Will be interesting to see how the @mentions system goes. Ive noticed product comments arent too common, mentions could be a better and more engaging alternative.
User submitted images could be pretty neat, although I wonder how often people would go to the effort of uploading an image of the product they bought. I know it works well on ThinkGeek, I always check the user submitted images before making a potential purchase. Its reassuring to see that others have bought and been enjoying the product.
Also perhaps a system similar to what Ebay has would also be good? ie when a customer receives the order they can log on and leave feedback for the item with a positive/negative/neutral rank, the % of positive ratings is displayed with the item (or perhaps the shop owner's name).
Something like that could even be incorporated into the mentions system, ie if you rate a product and want the shop owner to know about it, you @'name' them and it gives them the notification via that system too.
Also another major thing Ive felt has been lacking from the Shapeways shop setup/system - currently theres no 'push' from Shapeways for users to comment/respond on a bought item once they receive it.
I was thinking that perhaps a couple of days after the shipping arrival date, the customer would receive an email with a link to the item(s)/store to leave a quick feedback rank on how they feel about the item(s) they've purchased. I think a lot of the time its easy to have a customer slip away after a purchase- ie a customer will buy an item, then receive it a week or two later and wont ever come back to shapeways to leave feedback, they might not even consider it or know that they can leave feedback of any type.
Some certainly do, but I imagine it would be more common if they got an email letting them know they can with quicklinks. I think Ebay goes to an extreme with this idea though,
requiring you to leave feedback after you buy something. A nicer way to do it would be to just make a 'suggestion'/reminder to leave feedback/score for the item(s).
Also you could imagine leaving feedback for a 10-20 item order would be a pain for the customer, there could be a preset option to select and rate all the objects in an order at once (some kind of overall order rating) to make it a less complicated process, with the ability to single out items if they had a problem with a given number of items from an order, eg a customer receives an order which is exactly as they expected except for one item, they would be able to rate all the items in an order positive, except the one problem item which can then be individually rated.
Also, today marks 1 whole month of having sales every day from my shapeways shop, didnt expect this to happen (at least not so early on!)
Will be very interesting to see what happens after the holiday season, as we get into the new year.