OMINS updates
July 21, 2008 – 6:31 pmOne of the benefits of being an OMINS user is constant updates. Whether they be for performance, features or usability - we’re always looking for ways to improve the system. Often we’ll push small updates to the system daily! Of course, since OMINS is a web-based system, there’s nothing for users to download, configure or install. The updates are just automatically available!
It’s with this in mind that I would like to mention a couple of major updates.
Performance improvement
Last week we had a bit of a performance hunt and tracked down many places that weren’t as optimised as they could be. As a result, we’ve increased performance across the board! This is especially noticeable for people on slower connections or those accessing from overseas, but everyone will benefit.
Product setup work-flow improvements
One of the things we learnt while developing Easy Lister was that ease-of-use is very important to users. We found many people were unsatisfied with current auction software, and wanted something powerful, but easy to use at the same time!
It was with this in mind that we took a step back and looked at the OMINS product setup workflow. We found many places where we could not only make it easier to use, but add functionality at the same time!
I’ve outlined a few of the changes below.
Pricing control panel
One very common activity for anyone selling products is price adjustment, especially when you’re selling the same product on multiple platforms such as TradeMe and your OMINS e-commerce website.
While OMINS employs a powerful inheritance system for pricing, it’s now easier than ever to update all your prices at once thanks to a central pricing panel for your products. Blue prices means that price is inherited, which means that if you change the main prices those will change automatically also.
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Set auction timing
OMINS has a couple of ways to set when you want your auctions to list. Not only is there a powerful “timeslots” feature which is fantastic for $1 reserve campaigns, but you can also simply set which times you want the auction to list. This makes timing auctions easy! And of course, no need to leave your computer on to list since OMINS is web-based. Save power - keep New Zealand green! 
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Auto-adjust Pricing
Auto-adjust is a brand new feature we’re adding to OMINS which allows automatic pricing or listing number adjustments based on sales history and performance. This is fantastic as it removes the need to micro-manage your prices or listing numbers and lets the market price itself! I think the screenshots explain quite well how these features work. 
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TradeMe fee breakdown
Finally, we come to a new feature which will certainly come in handy! OMINS has always shown how much a listing will cost you, but we’ve now expanded on that to bring you a full breakdown of why it will cost that much. This fee breakdown is updated dynamicaly whenever you make a change so you can see how much it will cost you at any time.
Summary
As you can see, there’s quite a few great new features coming to OMINS in the next week or so and these are just a sample! We’re looking forward to the feedback from our users and we’d love to hear what you think of these features, or any other great ideas you have. Let us know!
P.S…
Keep an eye out for more information about our seamless integration with the top auction sites. Just a click of a button and they’ll be there with no extra work! No exporting to XML, no manually uploading, no need to download and install extra software… just fully seamless integration as you’d expect from a whole software solution.