Poll: What do you find buying online really hard or annoying?

#1

Post by revorad » Mon, Jul 04, 2011, 4:47 PM UTC

I'm building a shopping site because I find online shopping for some products really frustrating. The idea is to have one site where you can search for all options for a given product category and quickly filter down to the one you want to buy.

I have some product categories in mind that I would like to work on, but I want to know what you would find useful.

Please vote for one or more of the following and comment below to say what you find most frustrating about buying that online. What would you like to be fixed?

Thanks!

Re: Poll: What do you find buying online really hard or annoying?

#2

Post by georgefox » Mon, Jul 04, 2011, 5:03 PM UTC

Clothing. Granted, I hate buying clothes in person too, but not being able to try things on makes it seem like quite a gamble.

Re: Poll: What do you find buying online really hard or annoying?

#3

Post by vaksel » Mon, Jul 04, 2011, 5:03 PM UTC

I think one of the problems is that there is just too many choices, something better would be where you just tell your budget, and are given the top 3 options in your budget.

Re: Poll: What do you find buying online really hard or annoying?

#4

Post by jweede » Mon, Jul 04, 2011, 5:04 PM UTC

Too bad sparkbuy is shuttered.

Re: Poll: What do you find buying online really hard or annoying?

#5

Post by devicenull » Mon, Jul 04, 2011, 5:05 PM UTC

vaksel wrote: post #3

I think one of the problems is that there is just too many choices, something better would be where you just tell your budget, and are given the top 3 options in your budget.

The problem with that is I'd never be 100% sure that the 'top 3' options presented were actually the 'top 3' in terms of quality, and not the 'top 3' in terms of which company spent the most on advertising

Re: Poll: What do you find buying online really hard or annoying?

#6

Post by revorad » Mon, Jul 04, 2011, 5:06 PM UTC

vaksel wrote: post #3

I think one of the problems is that there is just too many choices, something better would be where you just tell your budget, and are given the top 3 options in your budget.

Well that's certainly the biggest problem I'm trying to tackle. I'm thinking of various approaches: one is to provide much better filtering and sorting tools. But the other is to just recommend the best product for a given price and one more important factor.

Re: Poll: What do you find buying online really hard or annoying?

#7

Post by gaustin » Mon, Jul 04, 2011, 5:06 PM UTC

Tools and supplies for my bladesmithing hobby. The supply sites that do exists have really terrible web presences and they still do much of their business with paper catalogs.

Most of the stores don't have items categorized more than one level deep nor by the properties of the item. There are all sorts of options for something as simple as an anvil or a pair of tongs.

God help you if you need handle hardware. You have to go through 40 pages of little, crappy pictures of items to find what you're looking for.

When you go to checkout, you're lucky if you can complete your order without reloading your cart a half-dozen times.

Then there's the whole quality thing. There are vanishingly few reviews on these sites. If you could aggregate reviews on similar items, it would be great.

But a problem with aggregating reviews is that a certain part might be imported from China on one site and the same part might be laser cut in house on another site. There's no real way to tell the difference without having the two items in hand.

Edit to add some links to examples: http://www.knifemaking.com/Default.asp http://www.piehtoolco.com/ http://www.usaknifemaker.com/

Re: Poll: What do you find buying online really hard or annoying?

#8

Post by revorad » Mon, Jul 04, 2011, 5:07 PM UTC

georgefox wrote: post #2

Clothing. Granted, I hate buying clothes in person too, but not being able to try things on makes it seem like quite a gamble.

I'm staying away from clothing for now, because I am neither super interested nor knowledgeable about it. I feel it will take a vastly different approach to sell clothes than other product categories.

Re: Poll: What do you find buying online really hard or annoying?

#9

Post by revorad » Mon, Jul 04, 2011, 5:09 PM UTC

jweede wrote: post #4

Too bad sparkbuy is shuttered.

Yes sparkbuy was a great site. There's http://decide.com and http://shopobot.com in the same space, but their focus is on predicting when to buy a particular product.

Re: Poll: What do you find buying online really hard or annoying?

#10

Post by revorad » Mon, Jul 04, 2011, 5:09 PM UTC

devicenull wrote: post #5

vaksel wrote: post #3

I think one of the problems is that there is just too many choices, something better would be where you just tell your budget, and are given the top 3 options in your budget.

The problem with that is I'd never be 100% sure that the 'top 3' options presented were actually the 'top 3' in terms of quality, and not the 'top 3' in terms of which company spent the most on advertising

How do you solve that problem now?