
Show HN: Auto Swatch - New-car research that doesn't suck - nicksergeant
http://autoswatch.com/
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DanielStraight
The site is pretty, but I would hardly call seeing what different cars look
like in different colors research. I guess if that's what's guiding your
purchase, it makes sense, but for me, appearance is nowhere near the top of
the list.

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nicksergeant
When my wife and I were car shopping, I noticed an emotional pattern. She
cared about color, style, etc. My target audience is women 25-40.

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DanielStraight
If the goal is to shop by color/style, I would filter out the cars that aren't
available in the selected color. Showing the little gray boxes provides no
benefit at all. I would also eliminate the pagination on the listings.
Pagination almost always detracts from the usability of a site. In your case,
it makes it much harder to compare vehicles within the search results. And,
when you remove the pointless grayed-out boxes, the page will never be that
long.

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nicksergeant
I originally filtered out the vehicles not available in the color, but it was
confusing when vehicles popped in and out depending on color. If my vehicle
isn't available in red, I want to know that.

As far as pagination goes, I'm with you. I'm still on the fence about whether
or not to ditch it.

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DanielStraight
Perhaps group results by availability then?

Like:

    
    
       Available vehicles A-Z
      ------------------------
      Unavailable vehicles A-Z
    

Why _not_ ditch pagination? What is it adding to the site?

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nicksergeant
More confusing UI, IMO.

I'll probably kill pagination, though.

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kmfrk
UPDATED: Expanded on the categorization aspect.

Your design is absolutely gorgeous, and that's worth visiting the site for
alone.

The categorization is a little wonky, and while it may technically be true (if
it is), I think it's going to confuse other people than me; Sedan, Hatchback
and Crossover seem _and_ look to similar judging by their icon. Maybe they
should be merged, or the main categories should be based on something else. To
someone who knows jack about cars, they all look like station cars to me.
Heck, upon closer inspection, some of the Hatchbacks and Crossovers look like
SUVs or Minivans.

Some people will probably be interested in several similar categories. I'd try
enlisting the feedback of your users to understand how they categorize cars
and apply at least some of that methodology.

Think about how people buy cars; if you need a big car to transport heavy
loads or compensate for something, you have an SUV.

If you're a mother of three, you'd want a "Family Car" (although that's a
tough sell to the husband).

Some people, myself and probably some women in their 20s, like "Small Cars",
like Mini Coopers, Fiat Grande Punto and their ilk. The Punto is a great city
car that's cheap on petrol, easy to navigate, and even easier to park. These
cars are like the purple Dell laptops to some women.

Then there's the Sportscar (or Mid-Life-Crisis Car, but let's just call it a
Sportscar). No need to delineate convertibles nor two-seaters and so forth.

I'm sure there's a general consumer pattern - a car buyer archetype - that you
can use to your advantage. Quora has so many quirky people that there might be
someone with that knowledge. This is probably a vital thing to figure out, and
basing it on buyer trends might be a good idea - as long as you don't create
category frameworks that overlap in domains.

As for relevant metrics, I would suggest MPG (bio/electric/hydrogen vs. diesel
vs. unleaded) and the Euro NCAP[1] score. The latter probably requires API
access, but nevertheless.

EDIT: What are those coloured boxes supposed to signify? Granted, I'm an
idiot, but I thought they were filter links for age groups at first.

[1]: <http://www.euroncap.com>.

~~~
kmfrk
Another thought I just had: approach your design like you were an online car
salesmen - not the Simplified Wikipedia of cars - or that you earned an
affiliate commission on every car "sold" through your site.

That way, you would be more focused on better conversion rather than
exhaustive classification, and have a completely different incentive. This
would affect the categorization and user experience significantly.

~~~
nicksergeant
Agreed. I think this will become more apparent once the functionality of the
site is fleshed-out. The goal is to get people's asses in (the right) cars,
not just tool around with the site.

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pauldisneyiv
I run a startup providing inventory services to automotive dealerships and
make use of the eVox product. Great images.

That being said I would be very careful how your licensing contract is worded
with them. You don't want to get burned and most everything in our space is
charged on a dealership by dealership basis.

The idea itself is interesting and I like anything that disrupts our industry.
Keep working on it and feel free to reach out if you'd like.

~~~
nicksergeant
We were in talks with Evox for a long time, our contract very specifically
allows advertising-backed public display of the photos. They've seen the site
and love it. FWIW, the folks at Evox were awesome to deal with.

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andymoe
It's a really great start and I have been thinking a lot about this problem as
every year during ski season I pine for an AWD vehicle of some kind and start
bouncing between car manufacturers sites. I search both visually but I also
like to hit google for a specific feature like AWD or TDI etc and use that as
a starting point. If you sprinkle in a few feature details - even if it's meta
only for the search box - then I think it will become even more awesome. (And
probably my starting point for all my car research)

Finally, I realize this is probably a first version but once I find a car I
like you should make an effort to send me to the the manufacturer site or even
a simple google qry that will find what I'm looking for.

I think your site is about 100 times more sticky than carwoo since right away
I am looking for cars - if later I want dealers to compete for me that's
great. I would seriously consider that you borrow their business model or that
they borrow your interface idea.

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grandalf
I have a few comments:

\- nice design

\- why use categories? I tried to find my car in two categories and couldn't
find it. I finally gave up and searched, and still didn't find it (no fuzzy
matches).

\- Why not use a flip approach to flip through the car detail pages and star
ones that you want to do further research on? Starred items could then be
viewable as a features/price matrix.

\- What is the problem that the site is solving for people? In my opinion it's
"What cars are out there, what do they look like, and how do they compare?".

\- I think that info about cars that are currently available with big
incentives or other discounts would be useful. Two seemingly smilar vehicles
could have a very different monthly payment b/c of incentives and as a
consumer I want to know.

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Killah911
It's very interesting. It's a work in progress, but the canvas looks good. One
of the huge problems with buying a new car is the sheer amount of "comparison
data" available. It's near impossilbe for someone to make a good decision
(good according to "How we Decide" & "Happiness Hypothesis") with more than
5-6 variables. I like the fact that it only presents one very simple dimension
of choice so far. Now, if you can figure out a way to not overwhelm a buyer,
and keep the choices low, by eliminating vehicles of the wrong color etc from
a search, it really would be new-car research that doesn't suck :)

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hnsmurf
I wouldn't use this honestly. I don't get anything from it that I can't from
manufacturers' sites. Every manufacturer has a "build your own car" link that
has colors you can choose. Theirs often even let you choose interior colors
too.

Manufacturers' sites suck, but this doesn't give me the info I need to skip
them, so I'd now have to use two sites instead of one. This site is just a
subset of the manufacturer site I'm already stuck using, and to be honest
their color pickers work better.

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hkuo
Having worked one of the top auto manufacturer websites from top to bottom,
MPG and Seating are the next two things you need to add. Particularly right
now, MPG is top of mind as gas prices are skyrocketing. And seating is always
important. It helps to know whether you'll be able to fit your entire family.

Next comes trunk space and safety ratings. Can I fit what I need to given my
particular lifestyle? Will I have a better chance of survival in a crash?

Awards help as well, such as Motor Trend or J.D. Powers. Those factor well
into the decision-making.

Funny enough, random things like number of cup holders is a deciding factor
some people. Will there be enough cup holders for everyone's drinks?

Regarding the interface, I think it would be particularly awesome if filtering
and display updates worked using this jQuery isotope plugin:
<http://isotope.metafizzy.co/demos/filtering.html>

~~~
nicksergeant
Good tips! There is a huge opportunity in this industry on the web. Current
car research sites have no human touch - things like cup holders and basic
safety ratings. The isotope plugin is pretty neat, but I'm not sure if it's
worth spending time on at this stage. It'd be a neat easter egg to introduce
sometime, though ;)

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vaksel
nice visually, but kinda crappy functionally.

that said I did find the ability to switch between models useful, since it
lets you see just what gets changed visually between the C63 AMG and the
regular C-Class, the M3 and 3-series, Base corvette and the Z06 etc.

That said for some reason you haven't applied this to Audi(i.e. A4/S4)

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vlucas
Those photos are gorgeous. I made <http://autoridge.com> and I had a lot of
trouble finding good vehicle photos. I ended up using the Flickr API to pull
in photos for both the website and the mobile app. Most of the resulting
pictures are good, some are seemingly random or mis-labeled, but none of them
are anywhere near the quality of what you have there.

~~~
nicksergeant
My original plan was to scrape photos off Flickr / MFR websites, but I quickly
realized that's not even close to legal :). Evox does a great job.

~~~
vlucas
Scraping photos is a lot different than scraping data, I fully agree.

But for the pictures, I am using Flickr's API, and it's not illegal. I have
read the terms carefully, and since the site it not a commercial one, I am
well within the public API terms. I also link to and credit the source on
every photo, as I know each individual has the rights to their own photos.

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CWIZO
Categorization of cars is messed up. There's a BMW 5 series in the hatchback
section. And a VW Beatle in the sports section ... and countless other
examples.

Is "seeing cars in different colours" the only feature you are offering? If
you are planning on adding more comparison features then I'd wait with
"launching" as this is mostly useless and user's wont remember you. Pretty
site tho :)

~~~
nicksergeant
We'll have all data on each vehicles soon. Something similar to this:
<http://twitpic.com/4mm384>

The categorization is messed up, yes, I'm working on a flabby set of data for
that. That'll be fixed soon, too.

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3pt14159
Take out the Google ads. If your goal is to make money then there are ways to
do that, but don't throw up ads until you're out of ideas.

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d5dhatch
I'll admit I'm in the category of color-first car shoppers. Well-done and
quite beautiful. Outside of color and type I might add in price next and mpg.
Then hand the search off to another engine to let folks fine-tune criteria.
Don't get too bogged down in needing all the data.

~~~
nicksergeant
My plans exactly. Stay tuned!

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kmfrk
I just clicked your "Subscribe", and it turned out to be a link to a
newsletter subscription. Nowadays, I equate subscriptions to RSS, so I would
rename it "Newsletter" instead, if you want to keep it down to one word.

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PonyGumbo
This is neat, but I think it would be much more useful if you could set a
ceiling on price before displaying results, or have the ability to sort by
MSRP in individual categories.

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nicksergeant
It's coming. Gotta get the data first.

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nicksergeant
Just an update - added MPG, MSRP and MFR site data on Auto Swatch:
<http://autoswatch.com/sedan-coupe/>

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duck
Your search doesn't appear to handle some characters:
<http://autoswatch.com/search/?q=F-150>

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gregpilling
The search couldn't find the truck as 'f150' either. I have an automotive site
(retail ecommerce) and it is amazing the variations on truck names that people
enter to find what they want. You could probably get some good search terms to
alias if you did some research with the Google Adwords keyword tool. You could
make F-150=F150=F series=etc...

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nicksergeant
Yeah, right now there's some issues with the dataset I've got. Dashes not
being dashes, etc.

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robin_reala
US-only data at the moment. Internationalisation plans?

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nicksergeant
Plans, yes. We've got <http://autoswatch.co.uk> and would love to hop into
that market. We've got our hands full with US at the moment, though.

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naner
Still actually kind of sucks. There's not enough filters.

Also they seem to have conflated "Sportscar" with "Convertible" moving all
high performance hardtops under "Sedan/Coupe". This provides the odd situation
where an Anston Martin V8 Vantage shows up in the same results as a SMART car.

~~~
nicksergeant
Yes, there are some category mis-matches. It's a work in progress.

