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Mike, thanks very much for this kind offer, really appreciated. Could you please have a quick play with my new site http://giniji.com http://giniji.com? I woul

by revorad 15y ago

Mike, thanks very much for this kind offer, really appreciated. Could you please have a quick play with my new site http://giniji.com http://giniji.com? I would like you to answer a few simple questions: How fast/slow/responsive is the site for you? Is it clear what it's for? Would you recommend it to a friend? If yes, why? If not, why not? Thanks a ton!

MatthewPhillips 15y ago
Not Mike but my 2 cents. Very fast for me. I was playing with the price slider control was actually slower to move than the new options were to render, pretty remarkable. I'd recommend using html5 sliders (<input type="range") and then falling back to whatever you're using here (should still be able to style it). I think it was a good decision to only ask initial price on the first screen and then switching to a price range on the second. It was a bit difficult to adjust the min and max because they're so close together. Not sure how to fix it. Maybe have them be 2 separate colors so you know which is which. I'd like more than 1 option. Being able to page through the choices would be nice. On the front page the price renders as: Â£. Not sure what you were going for there. I'd use this to shop if I could page through results.
- revorad 15y ago
  Thanks Matthew, that's nice of you to take the time to try it and give detailed feedback. It's not obvious, but if you click on any of the 10 results on the right, you will see its details on the left. My latest update (yet to push live) makes this a lot cleaner and more obvious. Is that what you mean by page through results?
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
    Yeah, I simply didn't notice the results on the right. I think I probably subconsciously dismissed that area as ads and didn't pay attention to it. I wouldn't take that as any indication that you need to change it though. Knowing about it now, I like how it works.
    - revorad 15y ago
      Thanks. It's good to know you thought of them as ads. Maybe others will think the same, probably because that's the standard layout on most sites. Will moving the results to the left make it more intuitive?
mikegreenberg 15y ago
My pleasure. :) - The site, on a cold start, took 5.95s before onLoad() fired (as reported by webkit). Most of that was spent loading your jQuery core and plugins and jQueryUI. See if you can minify and concat all of that together. - I like the simple UI. It seems like it's a buying assistant. I assume you'll ask basic questions and spit out some results. Let's see.... PS: a weird character showed next to the currency symbol (Â£ ) - Your images load up pretty fast! Quite happy with the snappiness of the UI. (You even did some planning for smaller screens...nice.) - It might be nice to have a way for the user to browse laptops without having to scroll all the way down the page to select a different one. (Might even be nice to have images in the results on the right.) - Now sure about the search bar across the top. I'm assuming eventually I'll be able to shop for other items and this is a placeholder for when it is complete? Would I recommend it to a friend? As it is today, I'm not sure. I don't immediately see any value here. Sure the site is pretty quick. But I think the way online commerce has come along in the past decade, you're going to have to bring a lot more to the party than just a fast web page. Not to mention that people go to different websites for very specific buying experiences. (Newegg handles laptop buying very differently than BestBuy...even though they both have similar gear.) Unless you're going to specialize on just one product or a VERY specific type of individual, I think it'll be hard for you to compete with that. I'm curious if anyone has said this to you yet, or if this is something you've considered.
- revorad 15y ago
  Mike, thanks a lot for the detailed feedback. Minifying and caching stuff is on my checklist. I purposely put the site to test in its unoptimised state to see how it performs and get some numbers based on my current hardware configuration. The next update makes it easier to browse laptops, so you won't have to scroll much or at all. You're right about the search bar on the top. I intend this to be a general shopping site, and will add other product categories sooner than later. It's interesting to know that you don't see any value. I'd spell out the value proposition, but I'd rather people recognise it on their own. Specialising along some vector is probably going to be crucial to get traction initially. In addition to product category and customer profile, I have couple of other options in mind. I'll choose one or two of them. Can you say what you think are the specific buying experiences people go to Newegg and Bestbuy for? Any other examples would also be useful. Once again, thanks a lot.

by revorad 15y ago

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

Not Mike but my 2 cents. Very fast for me. I was playing with the price slider control was actually slower to move than the new options were to render, pretty remarkable. I'd recommend using html5 sliders (<input type="range") and then falling back to whatever you're using here (should still be able to style it). I think it was a good decision to only ask initial price on the first screen and then switching to a price range on the second. It was a bit difficult to adjust the min and max because they're so close together. Not sure how to fix it. Maybe have them be 2 separate colors so you know which is which. I'd like more than 1 option. Being able to page through the choices would be nice. On the front page the price renders as: Â£. Not sure what you were going for there. I'd use this to shop if I could page through results.

revorad 15y ago
Thanks Matthew, that's nice of you to take the time to try it and give detailed feedback. It's not obvious, but if you click on any of the 10 results on the right, you will see its details on the left. My latest update (yet to push live) makes this a lot cleaner and more obvious. Is that what you mean by page through results?
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Yeah, I simply didn't notice the results on the right. I think I probably subconsciously dismissed that area as ads and didn't pay attention to it. I wouldn't take that as any indication that you need to change it though. Knowing about it now, I like how it works.
  - revorad 15y ago
    Thanks. It's good to know you thought of them as ads. Maybe others will think the same, probably because that's the standard layout on most sites. Will moving the results to the left make it more intuitive?

mikegreenberg 15y ago

My pleasure. :) - The site, on a cold start, took 5.95s before onLoad() fired (as reported by webkit). Most of that was spent loading your jQuery core and plugins and jQueryUI. See if you can minify and concat all of that together. - I like the simple UI. It seems like it's a buying assistant. I assume you'll ask basic questions and spit out some results. Let's see.... PS: a weird character showed next to the currency symbol (Â£ ) - Your images load up pretty fast! Quite happy with the snappiness of the UI. (You even did some planning for smaller screens...nice.) - It might be nice to have a way for the user to browse laptops without having to scroll all the way down the page to select a different one. (Might even be nice to have images in the results on the right.) - Now sure about the search bar across the top. I'm assuming eventually I'll be able to shop for other items and this is a placeholder for when it is complete? Would I recommend it to a friend? As it is today, I'm not sure. I don't immediately see any value here. Sure the site is pretty quick. But I think the way online commerce has come along in the past decade, you're going to have to bring a lot more to the party than just a fast web page. Not to mention that people go to different websites for very specific buying experiences. (Newegg handles laptop buying very differently than BestBuy...even though they both have similar gear.) Unless you're going to specialize on just one product or a VERY specific type of individual, I think it'll be hard for you to compete with that. I'm curious if anyone has said this to you yet, or if this is something you've considered.

revorad 15y ago
Mike, thanks a lot for the detailed feedback. Minifying and caching stuff is on my checklist. I purposely put the site to test in its unoptimised state to see how it performs and get some numbers based on my current hardware configuration. The next update makes it easier to browse laptops, so you won't have to scroll much or at all. You're right about the search bar on the top. I intend this to be a general shopping site, and will add other product categories sooner than later. It's interesting to know that you don't see any value. I'd spell out the value proposition, but I'd rather people recognise it on their own. Specialising along some vector is probably going to be crucial to get traction initially. In addition to product category and customer profile, I have couple of other options in mind. I'll choose one or two of them. Can you say what you think are the specific buying experiences people go to Newegg and Bestbuy for? Any other examples would also be useful. Once again, thanks a lot.