Part 2: Using the Split Keyword to Break up Your Data

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eSellerPro LogoThis article is a continuation of a previous article called Part 1: Comma Separated Keyword/Tag Blocks in Your eBay Listings? if you’ve not read this article then nip back and read through it, as we’ll need to know the original steps to where we are now.

So we left off with me saying that we should not process further keywords unless we have qualified the custom field so that we actually have something worth continuing with. We did this by using this keyword setup:

{{IFNOT/[[CustomFields:Variations:Other Colours]]// do something }}

So if the value of ‘Other Colours’ is not blank we should ‘do something’; Well lets look at the ‘something’. This is where it really gets good:

{{Split/Value To Split/Spilt Character(s)/ __SplitValue__ }}

Scary? Na, lets pop some values in here and we’ll talk it back in plain English on what the ‘Split’ keyword is going to do for us:

{{Split/{{CustomFields:Variations:Other Colour}}/, / <b>__SplitValue__</b>}}

Keeping this simple, lets assume we have ‘Blue,Red’ in our custom field for ‘Other Colours’ and that you know that the <b> and </b> are HTML tags and make text bold. So here it is:

Foreach ‘Split’ of the value of ‘Other Colours’ we are going to make <b>__SplitValue__</b>

Easy eh? Lets no use this with the two values ‘Blue,Red’ in our custom field for ‘Other Colours’, it would make the following:

<b>Blue</b><b>Red</b>

Wow, are you getting the power of this keyword yet? I hope so, lets keep going and beef this out into something more usable. As the complexity of the keyword is going now grow rapidly, I’m going to be using syntax highlighting on the code so its easier for you to read:

{{IFNOT/[[CustomFields:Variations:Other Colours]]//

	

	{{Split/{{CustomFields:Variations:Other Colours}}/, / 
		Find more items in __SplitValue__
		 , 
	}}.

}}

So this would make the following:

Find more items in Blue, Find more items in Red.

A quick note on the URL I used, I just simply went to eBay, picked the nearest store, in the search box on the left I entered ‘Blue’, but crucially ticked the box called ‘in titles & descriptions’ and chopped of the _SID=NNNNNN off the end, if you’re unsure, leave a comment on this post. I chose the ‘in titles & descriptions’ option, as I very much doubt any of you are spamming the titles with all the colour variations and for the super smart ones out there, instead of searching for just ‘Blue’, you would be prefixing these style colours with something like ‘sBlue’ so that the colour matching using this technique is absolute in its results (not clouded by junk results on ‘blue’).

Next Steps

Taking this further, lets assume you have made some colour swatches in images that are 50×50 pixels (we could do some further IF statements to use HTML colour codes, but thats way out for the purpose of example) and also you have entered your sizes into the ‘sizes’ custom field we first discussed, this could make something like:

{{IFNOT/[[CustomFields:Variations:Other Colours]]//

This item is available in other colours, pick you colour:

{{Split/{{CustomFields:Variations:Other Colours}}/, / Find more items in the __SplitValue__ colour }}

	
}}
{{IFNOT/[[CustomFields:Variations:Sizes]]//

This item is available in other sizes, pick you size:

{{Split/{{CustomFields:Variations:Sizes}}/, / Find more items in the __SplitValue__ size }}

	
}}

Summary

Thats quite a chunk of code to take in, but in simple terms for each colour it’ll bring in a swatch image of that colour and link it, then do similar task for image that are named ‘size-3.png’ etc… Neat eh?

Now some might say, ‘well eBay do variations now, I don’t need size or colours in the listing…’, thats right they do, but this example can easily be expanded upon for other values, like years of manufacturer if you’re selling roof racks, or perhaps this item is part of a range that is not being listed as multi level variations just single variations. You’re only limited here by your imagination the application of your data.

The point is with some thought and the right application of the tools & data at your disposal, you can actually have a targeted exit strategy to your eBay listings.

PS: For the XHTML junkies out there ‘border=”0″‘ is not valid, you’d want to use a CSS style or something :)

Part 1: Comma Separated Keyword/Tag Blocks in Your eBay Listings?

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eSellerPro LogoClearing out my old files earlier and I came across some old keywords I used on numerous occasions. Instead of  just detailing one, I’m actually going to join a few together here to make a example anyone using eSellerpro could use with a little thought.

Lets Make a Real-Life Example

Lets assume that you have two customfields the first with ‘Other Colours’ and another with ‘Sizes’, both in the custom fields group called ‘Variations’. These are two very common fields for anyone who deals with variation products, they could of course be ‘Languages’ for say DVD’s or ‘Years’ for of applicable models and so on…

So lets get right in and cover the first keyword, which is lets get value of the first field out so we can use it:

{{CustomFields:Variations:Other Colours}}

This keyword is in the format of ‘CustomFields:GroupName:FieldName‘. CustomFields calls the Custom Fields, GroupName is vitally important because it was found that the keyword only pulls in the values of the customfields from previous customfield calls, so if the value we were looking for was in a different group, then it would not be resolved; And finally the FieldName which is the internal name of the custom field (as opposed tot he display name which can be different).

So using the keyword ‘{{CustomFields:Variations:Other Colours}}‘ we can pull out the values in the ‘Other Colours’, for the sake of this example these other colours are ‘blue,green,red’. Noticing they are separated by commas, this is extremely important, as we’ll be using the ‘comma’ to spilt them up shortly.

Wait!! Lets Error Check

Now before we go any further, we need to error check ourselves. What do I mean by this? I do not think its a good idea to show or process any further code if there are not any ‘other colours’ to be showing to the viewer, we do this using another keyword.

There is two variations of this new keyword, IF and IFNOT. Both of these allow to check to see if a condition is true (there is another for IF/ELSE and IFNOT/ELSE but thats not required for this example, plus you could just alternate the IF/IFNOT to capture the alternative if its a 1:1 check, anyway back on topic…). These keywords are in the format of:

{{IF/Value being Checked/Value to Check Against/Output if True}}
{{IFNOT/Value being Checked/Value to Check Against/Output if True}}

Looks scary right? Naa its easy, lets do a real example. Lets pretend we have an colour blue in our custom field ‘Other Colours’ and IF we find blue, lets bring in an image that is the colour blue (for the smart ones, you can see where we could go with this):

{{IF/[[CustomFields:Variations:Other Colours]]/Blue/ <img src=”some-blue-image.png” />}}

Now you’ll notice the use of [[  & ]]  and not {{ & }}, this is for a very good reason, image the custom field value contained ‘Blue/Red/Green’, this would break the earlier format of {{IF/Value being Checked/Value to Check Against/Output if True}} and a good practice is to always use the ‘square’ brackets and also do your best to avoid forward slashes ‘/’ in you data.

So if the value of the ‘Other Colours’ was ‘Blue’ then we would have had an blue image appear and if there was not, ‘nothing’ would have been output from this statement.

That brings us very nicely onto ‘nothing’, going back to previously mentioning its not a good idea to show or process code when there is no need, we need to check to make sure the ‘Other Colours’ actually has something in it, so we can continue, we do this by using this keyword set up:

{{IFNOT/[[CustomFields:Variations:Other Colours]]// do something }}

This says in plain English: IF the value of Other Colours is NOT blank (thats what the // is ) then do something.

End of Part 1

This feels a good place to stop, I’ll cover off the next stage of this little session in my next post. I hope I have at least got your creative juices flowing, I know what I’m thinking, perhaps we could have a set of colour images and those images being linked, so that customers could pick their alternative colours or sizes using a user friendly block to your eBay listings or may be a ‘year picker’. Hey the options are endless!

View part 2 here:  Using the Split Keyword to Break up Your Data

Barclays ‘Ready For Growth’ Seminars

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Barclays LogoI got a call from a client asking if I would attend this with them, sounded interesting and I gladly accepted (to be honest I was thinking plush sandwich spreads and my sole addiction coffee, but hey!).

After getting the awkward ‘everyone stand around and chat crap session’ or ‘networking’ to the professionals. We were ushered in and were presented with our local (will explain more in a mo) and very competent host for the evening.

It was explained that we’ve have a chat with a local Bristol business that had been going through success and that the two main sessions would be hosted live from London.

An interesting note from the Bristol host was that a whopping 89% of the businesses that attended the seminar expected to grow in the next year, this was amazing considering the most gloomy outlook we were presented with Heck & the big wigs in London.

Their MD did a very good job at batting some very awkward questions from the audiences. But after we were greeted by far too much blusher (personal joke), the real star of the show was Paul Lindley of Ella’s Kitchen.

Paul was bursting through the dull-ness of the others and a firm favourite amongst everyone in the room. The funniest moment of the entire night was the gasps that that of his team of 30 he has one full time person to look after web PR. They seemed shocked by this, it seemed only natural to the people I was sat with…

In short, the second session lags, but its worth attending for the Mariot Hotel spread before and after, but just to listen to Paul from Ella’s Kitchen.

On a side note, it was interesting, after getting home, scanning the fridge I spied two pouches from Ella’s Kitchen, when quizzing my partner of this, she replied with ‘Yea she ate a whole one of those tonight’, which was ace considering my youngest has only just started eating ‘real food. 10/10 for market identification Paul *claps*

For anyone wishing to join, you can visit if you’re ‘up North’ on the 8th or listen live from the web, see http://www.ready-for-growth.co.uk/our-seminars.html for more information and yes its free.

SuperDryStore, eBay UK’s Largest Outlet Seller Exposed For YOU to Learn From

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SuperDrySuperDryStore is eBay UK’s largest outlet store for Fashion. As we all know ‘Fashion’ really is eBay’s baby atm and they’ll bend over & drop their pants for anyone with a brand name in this arena at the moment.

Yes thats right for anyone who has they’re head in the Arctic for the past year, eBay is in a 100% all out assault on getting high street names onto eBay, literally what ever the cost is, throwing round freebies all over the shop, free listing fees, free gallery, free sub titles, free designs, free development time, year contacts for monkey nuts.

eBay UK LogoBut…. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, that’s not to be the topic of discussion, for this and the forth coming posts, what I am going to cover is what YOU can learn from them, both the good things, the things I suggest you don’t do and crucially why.

I’ve a couple of posts already lined up, but they need more work, however the time is right to start this series off. So lets get right into some numbers from Terapeak for the past 90 days:

Total Sales £1,344,390
 Total Listings 36,458
Successful Listings 35,352
Total Bids 89,233
Items Offered 156,013
Items Sold 62,616
Bids per Listing 2.45
Sell-Through 96.97%

Past the headline number, £1.35M, thats £450,000 per month in sales. Amazingly this is no where near the figures turned over by the heavyweights on eBay and mere sniff on the values being chucked around by sellers on Amazon.

However they’ve[SuperDryStore] done a pretty good job, there is quite a bit we can learn from them for both what you should be doing and should not be doing. I see it as my role in the next few posts to expose these to you and I’d welcome any feedback you have.

Part 2 will be covering the ‘SuperDryStore eBay Shop‘.

PHP: Search for String in a String Using strpos

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This is more for my own reference than anything else, working on a recent project where specific terms and stock numbers needed to be excluded, the below function quickly allowed me to action the excluded items to ensure their exclusion.

Its different to the other options out there because of the use of ‘!==’, there is an issue when using strpos, that is if finds the string at position 0, then it gives a false positive, where as using ‘===’ or ‘!==’ checks for ‘identical’ or ‘not identical; matches.

Possibly the most boring post yet :)

//Decalre Vars
$haystack 	= array (
				"123",
				"456",
				"789"
			);

if(CheckIfExists($item->Title)) {
	// Do something if its found
}
						
function CheckIfExists($needle)
{				
	global $haystack;
	
	foreach($haystack as $needles) {
		
		if (strpos($needle, $needles) !== false) {
			//echo "We have a banned Item!! - " . $needle;
			return true;
		}
	}
	return false;
}