Silk Road forums

Support => Feature requests => Topic started by: railroadbill on September 28, 2013, 07:04 pm

Title: Streamlining product and processing inventory + SortByWeight in two simple steps
Post by: railroadbill on September 28, 2013, 07:04 pm
Id like to describe a small change that would help streamline the vending process and help vendors and buyers alike.

==Background==
The shipping aspect of the black market mail order business is a very resource intensive process and often creates a hard limit on orders that a vendor can handle. Currently the only way to limit this is either cancel excess orders angering potential customers, Or limit the inventory of each listing and reupping it each day leaving a large window where the listings are not shown. A secondary problem has been created by having multiple listings of the same product with different weights: each listing must represent all or a fraction of the actual inventory of a product, leading to over or underselling, in addition to the confusion multiple listings create for buyers who may be searching for a specific weight within a product class.

==Method==

The first step to streamlining product and processing inventory is to have one product listing per product. The weights would be shown in a drop down menu that would list the price for each weight. This could also be expressed as a set of radio buttons. In addition shipping options could also be expressed as a dependent list based on the weight selected.

The second step is to have a vertical grid on the listing page where each cell is a slot representing the number of packages the vendor is willing to ship per day. Vendors would set their processing capacity on their vendor page. As buyers place orders the weights of orders placed across all vendor listings would show up in each cell. Priority would be set by the vendor who would place a priority number for each weight and would be displayed alongside the weights in the dropdown menu.

==Result==

Having one product listing per product will have a number of effects. First it will simplify the browsing process for buyers as all weights (kg, g, ug) will be standardized and stored, allowing them to search by weight. Secondly it will remove alot of repetitive clutter from the site. Most importantly it will allow vendors to manage product inventory much better, eliminating the risk of balancing inventory numbers across multiple listings.

The creation of a order priority system through the use of cells posted across a vendors listings will benefit buyers as they will better be able to know if a vendor is able to fulfill their orders, removing much of the anxiety of processing waiting periods. For the vendors this will provide two main benefits, they will no longer have to be concerned with receiving orders they cannot fulfill and losing potential customers, and they will only have to fulfill the most important orders, providing a maximum return on their investment.

==Conclusion==

While any change to SR would be a big change we must focus on what really matters, which is accountability and usability. Currently SR has been focusing on the former and have made much headway but without a functioning processing-and-product-inventory-accountability-system feedback changes will only serve to mitigate the symptom and not the problem.
Title: Re: Streamlining product and processing inventory + SortByWeight in two simple steps
Post by: shroomin1 on September 30, 2013, 07:36 pm
Id like to describe a small change that would help streamline the vending process and help vendors and buyers alike.

==Background==
The shipping aspect of the black market mail order business is a very resource intensive process and often creates a hard limit on orders that a vendor can handle. Currently the only way to limit this is either cancel excess orders angering potential customers, Or limit the inventory of each listing and reupping it each day leaving a large window where the listings are not shown. A secondary problem has been created by having multiple listings of the same product with different weights: each listing must represent all or a fraction of the actual inventory of a product, leading to over or underselling, in addition to the confusion multiple listings create for buyers who may be searching for a specific weight within a product class.

==Method==

The first step to streamlining product and processing inventory is to have one product listing per product. The weights would be shown in a drop down menu that would list the price for each weight. This could also be expressed as a set of radio buttons. In addition shipping options could also be expressed as a dependent list based on the weight selected.

The second step is to have a vertical grid on the listing page where each cell is a slot representing the number of packages the vendor is willing to ship per day. Vendors would set their processing capacity on their vendor page. As buyers place orders the weights of orders placed across all vendor listings would show up in each cell. Priority would be set by the vendor who would place a priority number for each weight and would be displayed alongside the weights in the dropdown menu.

==Result==

Having one product listing per product will have a number of effects. First it will simplify the browsing process for buyers as all weights (kg, g, ug) will be standardized and stored, allowing them to search by weight. Secondly it will remove alot of repetitive clutter from the site. Most importantly it will allow vendors to manage product inventory much better, eliminating the risk of balancing inventory numbers across multiple listings.

The creation of a order priority system through the use of cells posted across a vendors listings will benefit buyers as they will better be able to know if a vendor is able to fulfill their orders, removing much of the anxiety of processing waiting periods. For the vendors this will provide two main benefits, they will no longer have to be concerned with receiving orders they cannot fulfill and losing potential customers, and they will only have to fulfill the most important orders, providing a maximum return on their investment.

==Conclusion==

While any change to SR would be a big change we must focus on what really matters, which is accountability and usability. Currently SR has been focusing on the former and have made much headway but without a functioning processing-and-product-inventory-accountability-system feedback changes will only serve to mitigate the symptom and not the problem.

I like it!  I am more interested in combining my different-weight listings together than limiting my number of shipments per day.  I guess I don't do enough volume to have to worry about the latter.  But the former would be extremely useful to me.