Topic: Selling Topics

Customized Item Sorting in a Booth

What is It?

A special Bonanzle feature offered to our plus and premiere members, customized item sorting allows the seller to wield power over the default order that items are shown within their booth*. The seller can either choose one of the basic sorting types (least to most expensive, most recent to least recent, etc.), or they can create a completely arbitrary item order if their heart so desires (and their time so allows!).

* Bonanzle respects a buyers' ultimate decision as to what order they want to see items in. If a buyer in a booth has chosen to order items by a particular criteria (even if it wasn't in your booth), Bonanzle remembers their preference and will apply it in future booths they visit. Setting up a custom item sort order affects the order that your booths' items are presented only when 1) the buyer has never chosen a sort order 2) the buyer has closed and re-opened their browser since they last chose a sort order or 3) the buyer chose to display the items in the "Seller Picked" order because they trust your judgement.

How Does It Work?

If you are a plus or premiere member, when you visit the "Sell" -> "Advanced Settings" page, you'll see a link to "Modify customized item sorting." When you click that link you'll be taken to a page that lets you pick how you want your items sorted. We'll call it the "Item Sort Page".

As of January 2009, the Item Sort Page is still in BETA form, so its particulars are likely to change, but the gist of it is that you start by picking a default sort type for your booth. If you want to use one of the regular sorts (least to most expensive, for example), just choose that option, click "Activate custom sort" and you're golden. If you want to create a customized order, read on...

Creating a Customized Item Order

To create a customized item order, just enter the item numbers for each item in the position that you want it to appear when a buyer views your booth. You can find the item number for an item by going to the item show page (aka: the page you'd look at your item if you were a buyer), and expanding the "Advanced Details" section (below your item's description). Your item number should be the rightmost piece of information there.

For your convenience, on the right side of the Item Sort Page, up to 100 of your most most recent items will be listed along with their item number.

After you enter the item number, click away from the item number input box, and if you entered your item number correctly, a picture of your item will appear above the item number. If you're sorting a lot of items, you can just press the "TAB" key to move from item to item, entering the item number for each item whose order you would like to specify.

When you're done, be sure to click the "Activate custom sort" button if you haven't already.

Wait a Minute, How do I Save the Customized Order I Setup?

You don't. When you click outside of the item number input box, we'll automatically save the change you made. Do not panic. It is easy by design.

How Do I Remove an Item from Customized Sort?

Just delete the item number below your item, click outside the input box, and it will magically vanish.

Limitations and Other Questions

Currently there is no way to insert an item before other items, so if for instance you had setup your item order and then you decided you wanted to add a new item in front of all the others, that is not yet possible. You could of course just replace your old first item with your new first item by pasting in the new item's item number.

There is currently a limitation of 100 items that you can sort by hand. After you run out of items that were custom sorted, the items will be shown in the order they were created.

We plan to somehow address these shortcomings in a future version of the Item Sort Page.

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