Topic Drop-Down Menu
The drop-down menu available when listing could use some improving. Although not a big issue when listing stamps (yet still an issue at times), for those of us that list a lot of covers, its sorely inadequate. The allotted space for listing the cover's title gets used up fairly rapidly (from, to, Scott number, cancel, markings, etc.) and then we're left with the topic menu which oftentimes (most of the time) has nothing that fits. This means a lot of topics aren't showing up in buyers' basic searches. It would be more than just a bit helpful to have a blank, fill-it-in-yourself option available on the drop-down menu where topics, those that didn't have room in the Title bar or just aren't in the drop-down, could be added manually. This would clearly increase visibility and consequently, sales ! Even better, get rid of the drop-down altogether and gives us a fill-it-in-yourself bar limited to a certain amount of characters (but with an adequate amount of room since many covers have multiple topics between the stamps, cachets, etc.).
Comments
I'm in total agreement with both of you and your good suggestions! At least 4 out of 5 times when I'm listing covers I can't find an already-provided topic that fits what I want -- so being able to enter our own topic would be great!
And for a buyer to be able to enter his own favorite terms in a search that don't necessarily show up in the title ('handcolored', 'cachetmaker', 'award-winning' e.g.) would be a big boon for me -- I still tend to overwrite my descriptions with lots of searchable words, realizing it's sort of a waste of time. It's a throwback to the way I wrote descriptions in the StampWants days when a search did include the words in a description.
I've learned to live with what we have now . . . but George's idea of a fill-it-in-yourself option for the Topic field would be a great addition!
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/bennett-cachetoons