Big Market Update

Over the last couple of months we have gradually introduced a number of changes to BoonEx Market. Some of the updates have been modified, pulled or further tuned to be most effective. Today, we're ready to finally announce and explain the changes in detail. 

Market "patrons" would have most likely already noticed most of the tweaks, and many have very vocally helped us along the way by their constructive critique. Thank you!

We see BoonEx Market as the most important feature of Dolphin and backbone of BoonEx operation. Ability to build unique social networks is what sets Dolphin apart and Market extensions actually make it happen. Going forward, we envision Dolphin extensibility to be even more streamlined and accessible. In this round, we have done a few things...

1. Market Homepage completely re-designed, within new look for product snippets, new sorting and filtering controls. Now you can select a combination of, say, category, version compatibility and product type to narrow down your browsing.

2. Vendors renamed to Providers. There's been some discussion on whether it's a good way to call'em, but we decided to stick to it ("Providers" works better for both products and services). The will be no more “Trusted vendors”. Instead we added an automated, objective rating system that works by giving ranking levels to Providers when they accrue “points” (New Providers: 0 - 99, Established Providers: 100 - 499, Popular Providers: 500 - 2999, Top Providers: 3000+). Points are positive feedback votes. Negative feedback deducts points.

3. Positive Feedback Percentage introduced for all Providers as well. Besides absolute number of points and rankings, all providers have the PFP, which shows percentage of positive ratings. Only ratings from the last 300 days are considered. Providers with higher ranks get some “bonus” percentages for their long-term loyal service ( Established: +1%, Popular: +2%, Top: +3%).

4.  "New & Noteworthy" browsing block and page added as the main browsing method. This list is automatically curated, based on a new fancy formula that goes like this:

N&N = LPS x PFP

N&N - New & Noteworthy Score

LPS - Latest Product Score (amount of positive "points" the product gained in the last 30 days)

PFP - Positive feedback percentage (%% of Provider's positive feedback in the last 300 days)

This obviously pushes forward products with some positive feedback and from most reputable Providers. Additionally, we've added a small "opportunity" boost for new products. Thus, a new product from New Provider gets a temporary 1 positive feedback point for 30 days to be able to get listed in New & Noteworthy. Established Providers get 2 points, Popular get 3, and Top Providers get 4 temporary points. In effect, new products from trustworthy providers show in New and Noteworthy, but negative feedback may quickly kick them out. 

PFP is the main driving factor for selecting “New & Noteworthy” products. Low feedback score (less than, 80%) can be used to delist Provider's products from browsing pages completely. Even lower score (less than 50%) may lead to profile suspension. 

5. Downloading from suspended Providers is now possible for existing purchases. Download can be initiated from "Shopping History" in BoonEx Account shopping cart.

6. Feedback Request Notifications are now emailed to all buyers. It is a well known trend that people rarely care to write positive feedback when they're happy with a product, but may go all out with negative feedback if something goes wrong. This phenomenon created a skewed impression of product quality and may hurt reputable Providers for little or no reason. So, now we're going to remind everyone to come and share their impressions and leave feedback. We'll remind twice, if needed.

7. Product page and Profile page redesigned to work with the changed rankings/ratings, and to declutter by grouping some page elements.

8. Customers Also Bought, and Other Products From [this Provider] blocks added to product page. Some Providers didn't really like the former one, but we believe that interlinking adds to better user experience of end clients, giving them wider scope of comparison, or at least engaging them to research more before making a choice. 

9. Mixed feedback introduced to Profiles. Now products feedback is imbedded into profile “feedback” block along with the direct profile feedback. Thus, clients can have general impression of Provider's reputability without having to check his products. 

10. Stars were changed to positive/negative votes. Old data was converted to the new system like so: 1, 2 stars - negative feedback; 3 - neutral; 4, 5 - positive.

11. Added new special fields for Providers (skills, timezone, availability, languages). This should help clients to coordinate any communication with Providers more effectively.

12. New moderation tools (for ghost providers clean-up) added. New info is displayed for moderators - email, last online time, number of new and unanswered emails. Also super-moderators can hide or suspend profiles. As you may guess this will lead to removal of the profiles that haven't been doing anything for too long. 

13. Subscriptions.  Now you can subscribe to someone's profile and receive updates when the member publishes new products, job offers or blog posts. This feature may actually work somewhat like an "opt-in" newsletter for Providers with strong following. 

14. Now connection should be mutual to be listed in connections list in both profiles. Yeah, I know... :) should have always been like that. 

15. Live-Search. When you search in Market the search form will automatically bring up suggestions, as you type. This kind of search assistance is particularly important for situations when exact name for the end result may not be obvious.

There're quite a few smaller tweaks as well, so we believe that the Market is an all-around better place now. More transparency, more objectiveness, more focus. 

Ta-Da!