Search & Filter Updates - pre Typhoon Update
Philip Wilkinson on Feb 08, 2008, in E-Commerce, Products
6 commentsWe’re having to write some new features and code for the next site iteration Project “Typhoon” due in the next few weeks, and thought that we should put some of them live at least on the current site to get some testing and feedback from everyone.
So, as of this morning (taking no responsibility for the bugs) - we’ve deployed a new Site Search and much better Filter Options for browsing attributes and review content types (e.g. video, expert reviews). So in more detail:
Site Search
Before we had some sort of weird hybrid thing whereby you would type something in the box and then it would display the results in a small cramped lightbox. Often there were no results as it was locked down to only matching exact terms for the two categories (cameras and games) tha we have deployed.
Well, know we’ve opened it up to be a full search results page that queries not only products but every single piece of review content we have brought into the platform. That includes expert reviews, user reviews, videos, question and answers, and thoughts:
So we obviously still need to work on relevancy of the thing and of course keep importing more and more content to get better results - but now is a great time to get some feedback on how we could do better when it goes into the new release. So please give it a go, for example with terms such as Canon Eos 40d
Improved Filter Options & Content Types
We’ve split out Expert Reviews & User Reviews so they have their own objects now and also replaced “comments” with Thoughts which is designed to be short pieces of text that people just want to say about a product or about the category generally (e.g. strongly recommend buying blu-ray now as HD-DVD has lost). We’re debating whether we even let people leave these thoughts without having to login… what do you think?
Really would appreciate any feedback so far and any bugs you find.. What would you improve?
6 comments
Hi Phil,
On the search example, it’s the first time I’ve understood the vision of Crowdstorm in its execution if you see what I mean. Simple, intuitive, works (for me at least).
I think the vision/model for the business are spot on but up until this ’search’ iteration have felt I needed to work really hard to understand what’s going on, ie the execution. We all have infantile attention spans on the net and simple and visual seems to work best.
The thoughts bit is a very cool idea and works well. Might want to ‘authorise’ them in an admin to screen the porn/spam that will no doubt get posted?
Caveats: i.) I’m not into video games and have digital cameras so am not using the site like a buyer would. ii.) I know the vision in your heads will be different from what’s on site at the mo. so I tread carefully on dreams etc.
Cheers,
James
Thanks for the comments James - and I completely agree. Our execution has never quite matched our vision to date and hopefully all that is changing now…
It will be interesting to see how “thoughts” progress but it may have to stay for logged in users only else we can’t add them to the ranking algorithm.
Anywayz - drinks call - it’s friday!
Thanks, interesting!
I personally think you have to give a user ability to post the thoughts without logging (or etter - optional). That’s because the eager to say smth may appear spontaneously and nobody wants get into registering instead of putting smart point on subject and flying away. Still you may to give the option for those who want to get the reply on e-mail.
Oh, forgot to say - and i think the Crowdstorm itself is still very complicated and confusing.
We’ve thought about this but also want to avoid spam, and having someone registered means they can be ranked on trust and knowledge.
Potentially we could open up the “thoughts” module to let people do this…
well, you can use captchas to fight spam.
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