Both of these were top level and did not have sub-categories and they were becoming hard to navigate with the amount of products they had in them. The staff at Ahwooga HQ moved the products into the correct sub level categories already.
Here are what they look like now with the new Sub categories in place.
Over the last few day we have been restructuring our server hardware to help how our data is delivered to our site viewers. With the site growing in size and the increased traffic, it was important we continue to plan for the future.
Site speed has been the other issue we have been dealing with here at Ahwooga HQ. So along with the hardware upgrades, we also needed to tweak some of the setting that actually deliver the site to your browser. Here are some of the results in the short time the changes have been in effect.
The Good;
(Week to week comparison)
Pageviews +20.73%
Bounce Rate - 1.46%
Page Per Visit +13.42%
Avg Time on Site +5.87%
The Not so good;
Sessions IDs were timing out too quickly. (Friday & Saturday Morn)
This news blog and the new Ahwooga warehouse crashed. (Saturday Night)
Saturday morning we had an image delivery issue. (Saturday Morning)
All of these issues were fixed by Saturday by 9:30am.
I hope we didn’t inconvenience any one too bad during these important changes.
Here is a quick how to video on creating a free car show classified on the site. We added in a 90 day listing duration that does not create a charge for the person listing the event.
There are some new features with in My Account>Listing>Preferences. A user can now preform bulk changes to certain components of their listings in bulk.
The Changes that can now be made are to the;
State
Zip Code
Currency accepted
Pay Pal address
Payment process
State tax rate
This is perfect for the person who moves their business or want to use another pay pal address. We even had a customer in Arizona who had to change their tax rate since the state added a few percent on. He was able to delete the old rate and bulk change to the new rate.
If anyone has any questions about these changes, feel free to get a hold of me.
Team Ahwooga is constantly looking for ways to not only improve the site but also improve the user experience. We feel that these 2 things will improve the seller performance and increase seller visibility.
Visitors can take in all the information we put into the site and they can also contribute by adding additional content to the site.
How can this benefit you?
By participating in the forums, galleries and the creation of content, you will be helping to generate more traffic to you through increased visibility before a wide potential customer base. Through your minimal efforts the entire site can benefit greatly, so please click the following link and join us in the warehouse.
The site also features a banner management system that is set up to drive traffic to the main Ahwooga site and to seller storefronts.
Please take a few minutes to browse around. We are open to any suggestions, so feel free to contact us.
Classifieds are able to have up to 8 images and full descriptions the same as our auctions or fixed priced listings and all are indexed and viewable though searches.
These ads are going to give businesses that our in our market a way to promote the service they provide right along an already strong base of product listings.
For shows, local and national event can have a global presence.
To post a a free ad in these categories, you need to be logged in and choose sell. If you don not need a membership, choose “No Thanks” at the bottom and then you will be taken to the beginning of of the select a category to list in.
On the last listing page you will need to pick the duration of the classified ad. The pull down bar defaults to 30 days, please change this to 90 days and your ad will be free!!
This weekend we put in a new major category for services. There are so many shops that not only offer parts, but also have services they need to promote. The way this is designed, all service classifieds will show up along with products that match the same keywords. Below I did a search for a Packard Antenna and the results came up with a product for sale and a classified for rebuilding antennas.
We are very excited about implementing this new category for both our buyers and sellers and believe this is a first for a marketplace site to have products and services come up side by side the same search. We also strongly believe that when used correctly will become a strong benefit for our selling members revenue streams.
For non member sellers who want to promote a service they offer, these listings will cost $1.00 and have the same upgrades as a fixed pried or auction listing. This is a very competitively priced option for putting yourself in front of a targeted audience like we have here on Ahwooga.
Earlier this week we introduced another top level category, Car Show and Swap Meets. For membership level sellers, there is no additional cost for creating a classified listing for an event. For non-membership level sellers the cost of a 30 day classified is just $1.00.
I’m not sure we have had a visitor to the site that doesn’t enjoy seeing these types of listings, so post them up.
It will take a little while to build this category, but when it’s rolling it will be great!!
If you are not yet part of the I Am Ahwooga Facebook Group, please join.
This has been a very fun ongoing way to help brand our new company and showing our passion for cars!!
Today we installed a Live support chat feature on the site. With 85% of all visits to the site being first time visitors, we knew there was a need for more support than a contact form or an e-mail address.
This is a very simple program to use for the person requesting the chat and you only have to enter a name to get started.
This option is available when the chat button is green and one of our staff members is online. The button turns grey when we are offline and it offers a way to send a note to us. The offline message will direct users to our help center.
We spent a while today and tested it in all the browsers. IE8 and Google Chrome worked the best, while Fire Fox had an odd issue with shrinking the original window. Over all the software seems to be working well and did not effect the speed of the site.
Managing your social online presence can be very time consuming and with multiple ID’s and different sites to post on, just the time to navigate to the sites can become a chore. We know this first hand here at Ahwooga HQ, because we had to find a way to become more effective with less available time.
We try very hard to avoid desktop applications since we need access from our homes, on the road and at the office. For managing our Twitter, Facebook Profiles/Pages and LinkedIn accounts we have been using Hoot Suite.
Hoot Suite uses a browser instead of a program and allows us to have it running in a window behind what we are currently working on. When we need to post an update, it’s there. We are confident in recommending this service and of coarse are big fans of using social media’s to promote products across the web. The site also has a very FAQ and help section. There is even mobile apps.
I hope this helps, and we are looking forward to see you tweets, updates and tiny URL’s about your Ahwooga listings.
We got a call from a very nice gentleman in Texas that sells parts and manuals for planes that was interested in our site. Originally we had not offered this category when when we launched the site. So the staff sat down to discuss if we should create it? Our unofficially motto has always been “Buy any Sell things that move you”. We all agreed that aviation products fall within that scope.
As always we have been keeping a close eye on the progress of our young site. Ahwooga just turned 7 months old and is continuing to pick up speed and momentum.
In previous posts to this blog I have shared things that our team has done to improve the site. As always, I want to thank the buyers and sellers that have provided valuable input. That really helps us make good decisions.
I would like to review some facts about the last 30 days that have created some smiles for us.
The last 30 days represents 14% of the sites life.
Below are stats from the last 30 days as a percentages of the last 7 months.
New Members – 24.2%
Number of Sales – 27.4%
Dollars in Sales – 43.8%
Visitors to the site - 23.3%
The beginning of August shows numbers that exceed those stats.
One of the only things we can’t track is telephone calls from buyers looking at listings. I truly hope all of our vendors are too busy to ask every caller “how did you come across my products”. With over 90,000 listings with phone numbers to the vendors, phone calls must be coming in.
Just for the record, our team is going to continue to be as aggressive if not more in growing the site and doing what we can to benefit both the buyers and sellers that use our site.
This has all been possible because sellers put their trust in us to help market their products.
Thank You.
Team Ahwooga
P.S. We have published some tips for selling auto parts online for most of our veteran sellers, the information is just review. Maybe someone might pick up a few idea’s to help them wherever they sell. You can fin the tips here: http://www.sellcarpartsonline.com/
This is a quick follow up post about the changes made to the registration and check out to the site. We are seeing a substantial increase in our checkout conversion rates for both new and return visitors. Simplifying and speeding up the registration/checkout process appears to be working.
As always, I want to thank those of you who have shared with us ways to improve the site.
Over the course of the last few weeks we have been studying and redesigning the check out process on the site.
Through buyer feedback and traffic analysis we were able to identify areas where buyers were experiencing some difficulties. By allowing sellers to put their phone numbers in their banners and listings, buyers who may not be as computer savvy can still call you and make a purchase but we wanted to streamline the process and make it better for buyers.
We walked through the procedure many times and were able to implement a set of changes that both simplified and improved the purchasing procedure.
We see buyers come in from a general Google search and within 5 to 7 minutes they view a product page, register for the site, complete their verification, return to the product page and then purchase the item.
As a seller you may not have had the experience of buying on Ahwooga, so we encourage you to go to the site, look around, find a hot wheel or a sticker or something and make a purchase from another seller so you can experience what the buyers experience.
As always we would love to hear how it went for you and we are always open to suggestions.
Over the last few day we have been restructuring our server hardware to help how our data is delivered to our site viewers. With the site growing in size and the increased traffic, it was important we continue to plan for the future.
