New store features in the works!!!
beingzoe 3 months ago // Potluck CoTradeCo news, comments, and requests

As a small company it is difficult to know where to put your energies and limited resources for growth and new site features. Many of you are already aware that the online CoTradeCo experience is about the community and building our grand and often times convoluted notion of a new time trading post. The offline CoTradeCo experience is equally about human interaction, but has been more focused on sales, and helping our sales force to help our customers. This post is about how we are currently reconciling the on and offline CoTradeCo experience and giving better purpose and direction to the “shopping” and “communication” functionality of the site ultimately giving real meaning to our definition of a new time trading post.

What we mean by new time trading post

This has been very open ended since the birth of the CoTradeCo concept and remains so to this day. Our intention was to provide a place for community interaction, building localized real world relationships. This was to be funded by operating a store that would utilize traditional sales people, full and part-time, to work with individuals and companies on a very personal level. In doing so this would provide us the opportunity to help people in our everyday lives who had recently lost secondary incomes after the collapse of the home mortgage business and negative economic circumstances. This ideally would be the basis for the community expansion online. People who work in specialized industries that use the products we carry could become representatives referring business to CoTradeCo in exchange for a 30% commission by simply being a conduit for the items their industries were already purchasing. These people would be members of the online community, and in-turn invite their friends and contacts to share their businesses and lives with other CoTradeCo community members. As this got rolling we would then begin implementing more unique ways for these individuals and organizations to interact, network, and even “hawk their own wares and services” directly through the trading post.

In practice this has been more difficult to accomplish than we would have liked. Defining and designing the business model, the technology needed, and putting it altogether has been a mammoth task for our tiny infrastructure. Thus our original fantastic visions have been put off and sometimes revised into simpler and less useful versions of what we were striving for.

But the past month marks a turning point in growth of CoTradeCo. Much of the core functionality is complete, a better long term road map has been taking shape, and we are in the process of bringing to life some of the more advanced and useful concepts behind the new time trading post.

The community and YOUR SPOT

While there is not yet the actual roadside CoTradeCo trading post / amusement park / roadside attraction we are striving for, we have always envisioned the site itself as a virtual representation of that very concept.

Thus the idea of the SPOT was born. More than simply yet another online profile or “space” for you to share tedious facts about your life, YOUR SPOT is meant literally.

YOUR SPOT is your billboard, your own booth at the trading post where people meet and you meet people like a tradeshow floor

In that concept is certainly the traditional profile but is to become a virtual world unto itself. A place where you could get some free advertising, use as central meeting place, hold a garage sale, have an online store, share ideas, network, and whatever else might come up as necessary to the community.

The first step in this process will be the “billboard.” Every SPOT comes with the traditional profile, but will soon include a literal billboard type advertisement that can be included in our catalog. There will be a special browse billboards section as well as the chance that your billboard will randomly be displayed alongside products in our online catalog. These will be akin to Google Ads that will be used on our site in various ways to promote YOU.

This will evolve into the opportunity to have your own private catalog of items as well as have your items listed in our catalog directly for affordable online solutions for smaller companies. And we have been bandying about ideas on how to offer literal old time style trading of goods and services between SPOTs that could range from a barter type system to a full on ebay style auction.

We are also exploring other methods of professional networking and communication exchange to help you find individuals and organizations that can help you in your own ventures and hobbies.

The communities will be enhanced with neighborhoods or groups that community members create to provide more local and specialized interaction.

New site navigation

As part of improving our online catalog, the entire site will get a navigational make-over by section. Namely between shopping/trading, community interaction, and resources. We are the first to admit that improvements need made to the CoTradeCo navigation, and no matter how perfect it gets we will never stop trying to improve.

We will be implementing new top level navigation that will focus better on the distinct functions of the site. The goal is to cater to the different purposes of why people visit and use CoTradeCo.

When using the store and forthcoming community “trading” functionality the main menu will change to reflect the most commonly used and needed pages, section, and functionality.

While participating in a community or on your SPOT, the menu will again change to provide the most useful navigation within the blog and community pages as well as let you know clearly where you are on the site and what else there is to do.

When we first launched CoTradeCo 6 months ago we were working under the idea that a common interface would serve our visitors best. Through much trial and error we have learned that this is not the case. While it is important to us to maintain a fluid experience throughout the entirety of the CoTradeCo experience we are beginning to get a better idea of how real people want to use the site and are responding to it.

New store features

Specialty stores

A common problem with sites as large as ours is that it can be difficult and unwieldy to find what you are looking for. Add into that our ongoing community building and community blog and you have a nightmare navigation situation.

We will be introducing specialty stores that will pre-filter items in our general catalog to the focus of that particular store. Some examples include…

• Firefighters store
• Construction Trades store
• Touring musicians store

...and many more.

Besides providing the specific products and services of relevance, these stores will also provide focused information and resources from our ever growing informational library. The goal is to provide the most focused and best possible experience for various industries and specialties taking into account the fact that some products are used and even referred to very differently by different people.

Filtering and sorting

The biggest change will be the elimination of the Shop by brand “categories”. Currently if you want to find Pelican cases the easiest way to do that is to go to the Pelican category in the catalog. Otherwise you could just browse the master cases category for all cases we carry.

Now that we have introduced UK Cases and Janal Cases-, with more options forthcoming, the current method of browsing would be quite limiting. Maybe you want a case and your first concern is not what brand it is. The current system would force you to choose between viewing all cases available at CoTradeCo or view only cases from one manufacturer. Indeed this is part of why we have refrained from putting our entire catalog offerings online due to the limited functionality and needless headache adding multiple categories for one thing like cases.

The new system will work around one master set of categories for all items. All cases from all manufacturers will be in one category. But while viewing the cases category you will be given the option to “filter your view” of the cases category to show “one or more” brands or manufacturers.

The core of this system will filter and sort by the most common shopping needs, such as brand, price, and sale items. Meaning you could choose to view all cases from Pelican AND Underwater Kinetics sorted from least expensive to most. Very cool.

But that’s just the beginning

Once the core sorting and filtering we begin adding in the actual feature and specification sets of the items being viewed.

In our case example a common feature/spec of a case is it’s exterior and interior dimensions. So our new filtering/sorting catalog will allow you to choose dynamically to further “filter your view” with the range of length, width, and depths available. Even cooler.

So in our example we started looking at every case CoTradeCo carries, and ended up viewing only Pelican and UK cases that are in the size range we need.

As you can imagine this is a herculean task, not simply implementing the technology, but actually entering in all the information. But this is in the short list of new features being implemented.

Traders…for sales reps and CoTradeCo dealers

Also on the short list are online tools for our reps and dealers. Reps and dealers will be able to log in and see stats on how many online customers and leads they have, view and print price sheets, as well as view other reports on how they are doing (e.g. how much money they are making). This has been a primary concern for some time now, but only recently has become possible to work on thanks to other items being completed throughout the site.

If you would like more information on becoming a sales rep with CoTradeCo please visit our opportunities section of the resource library to learn more.

We’re just getting started

We’ve set some pretty lofty goals for ourselves and the CoTradeCo community and we’re glad you are a part of it.

The very nature of the CoTradeCo Trading Post and Community is one of opportunities. If you have a suggestion for the site, a business proposition, or literally need help with ANYTHING don’t hestitate to contact Trader Dan and the CoTradeCo staff. We are here to work with you to accomplish our mutual goals and will do our best.

Thank you again. We hope you are finding your day well.