We’ve updated Kitely with several features and bug fixes that were requested by our users. The biggest improvement is to the Merchants Showcase area in the Kitely Welcome Center, and how it allocates free advertising signs to Kitely Market stores.
Merchants Showcase
Kitely Welcome Center is the most popular entry point to the Kitely grid, and is visited by hundreds of people each week. It contains an area called the “Merchants Showcase”, which provides free advertising for some Kitely Market stores. Each store gets a sign that displays some of its products, and visitors can click on the sign to view these products on the Kitely Market website. Thanks to this world’s popularity, the showcase is a great way to let people learn what’s available in Kitely Market.
The stores that get this advertising are selected by their rank. A store’s rank is determined by the amount of money that the store’s owner pays for their monthly Kitely subscription.
A store’s rank can also be improved when other people who have a Kitely subscription use their rank to promote that store (instead of promoting their own Kitely Market store). For example, this is useful when a group of users share a store. A user that wants to promote a different store can do so by entering that store’s name in their Account Settings:
Each store’s sign displays four of the store’s best-selling products (chosen at random from the store’s top ten best-selling products).
Optionally, the store owner can control which products appear in this sign by creating a Products Group called “Merchants Showcase”, and adding products to it. If this group exists then it will only be used to determine which products appear in the Merchants Showcase; it will not be used for the “Related Products” feature (which is the usual way that Product Groups are used).
There are a few caveats for appearing in the Merchants Showcase. First, only products with a maturity rating of General or Moderate are displayed. Second, only a store that has at least four eligible products can get a sign (since we don’t want empty squares in the signs).
The Merchants Showcase is automatically updated once per day. When that happens the list of stores might change, as well as the products that are displayed in each sign.
Sort Items in a Product
Items and folders that are included in a Kitely Market product are now sorted alphabetically. Previously they appeared in reverse creation order, but alphabetical order makes more sense. (This change only affects products that are created or updated from this point on; it doesn’t affect any existing products.)
