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Feedback on our startup: a personal shopping service
- deleted 19y ago[deleted]
- jsjenkins168 19y agoDo you manually make recommendations for each request or is there some sort of natural language parsing algorithm that you've built? If the latter, then really cool this has potential..
- seregine 19y agoWe break up this work into smaller tasks, and use Mechanical Turk for some of the tasks.
- dbreunig 19y agoHow is it scalable? Also: do you not plan on using ad revenue? As a consumer reports-ish site it seems like ad-fare might damage your cred (read: your entire product).
- seregine 19y agoWe show ads to users who aren't signed in. We're experimenting with affiliates, but we're careful to put in affiliate tags after recommendations are generated. If ads and affiliates become a serious concern for our users, we'll ditch them.
- dangoldin 19y agoI like the site - at first I was a little put off because I thought I needed to register to see anything but then realized I can still see other people's requests/answers. The colors seem a little dull to me in this "Web 2.0" world - I think if you make the design look more lively it 'll increase the appeal of the site. Also, are you you are allowed to use the images you are using? I have no idea what the Amazon TOS are.
- seregine 19y agoThanks, glad you like it. Dull colors, and you're not the first to say that. Hmmm.
- sohail 19y agoI like the idea. More details about how you make money would make for better feedback.
- seregine 19y agoWe plan to charge for a premium version of this service (underway).
- dbreunig 19y agoI think it's neat, but it seems like something that would exists as a B2B licensed product, rather than a consumer-facing tool.
- nazgulnarsil 19y agoif you did language parsing you'd be in for a big buyout from someone like amazon.
- seregine 19y agoIf I had a working AI, I'd be sitting pretty.
- rokhayakebe 19y agoVery good idea. I would touch up the design using better colors and that's about it. Huge potential.
- seregine 19y agoThanks! Now all we've got to do is execute.
- OpenWebU 19y agoI like the idea, too -- neat! Perhaps include a field where an inquirer puts a price range of what they are willing to spend (including tax and shipping) would be helpful for you to select something a gift that the person inquiring can afford.
- seregine 19y agoThanks for the suggestion. You know, we've gone back and forth on offering a variety of more structured forms. In this case, it probably does make sense.
- Dylanfm 19y agoWhen I view this request, for a monitor, you are recommending a laptop: http://clayvalet.com/r/an-lcd-monitor-with-dimensions-of-at-least-22/f5e44b40-d6bc-012a-7b37-123136003df3 http://clayvalet.com/r/an-lcd-monitor-with-dimensions-of-at-...
- seregine 19y agoTrue. The older a report, the more likely we are to have 'misfire' recommendations. We still have some, but they're getting much less frequent.
- alex_c 19y agoOne small nitpick, but it always bugs me: don't rely on browser resizing for images! Especially for really small thumbnails. This is what I see in Firefox: http://www.clutterme.com/users/alex/thumbs_unresized.png http://www.clutterme.com/users/alex/thumbs_unresized.png This is what I could see if the images were resized before being sent to my browser: http://www.clutterme.com/users/alex/thumbs_resized.png http://www.clutterme.com/users/alex/thumbs_resized.png (I resized the middle two thumbnails from the original images)
- seregine 19y agoYeah, that's clearly subpar. We'll have to do something about it soon, but it's not quite our top priority yet (report quality and site navigation are).
- Tichy 19y agoI hate this modern trend to trick users to sign up: on the first page, pretend all will be easy and peachy, no sign-up necessary. As soon as you enter anything, the evil "sign up first before you can see anything at all" pops up. What I am saying: I saw a "sign up" form. Not very impressive, seen those about a zillion times before. Edit: not saying you can't require users to sign up eventually, but please show me SOMETHING about what benefits to expect before I sign up.
- thingsilearned 19y agoSign up should be at checkout. That's how all online stores work. This is like making people show ID before they're allowed to browse the store.
- seregine 19y agoWe only require you to sign up when you're submitting a personal shopping request (i.e., engaging people to do work on your behalf). Looking at other people's requests and reports is entirely free to unregistered users. Thanks for expressing your frustration: we need to design that part of the user experience better. Our conversion goal is getting people to sign up and submit a request. We don't want people to abandon the page because they feel tricked into signing up.
- Tichy 19y agoI also tried recommending something to a user in the box to the right, and also ended up seeing a sign-up form. The first thing I tried was to enter something into the "shopping request" form, but I don't know yet what it is supposed to do. So I don't know that it will make people work for me, and hence I don't appreciate the sign-up form. If you require the sign-up before I can do anything meaningful, please show me what to expect in some other way (like a movie). If I am not allowed to do something, don't show me the option to do it- please!