits.