I’m working on a new feature that should be ready shortly. Though Rankforest has always offered RSS feeds to keep track of rankings, some users have expressed a desire to get updates via email, especially in response to some sales rank value criteria, such as breaking into the top 100. Soon this will be possible.

Rankforest can now track actual sales at Amazon.com. The sales date and quantity are provided in a list format and can be used in conjunction with the charts to see how much a certain sales volume affects sales rank.

The primary limitation is that the sales must be mediated by the Rankforest website. For example, there are see this on Amazon.com links on each item’s detail page. These links lead to Amazon.com, and, if the item is purchased, the sales are tracked. Each item also has a special tracking URL that you can copy and paste into your own site. Using the URL is effectively just like linking to the item on Amazon.com, with the added bonus of having purchases tracked.

This feature is most beneficial to items that sell in relatively small quantities. A single author or small publisher that makes the majority of their sales through their own website links to Amazon.com could more accurately gauge the relationship between sales volume and sales rank.

The sales volume data will be updated at the end of each month. There are already several months of data available for any books that have sold through Rankforest in the past. The data for February will be posted in another week, so if you’re curious to see how things work you still have time to make purchases this month.

Any sales generated through these links benefit Rankforest.com. You can read a little more about this feature on the main page.

While the blog is useful for discussing features and maintenance updates, I can never be sure that everyone has seen the latest posts. To make it easier to keep everyone informed, I created a System Notification feature that simply displays a message within your collection if any system notifications are available. To the right of the notification there will be a “dismiss this” link that fades the notification away, never to be seen again.

It’s pretty simple, but I’ll be using it to announce upcoming features and site performance upgrades.

Rankforest will debut with the ability to show you how books similar to yours are selling. Similar books are those that were purchased by customers that bought your book. With this feature you can see how well you’re doing within a particular sphere of consumer interest.

Once you have an account, you can add new books (or music, DVDs, etc) to the tracker. The amount of new items you can add will depend on your account level. Since 80% of what’s added to Rankforest is books, the default new item search form constrains the search to books on Amazon. This should make finding what you want to add easier. If you need to open the search space to all of Amazon, simply click the link out to the right of the search button.

Each search will present you with the items you’d see if you were searching on Amazon’s site. To begin tracking an item, simply click the Add link out to the right of each item and sales rank statistics will begin being collected.

I still haven’t had a server provisioned but I’m told it could be this week. After spending some time configuring it and setting up the new Rankforest, I’ll invite the people who have expressed interest in beta testing the site (if anyone else is still interested contact me or leave a comment).

Rankforest allows you to export your sales rank data in plain text format or as a simple Excel spreadsheet. The ability to export Amazon.co.uk and Barnes and Noble data will be added shortly and will likely affect the layout you see in the screen shot above.

Hopefully, we’ll get a small beta test going soon, so let me know if you want to be a part of it. Have a few volunteers so far (thanks for volunteering), but I think there’s room for more.

The following screen shot shows what happens when you select all sources as the data source for your graph. Sales rankings from Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble are shown on the same graph. When the site is released, selecting all sources will actually show data from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and Barnes and Noble.

A lot of new features were checked in today. Since most were relegated to the back end, I’ll focus on a few changes to the signup screen. A previous post showed the new signup screen. The slightly updated version is below.

What’s new? The line under the logo has highlights behind the key words in the sentence. I also added a note out to the right of the email field letting new users know I won’t be abusing their email address. A block linking to the terms of service was also added to the form, and it must be checked for a new account to validate.

Some things you can’t see in the picture. The form implements tab indices correctly so that you can tab to subsequent fields. I encounter sites all the time that don’t do this and it’s frustrating. Also, any errors you have on the form will be highlighted when you submit the form. You’ll also get explanations of the errors so that you can fix them. The fields that were correct will remain (I’m endlessly annoyed by forms that clear all the values I typed in when a mistake is made).

I’ve been spending time working on the backend processing system, trying to ensure that a book’s details are more accurate. Currently, some titles in Rankforest are truncated; some titles have multiple authors and yet only one is shown. Others have no author but they do have an editor. Additionally, in some cases the publisher gets listed as the author due to the organization of the Amazon XML responses.

Just a small update for the curious. Stay tuned for bigger announcements as release nears.

Have you voted on features yet?

A small feature, but one that will help you research your titles better, is the on-demand review links on the main page for each book.

All you’ll initially see are a few links to information on your book. This will keep things fast and light and not force a deluge of information upon you with each page load. In many cases, the reviews and blog posts will be the same day-to-day.

If you haven’t checked to see if anyone has reviewed your book recently, or if you need quick access to some reviews you know exist, click the Amazon review link and the reviews will appear on the page. Additionally, if you’re curious about whether anyone is blogging about you, there are a few helpful links to let you check. Clicking one will show you blog posts that are possibly related to the book in question.

After clicking the review links, the page fills with the most recent review and blog information.