Miss The Old APS Stampstore

Thanks Tiger dude! I did always like the orders coming in those cardboard mailer… exciting mail!

I to miss the old APS Store, as the search function of the store through Hipstamp is useless for what I collect.

Hipstamp only searches the title and with the APS titles being very minimal, usually only the Scott# and condition, so all off my searches come up with 0 "ZERO" results. I rarely if ever search by either of those 2 criteria, I always search with a word, such as "error", "efo", "shift", etc. I am sure others are coming up with no results or minimul results due to this limitation.

Unfortunately Hipstamp has no way that I know of to search the description, or what they call the details.

Using the search terms above, I was always able to find some listings in the old store, usually from a few up to about a 100 or so.

I am glad they are doing very well, but it would be nice to be able to actually buy something from them again.

That's not true at all. Don't blame Hipstamp.

It is the APS store itself that limits itself to the most basic of descriptions. They do not even include gum condition or even whether something is mint or used, so you can't search the APS store using those very basic terms. Elsewhere, sellers can write long descriptions to include any possible search terms including the ones you are looking for. So, your problem is with the APS Store and you should contact them about it.

Ehh? The old APS store had this information, so it's in the data somewhere. Perhaps there are fields that Hipstamp's API isn't using properly?

It looks to me that how the listing data was converted from the old APS stamp store to Hipstamp resulted in just the "bare bones" titles coming into the title field, much else into the description, and info like "used" only in the Hipstamp specific fields found under the Details tab (e.g. condition, type). And since Hipstamp doesn't support searching on description or condition, it does hinder users searching for condition & other characteristics. (This limitation is why I include key data like that in the title in my Hipstamp listings).

That being said, from all accounts their sales have been robust since the move, so clearly the move is working for APS & their sellers.

If I were a company like HS, I would have run a cost analysis of this type of integration in two primary parts; the NREs (initial development costs) and then the ongoing monthly costs. Both these costs would typically include both human resource costs and infrastructure costs. I assume they did this and that these number were used in the contractual negotiations with the APS. I believe that Scott has previously noted that the disclosure of these kinds of details are not public.

But while we do not know these details, we can assume that adding/having extra fields could impact both HS human resource and infrastructure costs.
Don

Quote:
Unfortunately Hipstamp has no way that I know of to search the description, or what they call the details.
Quote:
That's not true at all. Don't blame Hipstamp.

I was not blaming Hipstamp, but it is true that you can't search the descriptions, it would be a nice feature to be able to search the descriptions.

I do realize the main problem is the very limited info in the titles.

When I first visited the APS Store on Hipstamp, the titles had the Scott# and the APS Stores seller#, then they changed it to what it is now Scott# and condition. Neither is very useful for actual keyword searches.

The original APS store did sometimes have some information (usually quite short) as a description, that is the info my searches used in the Orig. store.
I realize they can't redo all the listings manually, and have to work with the info they have. That being said, because their titles are usually fairly short, I wonder if it would be possible to import the descriptions, or whatever part of the description that would fit into the title. Not sure if that is feasible or even needed for them, as luckily, they seem to be doing quite well without it.

I've spent a lot of time looking tough APS HipStamp (hey new acronym... APSHS!) and with careful searching one can find what they are looking for, There is quite a learning curve though for people used to the old stampstore. I miss the cat values the most and like others have said, the longer descriptions. I suggest noting your favorite sellers numbers and that does help.

I always use other online stamp dealers as benchmarks for how well listings work or don't work.

Phil Bansner is a one man show with an IT son for tech help and his site blows away Hip. It does not have 250,000 listings but 100,000 plus for stamps and postal history is nothing to sneeze at. Phil's search function is top-notch and each listing has enough info for most with some, postal history for example, getting quite involved.

A typical description:




I guess in the end the APS wanted new eyes on their material from an established player with a large audience.

If sales are the only metric it sounds as if they are crushing it.

Link to site rodgcam refers to - https://www.philbansner.com/default.htm

Searching/filtering options do look flexible there. Very recently set up my own store so always curious to see how other stamp sites do it - & steal the good ideas to improve my own searching/filtering functionality.

~Greg

In all candor, for as much as we poop on eBay, their search capabilities blow away the Hipstamp search options; the latter I find cumbersome, nonintuitive, and self-limiting.

Even excluding all of the mandatory and optional item specfics on eBay, that little "Include description" checkbox next to the search button (unchecked by default) opens the door to searching for anything, regardless of whether it is in the title or the listing text.

Additionally, one YUUUUGE criticism I have of Hipstamp is the clumsy and archaic way the individual item pages are designed. The relevant sections of the page are all set up as separate tabs, meaning one has to initiate a discrete action to view each one instead of being able to simply scroll through them. Additionally, once you leave that first tab, in order to bid/offer/buy, you have to know to go back to the first tab, as the purchase mechanism is not omnipresent.

The titles of the individual tabs frequently don't align with their contents, are redundant, or are superfluous (who cares about bid history on a fixed price item???)

It's a poor and clunky interface to which the APS has decided to hitch its wagon.

In database SQL terms, writing search queries is SQL 101 and anyone with even limited coding experience can quickly learn how to do it. And as long as the data is somewhere in a database writing the SQL queries to pull it and developing search web pages based upon those queries is not time consuming or costly.

The 'rub' comes with the various additional layers of coding which is often applied above the foundational SQL queries. Online marketplaces and other commercial websites view search capabilities as profit centers to be monetized. Added layers of code and algorithms are used to start changing how the search results are presented to the users. As a seller you can work with these websites and they are more than happy to explain to you how you can 'increase your stores visibility' in their search results. They often have several methods all of which will help your listings get to the top of search results lists. Of course this means sending them more money.

So on many online auction sites search results income comes in two basic ways; having a user find what they want and then buy/win the item and the income generated by those sellers who are willing to pay for getting a higher ranking. But the result of all of the added profit-driven 'tweaks' to search results often has users scratching their heads and wondering why they do not get the relevant results they are seeking. Highly sophisticated commercial sites like eBay monitor their metrics and know how many truly relevant results the page can have vs. how many paid but less relevant results they can mix in without extreme frustration. But they are certainly aware of which method always gives them income (seller paid for higher search results).

I am fairly sure that $20 million dollar a year HS has the capability to write SQL queries and return relevant search results. How sophisticated their additional coded that used to manipulate the search results is not clear to me but I assume that they cannot hold a candle to the $10 BILLION dollar a year eBay.

So I think it is understandable that HS, being 500 times smaller (in total sales) than eBay, is not going to be able deliver the same level of search capabilities. I assume that APS understood this when they partnered with HS.
Don

What a great website. Clean, simple, functional. Hadn't heard of Phil before but will enjoy perusing his stock.

+1 for Phil - His customer service is excellent as well. Shipments are well-packed and shipping charges are refreshingly inexpensive, at lest for "Philatelic Literature" buys, as he qualifies for Media Mail for those.

landoquakes,



Are you willing to share some of the searching techniques that you have learned with the APS Store on HipStamp? Like Mike, I have been disappointed with the ability to search for specific words, like "misperf" or "rabbits". Plenty of results from the rest of HipStamp, but nothing when searching the APS Store.

Does Hip Stamp have an Advanced Search feature like eBay that has a checkbox to search "Title and description" instead of just the Title? That would solve the problem, but I haven't found that option yet in Hip Stamp.

A better solution is to allow keywords to be listed in the title, so that someone browsing by catalog number can see "misperf", "proof", "green cancel" or other items of interest in the Title without having to click 3 times into the detail screen of every item to see those attributes.

Any other recommendations?