MorphMarket News

As you can see, we are kicking off 2021 with a fully redesigned home page. With this new layout there are a few minor changes worth mentioning.

When you are logged in, the update sections (blog and community) show up on the first page like before, because we want our regular users to be aware of changes.

If you are accustomed to jumping into a category using the Categories section, there is a faster way. In desktop, you'll see a new button "Browse by Category". In mobile, you can click the search icon (as pictured), and click "Browse by Category". The upcoming app will have a top level button just like desktop.

We hope you enjoy the new professional look. Stay tuned for the redesign of more pages, among other improvements.

We are preparing to promote a number of subcategories to top level this year with all the trimmings: trait tags, subcategories, store listings, calculators, etc.

We are conducting a survey of these species and need your input. Would you help us by reviewing our draft and providing feedback on anything we're missing or mistaken about?

The ones ready for you review are:

• Burmese Pythons
• Sand Boas
• Fat Tailed Geckos
• Axolotls

We are preparing a number of others and will be soliciting input on those soon.

We just ramped up the number of social media fields that sellers can display on their profile. Previously, we had two slots: home page and facebook. Now we've added 3 new fields: instagram, youtube and twitter.

If you previously had used one of these social media sites as your home page, we've moved that into the appropriate field. That includes 486 sellers using instagram, 343 with facebook, and 46 with youtube. Interestingly no one used Twitter as their home page.

All sellers should go and update their profile with these additional fields now to give buyers the full picture of their presence.

This covers the vast majority of the links used by sellers. If you have a presence on some other website that isn't one of the above, you are still free to use this as your home link.

At MorphMarket it's our job to make it as easy as possible for reptile, amphibian and invertebrate breeders and keepers to connect. And with 4,000 breeders and 50,000 animals from across the world in our marketplace, there's a lot to search through!

We recently rolled out a big upgrade to our search capability. Previously the search box gave no feedback as you typed into it. The new version has several benefits:

• It automatically completes your search so that you don't have to type as much and are less likely to typo. It also helps you discover what's on the site.
• It suggests several kinds of searches over the Ads. You can search for ads by Title, Category or Trait.
• You can search for Stores and not just Ads. You can search all the stores in a Category or even jump straight to a store page by Store Name or Owner Name. This option only displays if there are 3 or less matches. Stores included in this search are the same ones included in the Seller Directory, which requires active ads and/or membership.

It's worth noting that context matters. If you're already in a subcategory, suggested options will be limited to those applicable to that section. This helps to narrow down the overwhelming number of matches across all areas of the site.

The advanced search filters are still available, of course, which you can utilize instead of or subsequent to one of the searches above.

Two years ago, we introduced the MorphMarket ratings system. Since then we have gathered approximately 50,000 ratings on buyers and sellers making it one of the most valuable tools in the world of herp commerce.

We will be discontinuing the option for sellers to opt-out of the ratings system. This choice was provided when we launched first launched the system, but we will no longer support it moving forward because we believe it's unhelpful to the kind of transparency we want to promote in the marketplace.

In reality, using this feature has always been a bad look for the seller. It's better to have a few negative ratings with professional responses than to hide them all-together.

In two weeks, we will be removing this setting from all accounts. If you wish to permanently deactivate your account you may do so by contacting support.

If you live in the UK or Europe and want a MorphMarket Tee Shirt now is your chance. The price is £20.00 with shipping included. Please email your order to our distributor Thomas Eagle ([email protected]; whatsapp +447956006358) with the quantities and sizes, as well as your address. He will provide instructions for sending payment directly to him and will be placing a bulk order with us. We have not done this before but estimate a possible delivery time of 1 month or more. This opportunity may not come up again for a while, depending on the demand.

The Shirt (also has link to sizing guide)

We just sent out our end of 2020 newsletter which contains the Store Policy update (that we blogged about a few weeks ago) as well as a summary of other updates.

Read the Newsletter Here.

In 2020, over 6,400 sellers listed ads on MorphMarket. We love what we do. Thank you for supporting us as we support the herp community!

We hope you able to enjoy your time (in some capacity) with your loved ones.

We've added a new Message Count Notification feature to help alert you to new messages. There are actually two counts, and they will show up in the upper right corner over the message envelope button.

• Green Number: Unseen message count
• Yellow Number: Needs reply count

When you visit your messages page (or oftentimes when you open your emails), it will register your messages as having been seen. This will make the green count go down (or disappear entirely).

If you're a seller and you have an inquiry, it will be tagged as "needs reply" until you reply with a message OR use a quick reply action to decline it, mark it as sold, etc. To help you locate those messages you can use the "needs reply" filter on the messages page. None of this is new. Responding to these makes the yellow count go down (or disappear entirely).

In both cases, the new message counts shown on the button may be lower than the actual number of new or needs reply messages in your inbox. That's because these counts will only analyze the last few months.

We hope you like this messages system upgrade. Our goal is to make your interactions fast and frictionless. Stay tuned for many more improvements to our messages system!

All sellers need to read about the MorphMarket's Default Store Policy that will take effect January 15, 2021. This update does not necessitate any changes to your business policies PROVIDED THAT you have overridden the Default Policy in the terms of your own custom Store Policy.

The Default Store Policy page both explains the purpose and the terms of the Default Policy.

As written there:

"This Default Store Policy defines a minimum set of expectations which will be applicable for Sellers who do not otherwise override them in their own Store Policy and/or communicate them in writing before the sale. These terms are subject to change, and it is therefore recommended that a Seller override them in their own Policy.

Note that while a custom Store Policy can and should override the following, it cannot override MorphMarket's Rules or provide immunity from the rules."

You can find and edit your own policy under the Seller Profile page.

The purpose is to provide a more uniform and predictable experience for both buyers and sellers on the site. Many sellers historically have had gaps in their store policy if it is defined at all, which creates a divergence of expectations between buyer and seller and challenges for MorphMarket in providing moderation.

Block User is a feature in our messaging system. This action is similar to Decline Inquiry but stronger. When a seller blocks an inquiring buyer, it will close that inquiry and prevent any future inquiries from the user.

Block User is a quick reply action that is found on your messages page with the other quick reply actions. Blocking will send a decline message and close this inquiry thread along with any others from the user. In addition, it prevents any new inquiries from the user.

To undo, re-open a thread, and click reply and use the unblock button. This will not, however, re-open all the threads.

Currently Block User is only available to a sellers receiving an inquiry. In the future it may be available more broadly, but the main purpose for now is to block repeated inquiries and this is only applicable to sellers. Last week, we added Block Store for buyers, a feature that excludes ads from a seller from search results.

In this feature we also repositioned the quick action buttons to reduce accidental presses.