Wheedle.co.nz: experiences, comments

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BDFL - Memuneh
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#696448 4-Oct-2012 21:41

Reality is... ugly sites work.

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DonGould

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#696455 4-Oct-2012 21:46

freitasm: Reality is... ugly sites work.

off topic, but why?

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gzt

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#696459 4-Oct-2012 21:52

freitasm: Reality is... ugly sites work.

I would look at Sella more often but it is just so horrible to look at - it hurts my eyes and brain:

Compare this: http://www.sella.co.nz/motoring/cars/triumph/fm5h1r/

To this: http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=516587919

My first thought is that information is just not dense enough on Sella and too much whitespace. I would think about it some more but Sella really hurts my brain so you would have to pay me to do that..

Wheedle kind of got it right in that sense, and we all know how ; ).

Athlonite

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#696834 5-Oct-2012 15:47

@gzt that and the fact that most (99%) computer hardware being sold on seller comes from retail sources

I think I said it once before it's not an auction if the full retail price is demanded in a buy now type of situation and the seller is an business that's just out and out eTail selling without a website of their own not an auction at all where you place a bid on an item which is either successful or not

mattwnz

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#696836 5-Oct-2012 15:51

spacedog: If one of these jokers can actually build a secure/stable platform to the run the transactions of a large auction site, I think TradeMe could be easily toppled. The level of customer service, the usability of the site, the auction creation process and the crippling limitations (you can't even properly insert an HTML link, use bullet points, or style the text) is arcane and dated at best.

Searchability and usability is poor in general and most people who have had the 'pleasure' of contacting TradeMe customer service realize that the whole experience could be *vastly* improved.

What is truly telling about the TradeMe group is that they are lazy and resting on their laurels and having no competition. When was the last time their site had an interface update? It has been *YEARS* and now they are only finally looking at a revamp. Look at their othersites like findsomeone for dating. It is a miserable looking website with a horrid interface, yet it is the 'premier' online dating site in NZ.

I hope somebody knocks them off the block.....or at least gets them off their behind and actually investing in the site and the user experience.

For those that think it is impossible for TradeMe to get knocked off.....I remember once upon a time many people saying the exact same thing about MySpace when Facebook emerged. There are countless examples in technology where an entrenched player that owns a market space get's shoved into oblivion by a younger, smarter, and more agile competitor.

Thats what competition is for though, it makes companies sit up and react. Look at Air NZ before Anset came in. Their Wellington Terminal for one was 3rd world, created out of an old plane hanger. They tarted it up after anset came in with a flash new terminal.

DonGould

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#696927 5-Oct-2012 19:51

mattwnz: Thats what competition is for though, it makes companies sit up and react. Look at Air NZ before Anset came in. Their Wellington Terminal for one was 3rd world, created out of an old plane hanger. They tarted it up after anset came in with a flash new terminal.

Yes. In this instance the new competition, with it's marketing spend, may cause TradeMe to spend some more of it's profits on media advertising.

This week TM published a new interface make over, but really from what I can tell there must be very little investment in that, it looks almost the same as what we'd seen before, just a bit of a move around and colour change in places.

If one of the other platforms pushes video and can get users to actually make video content of their products then like the airline terminal example above, I can see TM being pushed to make some investment in a platform which will support the volume of video that they might be expected to carry, assuming that these platforms don't all just push the video to YouTube and then just embed the clips in their HTML (which would require little investment).

Wheedle could of course appear with a phone app that makes product capture and listing simpler, which could attract the post Christmas present posters, but are we there yet with the smart phone platform to support that?

D

Promote New Zealand - Get yourself a .kiwi.nz domain name!!!

Check out mine - i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz - don@i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz

loceff13

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#696937 5-Oct-2012 20:26

TradeMe has no worries at all, their smartphone apps are lacking yes but they still have almost no competition to compete with.

As for interfaces, when you have a good thing going why change it? If the newer design isn't faster or more intuitive to customers IMO it's a money pit. Both TradeMe and Ebay have undergone ~3 major layout changes over the past 10-12 years, bidorbuy is rather unique in that it's had 6-7 looking at the web archive images of it's site.

As for video we still live in a country with upload limits on broadband plans, buyers don't want to wait seconds for a page or video to load, it has to be near instant (ie all TM pages load in under a second). HTML5 support for browsers still isn't anywhere near ideal (better option for local content rather than a flash player or youtube embed hosted outside NZ), give html5 a try on youtube and see how average an experience it is. I think video would also lower expectations of most products.

DonGould

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#696951 5-Oct-2012 21:04

loceff13: TradeMe has no worries at all, their smartphone apps are lacking yes but they still have almost no competition to compete with.

Yes that lack of competition is something that does seem to have drawn some attention.

loceff13: As for interfaces, when you have a good thing going why change it?

That's part of the reason I see it took 40 years to get from 4:3 colour TV to 16:9. Also the same reason I suspect that it might be decades before we see 3D TV get traction if it ever does.

What developments have we really seen in cars in the last 10 years? Few more airbags and that's about it.

These things aren't good for the rest of us in the industry that exist lower down the food chain or in a different position on it.

TM doesn't drive VDSL or UFB update because it's blindingly fast on dialup.

It doesn't drive interest in a faster computer or newer web browser because it's so basic in operation that there's no driver.

It's not driving interest in better smart phones because it's only got a crap smartphone interface that no one bothers.

So rather than driving the market for the benefit of everyone, it's just collecting profits for shareholders, something that gets frond on.

But yes, the interface works, why change the steering wheel for a PS2 controller?

loceff13:
As for video we still live in a country with upload limits on broadband plans, buyers don't want to wait seconds for a page or video to load, it has to be near instant (ie all TM pages load in under a second). HTML5 support for browsers still isn't anywhere near ideal (better option for local content rather than a flash player or youtube embed hosted outside NZ), give html5 a try on youtube and see how average an experience it is. I think video would also lower expectations of most products.

I agree with you about the suggestion that video might have a negative impact on some sellers.

UFB is going to have to be all about video or it's pointless.

With $4.5b invested in UFB, I suspect that we will seem more projects like Wheedle attempting to bring something video based to the TM space, funded by UFB interest parties, just to drive UFB uptake.

D

Promote New Zealand - Get yourself a .kiwi.nz domain name!!!

Check out mine - i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz - don@i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz

gzt

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#696961 5-Oct-2012 21:34

loceff13: TradeMe has no worries at all, their smartphone apps are lacking yes

In what way exactly? They have iOS and Android apps and an API available to allow you to build your own. Anyone can improve on it.

spacedog

436 posts

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#696964 5-Oct-2012 21:40

mattwnz:

Thats what competition is for though, it makes companies sit up and react. Look at Air NZ before Anset came in. Their Wellington Terminal for one was 3rd world, created out of an old plane hanger. They tarted it up after anset came in with a flash new terminal.

yeah...that's why i'm advocating someone to come in and knock trademe around.

Sure, their interface is ugly and lightweight and runs great on a dial-up modem and a computer running a pentium 1 processor at 90mhz.....but hey Zork was a fun game in 1979 that worked great on a monochrome monitor. That doesn't mean we should still be in that era....

DonGould

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#696974 5-Oct-2012 22:01

spacedog:yeah...that's why i'm advocating someone to come in and knock trademe around.

Sure, their interface is ugly and lightweight and runs great on a dial-up modem and a computer running a pentium 1 processor at 90mhz.....but hey Zork was a fun game in 1979 that worked great on a monochrome monitor. That doesn't mean we should still be in that era....

What would you like to see in an interface though?

Promote New Zealand - Get yourself a .kiwi.nz domain name!!!

Check out mine - i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz - don@i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz

richms

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#696985 5-Oct-2012 22:31

I would like to see formatting in the listing, links, ability to search just titles, ability to build complex searches across multiple categories, excluding categories, multiple area selection, ability to narrow locations of items by distance, not having all my listings showing as being at the same location, onsite messaging between users that are auditable so that sellers cant claim to have not recieved your emails, ability to hold value in the paynow account and re-use it on other purchases or trademe fees, greater image quality so they are not mushed down into a 30% quality jpeg that takes about 10% of the screen area up, history that goes back more than 45 days, automatic emailing of all PDF invoices, seperate email addresses that are given to buyers/sellers compared to the one that trademe send all the admin crap to, sorting out the computer category so there are not useless categories like 256 meg ram sticks.

If you just copy trademe and dont solve these glaring problems then why move over to the new site since the fees on trademe are really immaterial since you just build them into your sell price or load it into the shipping that you charge.

Richard rich.ms

spacedog

436 posts

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#696988 5-Oct-2012 22:38

DonGould:
spacedog:yeah...that's why i'm advocating someone to come in and knock trademe around.

Sure, their interface is ugly and lightweight and runs great on a dial-up modem and a computer running a pentium 1 processor at 90mhz.....but hey Zork was a fun game in 1979 that worked great on a monochrome monitor. That doesn't mean we should still be in that era....

What would you like to see in an interface though?

What richms just said would be fantastic. Hell if they just made it a little more like eBay it would be vast improvement.

At the very least complex styling of auctions, the option to embed links, enhanced search, the ability to create auction templates, a faster method for creating an auction based on another auction rather than that hideous method of drilling down through categories, and the ability to see a much longer history of your completed auctions (that one drives me frickin' nuts TradeMe you cheap bastards who delete my old auctions after 45 days!!!!).....I could go on forever on this.....TradeMe totally sucks in usability

gzt

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#696993 5-Oct-2012 22:54

richms: I would like to see formatting in the listing -snip-

Can you expand on what you mean by formatting in the listing and what your requirements are?

All the custom formatting on ebay is a dogs breakfast. I vastly prefer TradeMe where it is easy to compare products because of the consistent formatting. In comparison Ebay is a demented yard sale of a thing covered in left over christmas wrappings.

spacedog

436 posts

Ultimate Geek

#696997 5-Oct-2012 23:35

gzt:
richms: I would like to see formatting in the listing -snip-

Can you expand on what you mean by formatting in the listing and what your requirements are?

All the custom formatting on ebay is a dogs breakfast. I vastly prefer TradeMe where it is easy to compare products because of the consistent formatting. In comparison Ebay is a demented yard sale of a thing covered in left over christmas wrappings.

Just because eBay goes too far let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater....

Here would be some useful things just to start:

bold
italics
links
bulleted lists like this one

numbered lists
Text alignment center
Text align right

You can easily find a middle ground that is an improvement over trademe without letting it get totally out of control...

Nobody seems to freak out over the text control we have here on geekzone and right now it is light-years ahead of trademe...

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