New Website - Product Comparison

cardine said:
What were you searching when you got that error?
Click to expand...

It seems to be a problem after a completed search. I ran a search, and got good results. On the results page, I did another search. I searched for "eastbound and down" vs. "dexter". I did not specify a Season or DVD/Blu Ray etc.

I just duplicated the error again. Note that when I put in "eastbound", a box came up asking "Do you mean" but I did not select anything from the box, just typed in "eastbound and down". (no quotes)
 


Some other ideas:

- Ability to "Print this page" (lets say I want to compare 2 tv's and take this in to Best Buy, for example)

- Ability to Share with a Friend/Share on Facebook (Facebook connect would be a good idea)

-When you do a completed search, the "Enter your products below" box shows up with your search terms. This box should change IMO to "Do another search" or something like that. I would then make an icon or headline that says something like:

Success! :thumbsup:
We have finished your product comparison for Product 1 vs. Product 2:

this way, people know they can search again.

- An account feature so you can save/archive your previous searches?

- Blog to show interesting ways to use the product

- Add another "Buy Now" button at the end of the lists so I don't have to scroll back up to the top. Some products have huge lists of features (see: http://whichproduct.com/Sony-Bravia-KDL-46EX500/Panasonic-Viera-TC-P50G25)

I know I'm probably getting ahead of myself with new features, but I think those would be pretty cool to have.

Edit: How about a "latest searches/comparisons" widget?
 
Totally dig it! Good stuff. You nailed the simplicity factor for surfers/buyers (worked for twitter)

Tried it, results were fast.

Hope it takes off for ya. good luck.
 
Magic Hat said:
It seems to be a problem after a completed search. I ran a search, and got good results. On the results page, I did another search. I searched for "eastbound and down" vs. "dexter". I did not specify a Season or DVD/Blu Ray etc.

I just duplicated the error again. Note that when I put in "eastbound", a box came up asking "Do you mean" but I did not select anything from the box, just typed in "eastbound and down". (no quotes)
Click to expand...

Fixed :) One of the many places that WhichProduct pulls data from gave a product having to do with "Dexter's Laboratory" (since you searched Dexter) and the single quote was what caused the database issue.

Magic Hat said:
Some other ideas:

- Ability to "Print this page" (lets say I want to compare 2 tv's and take this in to Best Buy, for example)

- Ability to Share with a Friend/Share on Facebook (Facebook connect would be a good idea)

-When you do a completed search, the "Enter your products below" box shows up with your search terms. This box should change IMO to "Do another search" or something like that. I would then make an icon or headline that says something like:

Success! :thumbsup:
We have finished your product comparison for Product 1 vs. Product 2:

this way, people know they can search again.

- An account feature so you can save/archive your previous searches?

- Blog to show interesting ways to use the product

- Add another "Buy Now" button at the end of the lists so I don't have to scroll back up to the top. Some products have huge lists of features (see: http://whichproduct.com/Sony-Bravia-KDL-46EX500/Panasonic-Viera-TC-P50G25)

I know I'm probably getting ahead of myself with new features, but I think those would be pretty cool to have.

Edit: How about a "latest searches/comparisons" widget?
Click to expand...
I like these ideas. Once WhichProduct itself is working 100% (or at least at a release-ready level) I'll have lots of little things to add, including a lot of things that you've mentioned here.



Also... I completely changed how the site shows the recommended products (the "Did You Mean..." dropdown). It now shows the actual Amazon product that will be shown if that term were to be searched which should make it more predictable for users when they are selecting one of the suggested products (since it'll show exactly what Amazon will bring up).
If people think this idea is good I'll make sure to add something on the homepage explaining how this function works for newer users.

Any thoughts on it? Do you like it more, less, have any suggestions to improve this feature?
 
One of the major concerns was incorrect product results, and I think I have almost completely addressed and fixed the problem by using the "Recommended Searches" dropdown.

Right now when you search, the following happens as you are typing:
WhichProduct find all search terms related to what you are typing, and it checks to see what product would be compared. So when you get recommended search terms, you get to see which Amazon product is associated with that keyword.

So if you start typing in Droid, the number 1 recommended result is for the docking station (since that is the Amazon product that will be compared if you search for 'droid' on Amazon). Since you don't want to compare the docking station (but the actual droid phone itself) you will skip over that recommended search, and click on the one below it (which leads to the Droid Phone result). And through time since people will almost always skip over searching for the docking station, it will no longer be the most recommended keyword for people to type in.

If I've done a terrible job explaining it, just play around with WhichProduct, and you'll notice that the percentage of searches that are incorrect (assuming you are clicking on something from the recommended searches dropdown menu) will go down substantially.

I have also added a reporting method at the bottom of each comparison which allows you to report incorrect data, which gets factored into how WhichProduct decides which keywords to recommend you use.

In the end if you use the recommended products dropdown your comparisons should all work without any issues. And currently I am working on getting some bots to scrape different potential search terms and search them all so I can start populating my database for recommended searches. Also I am planning on maybe making the recommended searches a little bigger and more prominent to encourage more people to use them.

So right now I feel like (besides some bells and whistles) WhichProduct is getting very close to being ready for a beta launch.

Would any of you disagree/agree? Is there anything big that still needs to be worked on?
 
after my first search, I received.

You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 's Accessories'' at line 1
Click to expand...
 
cryptix said:
Hey Cardine,
another thought - While the site searches, have you thought about dimming the screen with a grey background

and

then centering an animated graphic with some text that says something like -

"Researching Your Items...Please Wait"

have some sort of animated loading gif - like those circular spinning gifs that you see all the time. or a progression bar of sorts?

Look at Orbitz and Expedia when you are searching for fares, do something snazzy like that, that lets the end user know that the site is busy/working
Click to expand...

Same thought.

You can easily get an AJAX loader here:
Code: 
http://www.ajaxload.info/
 
14t0bpx.png


yep, it's working..
 
Pretty sweet idea Cardine, nice work. I think you could improve the front page a bit, though.

I think there's a bit too much text, and I found myself not really wanting to read it all. I would consider aligning the text instead of centering it. Then, you could put bullets for each heading, with each bullet being a relevant image. This could hep make the home page more interesting. As it is now, it's just too boring.

Also, I would also put the results (when it sais "click a product below to compare it") in bullets and align left instead of centering it.
 
Thanks for the suggestions everybody, I have a pretty major update now, and almost all of the changes I made were from suggestions made on this thread or via PM (thanks to everybody who gave feedback!) There are also a lot of features posted above (mostly bells and whistles) that I'm also working on adding for the next (and hopefully last) major update.


Let me know what you think, and if there are anymore suggestions/comments.

Also, I know some of the categories on the main page don't show any results (or don't show great results), my crawler is currently working on that :)
 
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