SLBoutique.com v2.0 is here!

Greetings!

I'm very proud to announce that the new version of SLBoutique.com has been launched. First off, I'd like to explain the two major changes we've put into place.

(1) The entire search has be re-written to use the Lucene Search Engine which will vastly improve the results provided. The original search engine was written in about 20 minutes by me, and it has long been overdue for a major overhaul. The results returned are now ranked by a scoring system, and should yield much better results than the former search which just did a straight string comparison on the name and description fields. As part of this change, we've dropped our categories in favor of tags. Tags (or "keywords" are much more beneficial for searching, since you're not limited to one and can actually be descriptive about your product. The more and better tags you use, the easier it will be for people to find your products! Our search works a lot more like Google does now, which should yield much better results.

(2) As we've grown over the past year and a half, many new features have been added. Many of them didn't feel like they quite "fit" in an area properly, so we've re-designed the entire web site to incorporate the new features. We've also switched from the traditional Flipper purple color scheme to the nice Electric Sheep Company shade of blue (I'm sure Cristiano will be happy about that, hehe).

There are numerous other more minor changes - like the rotating tips, and the dynamic left navigation. We're continuing to tweak a few things here and there, but we hope this major revamp is pleasing to all of you!

I want to thank the SLBoutique.com team for all of their hard work: Christian Westbrook for the amazing work on the search engine, Ryan Buskirk for implementing the design, Amanda for the wonderful design itself (and Cory for her input as well), and the entire Electric Sheep Company team for all the thought that went into the redesign process. It is an honor to be working with such a talented team, and really nice to no longer be a one-man show! Most importantly, I want to thanks everyone who uses the site: buyers, sellers and surfers! You've turned it into an amazing community, and without you, there would be no content.

Warmest regards,

FlipperPA Peregrine

Thanks for all the feedback everyone. Everything raised (and many of our own issues) have been kicking around our developers mailing list all day, and the gnomes are hard at work tweaking algorithms and enhancing the experience.

We are excited to have these new revisions out the door, but there is still a lot of work to go!

Keep the feedback coming...

Are you using the tags? Applying tags that will allow customers to find your item? Things like colors, male/female, type (halter, tank, shorts, capris, etc). Being specific with your tags will help.

One thing I'd like to suggest if it hasn't been mentioned already, is being able to choose how you'd like your search results listed. You could have it by price (high to low, low to high), alphabetical by creator, etc. The site looks great

The more I play with the search, the more I don't like it. I've tried lots of two word combos that should bring up my HUDs. Sometimes the search engine finds them and sometimes they don't at all. And nearly every time there are a bunch of results which are puzzling.

I have over 1300 items listed on SLB. If anyone wants to go back over all of it and hand-type in tags, be my guest. I would have thought the old categories and default tags would have worked, but it seems not.

One thing that I am finding that is annoying is that the searches are bringing up results that kind of match the key word. When I typed in gadget it brought up that along with Gaudete and Goddes, etc....THAT I think should be fixed.

Search is definitely better, but not as good as it could be.

The other major problem for me is still that it doesn't seem to be Firefox compatible. Often text is pushed off to the right and I get a few pages here and there as essentially blank.

The other major problem for me is still that it doesn't seem to be Firefox compatible. Often text is pushed off to the right and I get a few pages here and there as essentially blank.

Hey guys! Thanks for the feedback. We're aware of a lot of the problems, and have already started tweaking. The search engine, by default was putting far too much weight on description and far too little on tags, so we've changed that already; the search results I'm seeing are quite a bit better. Please let me know if your experience is or is not the same. I'll be continuing to check the thread in the SL forums for feedback. We've also got an internal discussion going right now about what do with with the categories. We still have the data, however, in analyzing how sales occurred on the previous version of the site, very few people actually browser by category; the lion's share of people used the search function. That said, some people did use the categories, and that's the core of our debate right now.

As far as my role, I'm still heading up SLBoutique, although it is owned by the Electric Sheep Company. I have a great team working with me now and am very excited about where this will head. We're still polishing the chrome on this new release - that's for sure! - but truly believe you'll see better results in the long run. I'm a paid employee of the Electric Sheep Company now, so don't worry - I'm not going anywhere any time soon (except for a two week vacation - <grin>.