Wheedle.co.nz: experiences, comments

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Forums › Startups › Wheedle.co.nz: experiences, comments

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#693728 30-Sep-2012 20:08

Maybe it's just the most elaborate phishing scam. Get everyone to register, and assume they use the same email/password combo for Trade Me.

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ajobbins

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#693729 30-Sep-2012 20:12

Man, they have blantantly just copied elements from Trade Me.

Home page categories/layout, 'My Dashboard' closely resembles 'My Trade Me' etc.

I see nothing innovative

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gzt

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#693730 30-Sep-2012 20:14

The design similarity to TradeMe is ridiculous. Still waiting for the registration confirmation to come through.

You have to wonder if that is close enough for design infringement.

I saw one or two garbage items which need to be removed:https://www.wheedle.co.nz/Search/ItemDetails/854

freitasm

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#693731 30-Sep-2012 20:18

gzt: I saw one or two garbage items which need to be removed:https://www.wheedle.co.nz/Search/ItemDetails/854

They will soon learn they need to have people working 24/7 to validate listings - this is one of the things Trade Me has going for them.

And wow, the listing page is a perfect copy of Trade Me's own.

Come on people, you have to do better than the incumbent.

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gzt

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#693733 30-Sep-2012 20:27

There is a good precedent for this approach - Barnes & Noble vs Amazon. It worked well for B&N.

*

blair003

557 posts

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#693746 30-Sep-2012 20:33

I just visited the wheedle website for the first time. What was the brief for the site creation, did they just send a link to trademe.co.nz and say recreate that?

sleemanj

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#693748 30-Sep-2012 20:34

ajobbins: Man, they have blantantly just copied elements from Trade Me.

Home page categories/layout, 'My Dashboard' closely resembles 'My Trade Me' etc.

I see nothing innovative

Yep, sounds like had the same kind of "specification" that I get handed from time to time

"Specification: Everytning just like TradeMe"

---
James Sleeman
I sell lots of stuff for electronic enthusiasts...

Dratsab

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#693753 30-Sep-2012 20:38

Have to agree. My first thought on looking at it was "Trade me rip-off". Apparently internationally specified phone numbers aren't valid phone numbers either.

Was a strange sort of feeling browsing through so many empty listing categories. Will be interesting to see what happens over the next few months. I'm reasonably sure though, that I'll still mostly buy from e-bay because the stuff I want that isn't available on Trade me won't be available on Wheedle either.

sleemanj

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#693754 30-Sep-2012 20:39

Computers category as a whole has 20 listings.

Talk about launch FAIL. Come on, this is a fundamental rule, don't launch a site with near zero content, especially that kind of site.

This should have been easy - "hey, computer shop, we'd like you to list all your stuff on our site before launch, with a small discount cheaper than you are selling elsewhere, all we need is a product feed in whatever format you can give it, and in return it will be totally free for you to sell for the next 6 months".

Would have been a massive win-win for everybody, and they have the money to do it surely!

---
James Sleeman
I sell lots of stuff for electronic enthusiasts...

freitasm

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#693756 30-Sep-2012 20:47

I will say one thing about "launch": if your site is going to be slower than the incumbent at launch, you lost it. There's no excuses. There's no traffic. Saying their servers are being under load is unacceptable. Bad capacity planning, bad performance optimization will kill it.

Seriously, there's a reason why Trade Me invests so much in infrastructure and management. There's a reason why they have database people who give talks at Microsoft Tech Ed about operations and database.

There's a reason why we here at Geekzone look at our database every day, make small updates every day, use different CDNs, improve web site optimization every day.

Speed matters. If people can get a Trade Me page under a second, they won't give Wheedle a chance if it takes two seconds.

In two seconds you can miss an auction. If you can't place a winning bid you will go to the other site where you know you can keep pressing F5 and refresh the page without delays.

If these guys don't look at infrastructure, performance and web page optimization, they are doomed.

If Wheedle doesn't have a team here in New Zealand to look after everything, a team half way around the world won't save them.

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mattRSK

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#693757 30-Sep-2012 20:47

Out sourcing to India looks like a good idea, NOT. Why bother?

Ramboss

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#693770 30-Sep-2012 21:05

And apple thought Samsung were copying them, wonder how trademe feels

DonGould

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#693771 30-Sep-2012 21:08

Ramboss: And apple thought Samsung were copying them, wonder how trademe feels

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mattwnz

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#693772 30-Sep-2012 21:09

Heaps of bugs in it too. One advert shows a photo of an imac for $5, when you click on it it goes to an auction for a dress for $5. Other images don't load and just come up with the error Load failed: no data found.

mattRSK

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#693783 30-Sep-2012 21:34

Does not look good on iPad due to JavaScript.

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