

Ask Hacker News: What do you think of this shopping cart on my new startup that just launched? - wmeredith
http://200nipples.com/index.php
Good morning all. I just launched a t-shirt sales site, not exactly a web app, I know. But we have a freaky business model, which required a correspondingly freaky e-commerce cart. My buddy essentially reverse engineered Ticketmaster's cart. Anyway, I love this community and respect it's opinion greatly. In fact, I learned most of my web/customer-experience design stuff by reading things I found here.<p>Anyway, I'd love to know what you think of the site's usability etc...
I opened with the cart, because I figured hacker types would be most interested in that, but all comments/criticisms are welcome.
======
wmeredith
Good morning all. I just launched a t-shirt sales site, not exactly a web app,
I know. But we have a freaky business model, which required a correspondingly
freaky e-commerce cart. My buddy essentially reverse engineered Ticketmaster's
cart. Anyway, I love this community and respect it's opinion greatly. In fact,
I learned most of my web/customer-experience design stuff by reading things I
found here.

Anyway, I'd love to know what you think of the site's usability etc... I
opened with the cart, because I figured hacker types would be most interested
in that, but all comments/criticisms are welcome.

~~~
tstegart
Yeah, while the counter is great, it could use a sentence or two more of
description. Keep the counter, add a fun sentence about why its there, not
just what it does.

~~~
wmeredith
Done.

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Xichekolas
I think the concept is great... definitely in the vein of woot.com. Also an
easy way to make a quick $5k on a T-shirt design.

Have you thought of reversing the dollar amounts? Have the #1 in the series
cost $100 and the #100 cost $1. People are always willing to pay more for the
first of any series, especially a limited one. I personally have no drive to
pay $99 more for something that is the 100th of it's kind, but I might pay $99
more to say I had 'the original'.

(Also: Hello fellow citizens of KC area!)

~~~
tstegart
I agree, having the first is valuable, but also getting the last one before
they're never made again is also valuable. Maybe the middle ones should be $1,
and the ends cost more.

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jey
I'd like to file a bug report.

    
    
      javascript:var GM_JQ = document.createElement('script');GM_JQ.src = "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.2.6/jquery.min.js";
      GM_JQ.type = 'text/javascript';document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(GM_JQ);function GM_wait(){if(typeof window.jQuery == 'undefined'){
      window.setTimeout(GM_wait,100); }else { $ = window.jQuery; letsJQuery(); }}GM_wait();function letsJQuery(){alert("starting");haxor(1);}function haxor(idx)
      {if(idx > 100) { alert("done"); window.location.href="http://200nipples.com/index.php"; return; }$.post("/options.php", { "design_id" : 2, "series_number" : idx });
      setTimeout(function() { haxor(idx+1); }, 100);}
    
    

Put that all on one line so that it's a URL and copy it, then go to
200nipples.com and paste it in the location bar. It just posts { "design_id" :
2, "series_number" : idx } to "/options.php" for idx in [1,100], which
reserves all the shirts so that nobody else can buy them until the timer
expires.

I don't think an IP ban is the best way to deal with this problem.

~~~
mildweed
IP ban certainly isn't the best way to deal with it. Its just what I could do
untill you guys told me how you did it. Thank you for revealing your method so
I can repair the hole.

~~~
jey
Great, now can you unban me? :-)

~~~
mildweed
Ooop! You're clear to not get redirected to here anymore:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU>

------
babul
T-Shirts: You need to get better designs. They are not that special and
limited edition does nothing for them. Limited editions only really work if
_other_ people know the item is a limited edition, or the design is very
unique. There are lots of markets out there filled with handmade items that
are "limited editions" most people will not be aware of. Try and get something
like a XKCD design that _only_ is seen on one of your limited edition shirts.

Cart: Nice idea and implementation. Emphasise the sold items less (i.e. not in
black) as it is counter intuitive. Also have some basic images explaining what
is going on (especially with the release-to-wild concept) as I only really
understood it when I went through the process and not in the first 5~10
seconds of visiting. 4 or 5 should do it outlining the workflow i.e. look,
select, buy, or release.

Name: You can come up with edgy mnemonic names that won’t put people off.

------
tstegart
Launch tip: if you're posting during work hours with a URL that suggests NSFW,
put that its a t-shirt site and its safe for work in your title or post. I bet
you lost a ton of people who looked at the URL and moved on because they were
unsure. They might not have come back to check out the comments to know its
ok. You have to realize, there are serious consequences for some people at
some companies for going to a site with a bad URL, even if its not a bad site,
it puts you on the bag guy's radar.

------
shafqat
Hey dude - I love it. Great concept, good execution, very fun site. Didn't
understand why there was a timer counting down on one of the items. Instead of
trying to figure it out after 5 seconds, I went to a different page on the
site.

Anyway, great job. Not sure about the first t-shirt. I didnt find it that
funny. Maybe I'm just lame. But overall, great site. I'm hoping the next
t-shirt will be so funny that I pee a little. I'll surely be coming back to
check out future designs.

~~~
wmeredith
Nah, you're not lame. We expected that some designs wouldn't appeal to some
people. This is especially pronounced with the one-design-at-a-time business
model. Just subscribe to get a new design notification and come check the next
one: <http://blog.200nipples.com/2008/06/shirt-reminder/> :-)

------
immad
I think instead of labeling the shirts #1 to #100, you should consider
$1-$100. Would make it a lot more intuitive to understand the grid.

Also the top line said sold and was all dark, which made my mind think of it
as a title bar to the table and ignore it, not sure what a good way of dealing
with that is but that made it harder for me to work out what was going on.

------
mpfefferle
I'd look at it but the domain makes me think its NSFW.

~~~
immad
"What's with "200 Nipples?"

That's how many nipples we assume will be covered by any single run of our
high-quality shirts. (We'll have the third-nippled buyer in there
occasionally, but we didn't want to count on it when naming the company; this
is serious business, after all.)"

I think its a interesting way to brand it.

~~~
wmeredith
We debated loooooong over the naming issue. We decided to go with something
not easily forgotten and a little funny/edgy over something that is safe.

It's a boutique shop anyway, so we're after the 20% rather than the 80% of our
market. (Which made safe and bland much less desirable. In fact it made it
wholly undesirable.)

~~~
froo
You could always make a set of 25 "tea cosey"-like creations.

Market them for cows and their udders? You could get a little blog exposure
that way I'm sure.

~~~
steveplace
That's udderly ridiculous.

------
tlrobinson
Quick... if he sells all 100 shirts for $1 to $100, how much money will he
make...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss#Early_year...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss#Early_years_.281777.E2.80.931798.29)

~~~
wmeredith
$3854.96 (net) :-)

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immad
Feedback: If I leave the page open the cart becomes out of synch and I need to
reload the page. Either it needs to poll the server or a quick hack would be
to make it refresh after a certain delay.

Or you could have a refresh link next to the cart

------
epe
I think it's brilliantly executed. The /index.php page tells me everything I
need to know -- contrary to what some people are saying, I found the cart
instantly understandable. (To be clear, I'm talking about the version with
"These are all the shirts. If a shirt is counting down it is in someone else's
shopping cart. When someone clicks ..." in red. I'm not sure if that was there
when you first posted or not.)

~~~
wmeredith
That's the new version.

------
Mistone
confusing as heck \- took me a while to figure out what was going on - how
about a quick: here's how is works section - would be helpful -

------
tipjoy
Very clean site.

The white/gray/dark gray color scheme of the cart part isn't working for me.
They white ones look most like links, when they're the sold ones. The grey
ones look disabled, when they're the ones you want me to click on.

Also, I agree with others that the dollar amounts should be switched, and the
first one should cost the most. Do you label the shirt with the number (as in
1/100 like prints do)? I think that would add value but it isn't clear to me
if my run # will be on the shirt I buy. Update, now I see that it is on the
shirt as shown in pictures #4 & #5 but you should definitely emphasize this A
LOT more. This is the reason someone would pay more when they don't have to.

I don't really like the red treatment. Those are the instructions, not an
error message. And here's a tiny nit which might make things a bit clearer:
how about "Click a shirt number to get started"?

------
JimEngland
Cool idea, weird name. <http://200nipples.com/showcart.php> Everything is
there that needs to be when you select a shirt to order, but the presentation
is really lacking. Try making some parts of the text a lot larger, throw in a
picture of the shirt, and maybe make an icon for "releasing it into the wild."

Also, a lot of the screen is wasted with the top header. You want to make sure
people see your content above the scroll; I'd suggest making things more
compact. Good work though.

------
immad
Also I like the concept. I think anything around improving e-commerce websites
especially with variable pricing is smart.

One issue is that as you hit $100 it may seem pretty unfair to buy something
that someone has bought for $1 previously. Maybe the pricing should be non-
linear compared to quantity. As in there are 10 shirts available at $50 and 1
at $1 and it not going all the way to $100. Just a thought, but I guess if in
practice you find that the $100 are easy to shift then...

------
jbenz
Mine says it will ship August 7th. Why so long?

I really like the "Chicken Exit: If you don't want to purchase this shirt,
click here to release it back into the wild."

The whole goal is to get a customer who really likes a design but maybe isn't
sure if they want to spend the money. Well, they know their time is limited,
panic starts to set in, and of course they end up buying it. Smart.

But I didn't really dig the RIAA design. Maybe next time.

------
shawndrost
Congrats on launching! The SOLD boxes shouldn't be links... it's confusing
that my mouse changes on mouseover but clicking them doesn't do anything. When
a shirt times out and is released, its box stays dark grey... shouldn't it be
light grey? And how about using red/yellow/green for sold/in
progress/available instead of white/dark grey/light grey?

------
subwindow
I think the price points should be adjusted a little bit. Very few people are
going to want to pay more than $30 for a shirt. This means that for almost all
of the shirts, 3/4ths of them will never sell. It kind of looks bad.

Its not as catchy, but $10 + (Shirt Number/4) seems like a better formula-
$10-$35.

------
jonknee
You should really note what kind of shirts you're printing on. By the sizing
chart it appears to be American Apparel (nice shirts, I wear one of theirs
about every day).

But I'm not going to buy a shirt, especially after the first few cheaper ones
sell out, without knowing the specs.

~~~
wmeredith
Done

------
jacobbijani
Maybe I'm missing something, but why is the last shirt printed more expensive
than the first? Exclusive items with a lower item number are generally more
valuable.

Why don't the timed items revert to a regular item once the timer is expired.
Remove the grey background, basically.

~~~
gigawatt
I don't think you can really think of them as #1/100 like an art print. The
increased price has more to do with the relative scarcity of the item when it
was purchased.

~~~
jacobbijani
That makes no sense. Number 100 is $100 when there are 99 others available and
when there is 1 available.

And that is precisely what you can think of an itemized limited edition
anything as -- that's what it means.

~~~
gigawatt
Well, I guess they're going on the assumption that no one would purchase a
more expensive shirt when a cheaper one was available. I see your point,
though, and it does kind of negate what I said.

------
ashleyw
I like the site and cart setup, but the "we will reserve your item while you
checkout" model is already used at most e-commerce sites, although your info
on how many are being reserved is public. (plus the time limit is likely
shorter)

Still, I wish you luck!

------
cia_plant
Are people really going to pay more than $30 for a t-shirt? I would think that
people who like to spend a lot of money on clothes usually buy things other
than t-shirts.

~~~
Xichekolas
There is a store in my hometown that sells 'designer t-shirts' for $80 each.
Never underestimate the psychological effect of 'pricey = exclusive'.

~~~
wmeredith
There are also a few of these in Kansas City.

~~~
Xichekolas
That just happens to be my hometown... roughly.

------
radley
FAIL. sorry =(

<http://www.vcwear.com/fund-the-shirts/>

~~~
radley
It's hard enough to create a design people will not only wear, but actually
pay money for.

The pricing scheme is fun for programmers and number-concept fanatics... but
has no place in reality. As an example, I posted a link to a site with a ton
of online attention who tried a sales gimmick to sell t-shirts for $100 each.

Months later they sold a total of 18 shirts.

Compare this to Threadless.com who can sell 100k of a single design, offer
100s of designs at a time, and build a community around potential designs...
and still have a small boutique profile.

Finally, it's really uncool when a company doesn't have enough faith in it's
product to actually stock the product.

To finish on a positive note, I like the name. It's funny. I also suggest:

\- Print & sell the shirts at cost + shipping. \- Keep up the excellent blog &
artist profiles. \- Create a community voting page wherein if enough people
pledge to buy, you print.

~~~
wmeredith
"Print & sell the shirts at cost + shipping." What the hell kind of a business
model is that? (Hint: there's no profit.)

"Keep up the excellent blog & artist profiles." Thanks for the compliment,
we'll try.

"Create a community voting page wherein if enough people pledge to buy, you
print." That's a good idea, and it's what Threadless does. It's feature-bloat
we've discussed for the future.

------
wumi
_Ships: August 7th, 2008_

Why so long?

~~~
wmeredith
We send in our print orders at the end of the month. This is by far the
weakest link in our business model.

~~~
Xichekolas
How much would it cost to just pre-print 100 of them? You could always do an
end of the year grab-bag of any that didn't sell (like woot.com's woot-offs).

You'd probably not come out ahead on all designs, but I'm sure people paying
$100 for the shirt would love to have it asap.

~~~
jonknee
Then no one could choose a size. It's a tough printing job any way you slice
it. Perhaps doing it in house would be a little faster, but that takes a lot
of time and money.

------
cmos
love it. Let us know how many of the 'above market' shirts you sell. I'd be
very impressed if you can get enough people to buy all of the ones above $45.

And I'm a big fan of the name as well. Note that you have more comments here
than in most posts.

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khangtoh
seriously, i had to think twice (nsfw .. when I saw the url).. please change
it.

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ngvrnd
Fail.

