You may have noticed a new menu icon on Booko recently:
You have Alerts!
Booko will now show you notifications on the website. The alert icon changes to Booko orange when a notification is ready for you.
What kind of Notifications are shown?
Alerts: The first notification type we introduced was for Alerts. So not only do you get an email when your alert is triggered, you can now see a nice clean summary of all triggered alerts under the notification menu.
Updates to Followed Lists : Do you follow any lists? If you are following lists you’ll now receive a notification when the list is updated. No need to randomly check your followed lists any more.
List suggestions: When a suggestion you have made for a list is accepted or rejected, or a list you create receives a suggestion, you’ll get a notification so you can keep on top of the changes.
You can find the Notifications under your Profile -> Notifications or via clicking on the notifications menu in the tool bar.
We’ve recently added some features to Lists on Booko to make them more easily shared with friends and colleagues or anyone on the internet.
Discoverability
Lists now have an option to be discoverable to other Booko users. Marking a list as discoverable will add the list to the Discover More Lists page. You can find a list to these discoverable lists by clicking on “Lists → Discover More Lists“.
To set a list to be discoverable, edit your lists and find the privacy settings, then set your list to Discoverable.
List Sharing
You can also set a list to be shareable – this makes the list public, but doesn’t advertise the list on the Discoverable page. When you’re viewing a list which is shareable (or discoverable), you can copy the URL and send it to friends – they’ll be able to view your list and follow it if they want to keep up with books you add to your list.
List Following
When you discovered an interesting list, or when a list has been shared with you, you can ‘Follow’ it. Following a list is like bookmarking it. You can find the list of your followed lists under your Profile → Follows.
Lists which are Shared or Discoverable can also be followed with an RSS Reader – any new items added to the list will show up as a new article in your feed reader.
List Suggestions
To make lists actually collaborative, your fellow Booko users can now send you suggestions for your discoverable or sharable lists. This feature can be switched on from the list edit page where you can enable “Accept Suggestions”.
When a fellow Booko user is browsing one of your lists which accepts suggestions, they’re presented with a list of their recently viewed products or works or series which they can suggest you add to your list. They can also see if their previous suggestions were accepter or rejected.
When you add a suggestion to a list, the list owner will see them and can accept or reject them.
We are all about clever shopping at Booko, whether that’s finding the best price, shopping internationally, choosing second hand or setting your own prices. We have a brand spanking new feature on Booko that we know will make your lives a little easier.
Sometimes we have no idea what to read and just need a recommendation, other times we’re looking for books to give as gifts but have no idea what the recipient would enjoy. Today, we are taking all of the guesswork away and are launching the ‘following’ function in our hugely popular list section.
Now you can follow a number of lists which suggest books to read, movies to watch or even ideas for Santa.
Let’s start by having a look at our current list function.
When you log into your Booko account a drop down menu appears to the left hand side of the site and you will see Lists and Following as options.
When you click on Lists you are shown all of the lists you have created on Booko.
You can also add more lists here. We often suggest making lists for all different reasons such as books for each course at uni, gift ideas, a wishlist of books that you’d love to read this summer, bookclub books, movies you want to watch oneday… the options are endless.
You can change the settings on these lists by clicking on the little pencil icon to the side. Here you can choose to make your list private, sharable or discoverable.
Private means only you can see what is on the list, sharable allows you to send a copy of the list via a link (super handy when you are giving Grandma ideas for Christmas presents) and finally, discoverable is our new option. It allows you to share your list with everyone and they can follow along as you add more books to your list.
Because your privacy is super important to us, you can change the setting of your lists whenever you like, you can easily switch from private, shareable and discoverable by clicking on the pencil icon.
When you click on Following in your drop down menu, it shows all of the lists that you follow, these include all of your own private lists, any that have been shared and sent to you via a link, along with any of the discoverable lists you have decided you’d like to follow. Again, you can unfollow any list at any time by clicking the ‘unfollow’ button to the right hand-side of the list.
How to find a list to follow.
In the menu bar at the top of the Booko website you’ll see Blog, History, Alerts and Lists as options that you can click (along with the super handy country flag which allows you to shop in different countries and currencies). When you select Lists, a dropdown menu appears with Manage My Lists and Discover More Lists along with all of the lists you have previously created. Manage My Lists takes you straight to the list function above where you can change settings on your lists, along with adding and removing books, adding a description about the list and renaming the list.
Discover More Lists is where you will find book recommendations galore.
All of the lists that Booko and our community of users have set to ‘discoverable’ will show up here. We have made a few lists to get you started and will continue to add to them but it is also a space where the Booko community can share topics, authors, genres, gift ideas and favourite books. To follow a list, simply click on the orange ‘follow’ button to the right. If you’d like to take a closer look at the list, just click on the list title and a new page will open showing all of the books in the list along with their blurb. You can then click on the book image and add it to one of your own lists, set a price alert, or even buy it straight away!
As always, prices are constantly being refreshed behind the scenes so it doesn’t matter how old the book is, how long it has been on someone’s list, we will always show the most recent price.
We were inspired by our book loving community to create this new feature, you have so generously recommended books in the past and we wanted to give you a space so that this can continue. So get clicking, make a list, add your favourite books to it, set it to discoverable and we’ll follow along.
As usual, we’d love your feedback on this new feature so we can make sure it serves our community’s needs best. Drop us a line at booko@booko.com.au with your thoughts and suggestions.
