A couple quick notes on some changes made today that you'll probably notice as you browse around... <h2>Revamped Buy Page</h2>Our "Buy" page had been bugging me more daily... not only did the left side boxes look antiquated, they also had a secondary search box (confusing), some "browse by" choices that did not separate cleanly from the choices below the Bonanzas box, and an annoying requirement of making a buyer click twice to get to some of the most common functionality (perusing a category... had to click on "Browse Categories" then pick the category itself). I tried to resolve "all of the above" in today's round of updates. We now have links to the category showcases of the most popular categories (by listing volume), the "Browse by" box has been clarified into browsing by category and browsing by user selected items, and the choices below the Bonanzas now describe what a hand picked list, exceptional item, and favorite booth is, for the new buyers who were probably scratching their head when they looked at those choices previously. <h2>Home Page, by You</h2>Another change I'm really excited about is upping the limit of the hand picked lists to 20, so we can start featuring hand picked lists on the home page. Quite frankly, the whole "weighted random item selection" used to pick home page items currently does a lot worse job of picking attractive and intriguing items (that leave a good first impression) than you all do. Time and time again we see hand picked lists that inspire, that make us laugh, and that are just plain <em>pretty</em>. It makes a lot more sense to give new users those feelings when they first visit the home page than to give them the feeling they're looking at a random number generator. We don't have the hand picked lists showing on the home page yet, but after some good 20-item hand picked lists get put together, we'll get them online shortly thereafter. I'd say sometime in the next week. We'll also find a way to credit the creator of the hand picked list on the home page, so it could be great exposure for a seller looking to get noticed. Numerous other bug fixes and user requests got in today (Super B-what? I watched the last three minutes of the game today, I think it turned out to be the perfect strategy :)), as always, take a look at the "What's New" list if you're curious. <h2>January Stats and February Starts</h2>Judging by historical traffic graphs from other eBay alternatives, we'd expected January to be a ho-hum month for traffic and sales -- the holidays being over, buyers and sellers typically seem to take the month off, and marketplaces try to break even. Bonanzle? Notsomuch. Traffic was up significantly again, with 55% more unique visitors than December. After increasing more than 100% in December, sales also continued upward in January, increasing by more than 30% over what they had been in December, traditionally the busiest sales month of the year. Nice work as always, team! And February is off to an even better start, more than 1000 users registered today -- be sure to welcome the new users aboard if you encounter them! And apologize to them about the eBay importer for me... it now has more than 150 jobs queued for import <img src="/images/emoticons/smile_1.png" /> Luckily, help is on the way -- we'll be doubling our server capacity <em>yet again</em> next week... the cycle never ends. 1 2009-02-02T00:39:54-08:00 84 true true 1 2009-02-02T00:39:54-08:00 A_Couple_Changes__A_Couple_Stats