Feedback For Product Facets

Discussion in 'Official Announcements' started by Andrewsimonthomas, Oct 17, 2016.

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  1. Andrewsimonthomas
    Andrewsimonthomas Well-Known Member
    Hello Shop Owners,

    We are pleased to announce some exciting changes to make it easier for shoppers to find your products. Right now the marketplace is organized into Categories and Subcategories. This has been fine for separating jewelry from model trains, but what if a shopper comes in looking for a fashionable iPhone case? In the past, we have depended on the tags, descriptions, and titles that you've provided to help guide the search process and filter things down, but that is not always the best or only way to guide a shopper to your shop or product.

    We're now going to make that flow much, much easier...and we want your input!

    How is this going to work?
    We're adding a new product filtering option called product facets to the following subcategories:

    - click here to comment and provide feedback on the list
    - click on the subcategories for a image preview
    Since the goal of this undertaking is primarily to make your products more discoverable, please let us know what you think of the current breakdown! We want to confirm that we are using the right words to attract the audiences you are trying to reach to buy your products.

    Important Dates:
    • New product facets available to Product Edit page:
      • Edit: due to the effects of this, we will update you of our status the week of 10/24 - 10/28
    • Community feedback period: 10/17/2016 (today) - 11/4/2016 (3 weeks)
    In addition, to make the process of adding facets easier we plan to pull a list of tags that are applicable per facet and automatically apply the facet. So if your product in the Miniatures > Vehicles category was tagged “1/87 scale”, it will later be applied with the correct scale facet: “1/87 - HO”. The complete list of tags we will be looking is will be coming in the next few days, but if you have suggestions please share.

    The categories receiving these product facets in this first iteration are listed above. That said, if you have additional suggestions, please feel free to share them below.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 21, 2016
    Model_Monkey likes this.
  2. imdaveho
    imdaveho Shapeways Employee Product Team
    Hi Shop Owners,

    We wanted to keep you posted on our progress for this exciting feature. Due to certain issues in the internet, we will provide an update soon on the status next week.
     
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  3. seriaforma
    seriaforma Well-Known Member
    I think you need more refinement in the Home category, esp. planters and sculpture.
     
  4. imdaveho
    imdaveho Shapeways Employee Product Team
    @seriaforma, thanks for the feedback! We're definitely planning on these changes soon, but currently are focused on the current list of categories. In the meanwhile, feel free to elaborate on how you would like to see this kind of refinement with planters and sculpture. :)
     
  5. MrNibbles
    MrNibbles Well-Known Member
    I have some general ideas but I'm not sure if they need to be new categories or facets under existing headings. But here are some general things that might be good to add if they aren't already somewhere:


    Arts and Crafts; perhaps under mechanical parts or DIY? Supplies, jigs, patterns, kits...
    Hardware - stuff like feet, handles, knobs, hinges, name plates, etc.
    Expand Home to Home & Garden or include garden under home.
    How about a general Office category?
    Outdoors - More general than "garden" and might include outdoor activities/applications such as biking, etc.
    Tools?

    This stuff can get awful messy. It sounds as if the facet structure is basically an enhanced tree structure? I hope that products which can fit into multiple categories or facets can be marked as such, perhaps in a more general matrix selection format so, for example, something could be discovered starting from various top categories. Think of something like a bird house kit/components/embellishments which could conceivably fit in crafts and garden and outdoors and mechanical parts.

    Anyway, does this mean it will eventually be best for us to go through each store product and modify/expand previous selections? That could end up being a lot of work. :(
     
  6. Carlos2k10
    Carlos2k10 Well-Known Member
    Hi there

    Left a bit of feedback on the spreadsheet,

    Please think about getting a way to do a bulk refacetting as editing every single model to adjust the facets can be
    a daunting task.

    The CSV route with the categories works very well (hint, hint)

    Regards
     
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  7. imdaveho
    imdaveho Shapeways Employee Product Team
    Hi everyone!

    If you all haven't seen already, we have released Product Facets for updating on the Product Edit side. We're currently working on moving it to the marketplace and will keep you all posted. But in the meantime, this gives all you Shop Owners the chance to start setting your products with the appropriate Facets for display!

    Two things to consider:

    1. We leveraged your tags to automate some migration over to facets so you don't have to do too much work. We will also be doing to additional automation over the next couple of weeks.

    2. We are still accepting your feedback on the facet items and groups that you see in the original post. Some of you have already included comments that we're thinking about incorporating in the near future. We wanted to give you all the first pass at setting facets in order to get products up-to-date AND also to give you all a chance for more feedback now that you get to see it live.

    @MrNibbles @Carlos2k10 As for bulk edit for those with more than several products in their Shop Inventory, we are looking into it, as we know how much work it may entail. We are trying to automate as much as possible and for those that could not be, make it as easy it is to update.

    Either way we want to make sure that you all are successful this season and beyond. Please continue to share your thoughts and we will do our best to accommodate your suggestions.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 25, 2016
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  8. Carlos2k10
    Carlos2k10 Well-Known Member
    Hi, a minor suggestion regarding the tags for the "auto faceting"
    Modeling scales are often written as 1/XXX (1/285, 1/200 ...ect) it would be interesting for the systems to take this into consideration as well.

    I have spent the last two hours correcting/ adding scale facets (and a couple hours more to go...) in my shop.
     
    Andrewsimonthomas likes this.
  9. stonysmith
    stonysmith Well-Known Member Moderator
    @imdaveho @Andrewsimonthomas I like to vote (beg) for the ability to bulk update these - It seems that quite a few of my models did not got updated with the facets.
     
  10. Carlos2k10
    Carlos2k10 Well-Known Member
    Minor addition number 2 everything that does not fit any facet should be assigned a default facet of "Others"
    not to be lost in limbo
     
  11. stonysmith
    stonysmith Well-Known Member Moderator
    @imdaveho can we get a category for [Freight Wagon Load] ?
    I have a number of objects that go onto or into a Freight Wagon, but it doesn't have it's own wheels.
    Items such as this, the most-sold item in my entire shop... http://shpws.me/DvHa
    I also have a number of add-ons for locomotives such as Air Conditioners, etc.

    Also.. nit picking... in the US, they are generally called "Cars" instead of "Wagons" <grin>
     
  12. imdaveho
    imdaveho Shapeways Employee Product Team
    @stonysmith @Carlos2k10 We're planning another automation step before this goes out to the marketplace where we will take into consideration the suggestions here (eg. the 1/60 vs 1:60 issue is super valid and will be incorporated in our next automation step)

    As for bulk edit, we're definitely hearing your concerns here. I'll keep you guys posted on the some of the possibilities we're considering over the next few days.
     
  13. Carlos2k10
    Carlos2k10 Well-Known Member
    One more suggestion, I would make the facets collapsable in the marketplace interface so you can "hide" the facets you are not interested in when refining.

    Regards
     
  14. Model_Monkey
    Model_Monkey Well-Known Member
    Love the whole idea of facets! I consistently hear from customers that they simply cannot find my products. This seems to be a very good and big step in fixing that.

    Recommend caution with automating "bulk faceting". I noticed that automation has incorrectly "faceted" some of my products.

    I did notice a more significant problem that appeared just yesterday mid-morning East Coast USA time, that may be linked to these coding changes or automation. I have notified customer service who is helping but am interested to know if anyone else had this experience. I'm using Google Chrome on Windows 10, if that helps.

    Yesterday morning, to take advantage of the new "Marketplace Facets" feature, I was systematically going through products to add "Marketplace Facets" to their pages. After several successful changes, it was later in the morning when I noticed that product descriptions were disappearing altogether when I went to edit a product page. Gone, just a blank, empty product description box. Not a good thing to lose product descriptions.

    Last evening, I only noticed missing product descriptions on two pages opened for editing, but on ALL pages opened for editing, the formatting was dorked up, specifically, 1) paragraph separations are lost - the last sentence of a paragraph abuts the first sentence of the next paragraph without any spacing combining paragraphs, sentences and even words, and 2) right-left justification is lost..

    Today, it appears that the product descriptions are there but paragraph spacing and justification remains lost.

    As soon as I sign in and attempt to edit a product with the intention of adding facets, the formatting of the product description appears lost on the product editing page. If I do not save the editing page, the original (good) formatting remains. If I save it, the (good) formatting is lost permanently and the page's product description is a mess.

    Although this may seem rather minor, it makes a mess of product descriptions and can be confusing to new customers trying to understand the product and gain the confidence necessary to make a purchase. I am concerned that if a customer sees a mess of a product description, the customer may have no confidence that the product itself isn't loaded with design errors or that Shapeways can competently print the product, and then the customer chooses not to buy.

    When a similar problem occurred several months ago (lost formatting and the inclusion of this character "Å" randomly throughout the product description in some places where there had been a paragraph separation), the problem was fixed but only for new products. Existing products had to be repaired by the designer one product at a time, removing the offending character and restoring paragraph breaks.

    Could this problem be related to the adoption of the new Marketplace Facets feature or automation?

    Hopefully, the tech folks can figure out what changed and fix it.
     
  15. glehn
    glehn Well-Known Member
    I miss an "Other" option under Aircraft/Type. Or you could add more options, like "Military Transport" planes, such as my KC-390 model and "Trainers", which I happen to have a dedicated session in my shop.

    Regards,
    Luis
     
  16. mkroeker
    mkroeker Well-Known Member
  17. Model_Monkey
    Model_Monkey Well-Known Member
    Concur with recommendation to be able to edit facets via CSV.
     
  18. reducedAircraftFactory
    reducedAircraftFactory Well-Known Member
    On facets, specifically "Country": We've talked about how it is very difficult to assign a single country to many items. Perhaps it would help to illustrate the point with this example: consider the famous supersonic jet transport "Concorde". Please tell me whether the Concorde should be classified as a French plane or a British plane?

    "Country" needs to be "pick as many as apply"; not "pick one".
     
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  19. PixelRaizer
    PixelRaizer Member
    Is there a way to update the list of board games? The board game my models are compatible with isn't listed.
    The Board game I made models for is called Betrayal At House On The Hill.
    If I could make a suggestion? Maybe the drop down window could be connected to a database or something like that? Something that can be updated by us users as we type in the names of the board games. Just a thought
    upload_2016-10-31_16-42-5.png
     
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  20. reducedAircraftFactory
    reducedAircraftFactory Well-Known Member
    I have gone through all my products and added facets where possible, but I still have roughly 25% of my products where picking a single Country for an aircraft does not make sense. I'd like to see Shapeways fix this before the use of facets becomes commonplace for customers.
     
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