CA Announcement Coming Tuesday January 9, 2018

[rando]

3 hours ago, mfin said:

I think it is important to have a very clear and instantly easy view of "Private Sellers only" because people tend to use Forums for private sales and buying, mixing them up with Retail Sales is not that appealing to a lot of people. If people think it becomes mostly Retail Sales, you will fail in getting traction right from the off.

 

I'll avoid the direct comparison by simply referring to the King B. model.  When I went to look up a book online today.  This site offered me the choice to buy it new or used, and listed the number of sellers, from the same page.  It defaulted to the most common choice.  I believe this is the ultimate expression of what the Superphonica's sales platform hopes to accomplish.  

 

Publicly and privately I've pointed out to Chris the fine line between similarity and familiarity.  What I see as most important right now is building upon the core model that will see the site through the next few iterations beyond what is essentially a public beta.  At some point a unique full site architectural renovation will take prominence.  I've pointed out at least one significant example of identity where further work is needed.  

[mansr]

24 minutes ago, rando said:

When I went to look up a book online today.  This site offered me the choice to buy it new or used, and listed the number of sellers, from the same page.  It defaulted to the most common choice.

Sounds a lot like Amazon.

[mfin]

29 minutes ago, rando said:

 

I'll avoid the direct comparison by simply referring to the King B. model.  When I went to look up a book online today.  This site offered me the choice to buy it new or used, and listed the number of sellers, from the same page.  It defaulted to the most common choice.  I believe this is the ultimate expression of what the Superphonica's sales platform hopes to accomplish.  

 

Publicly and privately I've pointed out to Chris the fine line between similarity and familiarity.  What I see as most important right now is building upon the core model that will see the site through the next few iterations beyond what is essentially a public beta.  At some point a unique full site architectural renovation will take prominence.  I've pointed out at least one significant example of identity where further work is needed.  

 

My guess is that kind of thing won't likely happen. The total volume of private seller items will be so outweighed by the total volume of trade seller items that the results won't be there. Trade sellers, when something is easy to adopt, will look at using it for what it is, the addition of another sales channel for them. They will look at it as worth the exposure IF it takes little effort and outlay for the return made, if that calculation is a no brainer, in they come, and hence swamp the total content with trade items. Even just a couple of trade sellers can put up the equivalent number of items that hundreds and hundreds of private users could put up.

 

Private sellers also simply put their items up for sale in places where they buy private items, if they can't find things to buy, or it looks like it's just full of trade items, they won't put their items on there because they won't automatically connect with the process in their mind.

 

The problem is there is so often going to be zero results of private seller items returned but plenty of trade seller ones people will just think there's barely anything on there worth searching for.

 

The alternative is to browse content, looking at all items, hoping to spot something that you are after, this is something that works well in forum classifieds (lots of people do it), but is generally not possible or a bit more unnatural in listing based stores that aren't crafted into true online retail shops. We are conditioned for smooth looking store-esque approaches to have what we want (this that has been created is store-esque), when they don't give results we want, we make very quick judgements such as "well, it's not got much on it". Having more and more items by trade sellers doesn't fix this really, results for results sake are useless. People try to make searches return all sorts of associated searches just to get something on the screen so a search looks like it gives good results, people aren't fooled by those kind of 'techniques'.

 

Anyway, its all very interesting. What Wigwam got wrong is they needed to keep all the classifieds but have people list them on the new store-esque approach, and have good browsing for forum type behaviour. They needed to do this BEFORE they polluted it with all the Trade Stuff. Now they will have a not very appealing Trade Store, and it never got started as something as good or better than their classifieds was for private sales between forum users. So, they've created a long game, which might work, but I wouldn't think it will meet what they dreamt of. All my opinion, nothing more.

 

The above is why I think it is important to get it right from the off, a jack of all trades with a few filters won't work. My earlier suggestions for patching how the search could work with two buttons is one possible shout for this to work better, but I wouldn't be surprised if it would take some serious hacking about of the underlying platform. 

[Superdad]

Chris:

 

For at least two used items that I put into a cart--and went all the way to entering my address, with the screen ready to hit the payment button--the items in the cart still said "The seller hasn't set a fixed shipping fee."  Which seems to mean that either:

a) The seller would have to contact me for payment of shipping;

or:

b) I would compete the purchase and the shipping charged would simply be a surprise.

 

Neither scenario will be appealing to buyers.  Please explain.

 

Thanks,

--Alex

 

P.S. @mfin has done a great job explaining the sentiments that I and many other average-Joe buyers--coming from say Audiogon--are likely to have.

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, Superdad said:

Chris:

 

For at least two used items that I put into a cart--and went all the way to entering my address, with the screen ready to hit the payment button--the items in the cart still said "The seller hasn't set a fixed shipping fee."  Which seems to mean that either:

a) The seller would have to contact me for payment of shipping;

or:

b) I would compete the purchase and the shipping charged would simply be a surprise.

 

Neither scenario will be appealing to buyers.  Please explain.

 

Thanks,

--Alex

 

P.S. @mfin has done a great job explaining the sentiments that I and many other average-Joe buyers--coming from say Audiogon--are likely to have.

 

I've been working the resolution to that shipping issue this afternoon and I'm about to put it into place this evening.

 

The issue revolves around components that may have very wide price swings depending on the shipping options, and people not wanting to charge too much or too little. Thus, we let people opt not to put in a shipping charge. It's not how I would sell something, but people want it. 

 

In a few minutes, there will be messages in the cart and at checkout that explain to the buyer that the seller has either accidentally not entered a shipping cost or purposely not entered a shipping cost because he wants to charge the correct amount. It also explains that the buyer will have to contact the seller to have him enter a shipping cost in the product in order for it to be purchased. 

 

We are trying to accommodate sellers in this strange HiFi situation. Ii can't think of many other scenarios where people say - contact me and I'll determine shipping and then you can purchase etc...

 

Again, this isn't how I'd do it. In fact, i'd be turned off buying something if I had to go through this type of thing. I want add to cart and to see a shipping charge. If it seems reasonable I'll buy it. If I was shopping eBay and someone said shipping determined later, I'd move on to the next person selling the item. That's just me. 

[mansr]

5 minutes ago, Superdad said:

For at least two used items that I put into a cart--and went all the way to entering my address, with the screen ready to hit the payment button--the items in the cart still said "The seller hasn't set a fixed shipping fee."  Which seems to mean that either:

a) The seller would have to contact me for payment of shipping;

or:

b) I would compete the purchase and the shipping charged would simply be a surprise.

 

Neither scenario will be appealing to buyers.  Please explain.

I agree. The full cost must be known before committing to anything.

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, mansr said:

I agree. The full cost must be known before committing to anything.

Absolutely. We don't allow checkout unless full cost is known.

[PeterSt]

15 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I should also note, there is a view of the products that's ugly but I want to offer it because some people will prefer it. It's called Product List View.

 

What's ugly is the rendering of the photos. The list seems fine to me. At first I thought it was The Audio Salon's photos but it is in everything. So if you shop at B+H Photo again one of these days, maybe you can do something about that ? 

 

You can see it when you click on the photo in the detail page; only then the appropriate rendering is applied (probably no rendering apart from what my browser makes of it).

[rando]

16 hours ago, mansr said:

Sounds a lot like Amazon.

 

You forgot the ®.  

 

@mfin Might not have been clear what my intent there was.  You more than took up the torch leading off into the wilderness though.  Without banging on about originality, or lack thereof, it is this very thing that will be needed for success.  You recognize it is the core functionality that needs to be sculpted into rough form at this stage.  This is the type of input it appears they need to hear.  Being based in experience with a fair amount of previous attempts by forums to split off in this direction.  

 

I'm as wary of giving free advice as receiving it.  With that grain of salt, would it be worthwhile to have @Dave pencil in an hour every week to add some form to these discussions?  Randomly attacking whatever comes to mind doesn't account for where he is currently facing difficulties or would prosper from outside input.  

[The Computer Audiophile]

3 minutes ago, rando said:

 

You forgot the ®.  

 

@mfin Might not have been clear what my intent there was.  You more than took up the torch leading off into the wilderness though.  Without banging on about originality, or lack thereof, it is this very thing that will be needed for success.  You recognize it is the core functionality that needs to be sculpted into rough form at this stage.  This is the type of input it appears they need to hear.  Being based in experience with a fair amount of previous attempts by forums to split off in this direction.  

 

I'm as wary of giving free advice as receiving it.  With that grain of salt, would it be worthwhile to have @Dave pencil in an hour every week to add some form to these discussions?  Randomly attacking whatever comes to mind doesn't account for where he is currently facing difficulties or would prosper from outside input.  

 

Hi Guys - Thanks for the continued feedback and advice. It's all helpful. 

 

We'll be posting regular updates on the Superphonica forum section about what enhancements, changes, updates have been made, and encouraging feedback. I'm working on a little update right now.

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/forum/94-superphonica/

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I just posted the update for today in the Superphonica forum.

[christopher3393]

Thanks Chris. This could become a nice replacement for Audio Asylum.

 

...and I intend to read the whole series:

[rando]

As much as I'm digging the remedial back to basics aspect.  I'd rather be learning four letter words* like FUNK with The Super Phonics.  

 

*Disclaimer: Four letter words not guaranteed safe for children or sensitive adults

 

 

[christopher3393]

a funkumental bootytastic enterprise