The bidorbuy marketplace is enormous.

It houses more than 1.7 million products, from smartphones, power tools, scrapbooking stamps, to lounge suits, engagement rings, natural soaps and so, so much more.

So, how are beginner buyers to find what they are looking for in all that abundance?

Browsing

The most obvious way to find a product is to browse categories and subcategories. When you take a look at the bidorbuy category structure, you will, quite logically, conclude that you are most likely to find covers for your iPhone in the category called cell phones & accessories, subcategory accessories, and sub-subcategory cases, covers & skins.

That works well for sections that spread over two, three or four pages. However, if even a sub-subcategory has hundreds of pages (as is the case with the already mentioned cases, covers & skins), you need help. And help is there, in the form of filters that are situated along the left-hand side.

Filtering

In the case of smartphone covers, you can filter by the attributes that include type (flip, skin, wallet), compatibility (Apple, BlackBerry, Samsung), and so on.

Filtering attributes are, of course, closely associated with the type of product. For example, fine jewellery rings can be filtered by metal (gold, silver, etc.), stone (diamond, emerald, pearl, and so on), stone carat, setting, ring size…. Casual dresses, on the other hand, are classified by brand, size, style, hemline, material and colour attributes.

As you keep revisiting bidorbuy, you will notice that more and more families of products can be filtered by their attributes, making it easier for you to browse. As for those that are not yet “filter-able”, there is the search within results box to help you find the item you are browsing for. In this example, we decided that we want to see only slim fit gardening gloves:

Searching

Regular users of the bidorbuy search box (the one that is situated at the top of every page of the site beckoning you to search for anything), will have noticed some important improvements there.

To start with, the box is now so smart that it corrects your spelling. If you type this:

The box will automatically correct it to this:

The (so clever!) box will also give you some good suggestions for narrowing your search:

Remember to explore our advanced search too. To access it, just click on the arrow at the far right of the main search box:

If you are not ready to buy straight away, you can save your searches and get alerts when an item that fits your search is listed.

All in all, finding bargains and rare treasures is a fine art that requires some patience. The tools available on bidorbuy go a long way towards helping you make it easy and enjoyable. Make use of them!