
Ask HN: Review my Startup - http://Cardnap.com - lachyg
Check it out: http://cardnap.com/<p>In short, Cardnap helps you find the most heavily discounted gift cards for your favourite stores. We do this by aggregating the cards from all the various sellers out there, we've got plans to add the likes of Craigslist and eBay so we'll have nearly every marketplace out there. Although, this is just the beginning for us!<p>Would love your feedback on the idea, execution, and its direction! Bear in mind, this is just our MVP and we've got a long way to go from here.
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tnorthcutt
I suggest aggregating multiple identical listings into one line item. I
decided to just sort all cards by % discount to see if there were any cards
I'd actually use that were heavily discounted. After 3 pages of $25 Fandango
cards, I gave up and left.

Edit: I decided to go back to see how bad it is. Pages 2-27 are Fandango
cards. From my cursory scan, it looks like those 26 pages only list two
different card values. I really, really think you should consolidate those
listings.

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lachyg
Argh! Yeah. This is the #1 most requested thing, we're working on it, trust me
:-)

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frankdenbow
Clickable: <http://cardnap.com/>

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lachyg
Thanks :-)

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lachyg
Woo! So launch is going well! Just got on LifeHacker:
[http://lifehacker.com/#!5791193/cardnap-is-an-ebay-for-
gift-...](http://lifehacker.com/#!5791193/cardnap-is-an-ebay-for-gift-card-
balances) and Twitter is going crazy! <http://twitter.com/#!/search/cardnap>

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ptbello
Nice! Here's my 10 seconds experience: in the search results page I got the
sentence "Showing 125 cards worth between $10 and $200 discounted from 0% to
50% for ITunes." But the actual results have discounts between 8 and 10. In
fact I clicked on "from 0% to 50%" and tried the range 45-50 but got no
results; incidentally this distracted me from realising I could have clicked
the column header and sorted in the first place. Perhaps the the sortable
headers functionality should be more prominent by design. Great idea anyway!

~~~
lachyg
Ah, we'll make that more clear in the design / text. Cheers

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paraschopra
Love the design. Lachy, you always come up with beautiful designs. Loved
<http://paggstack.com> too!

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lachyg
Thanks Paras, I really view design as a very important part of a startup or
new site. Gotta focus on making things as easy to use as possible, can be a
great competitive advantage :-)

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Schultzy
I agree. It's clean, simple, organized and I know exactly what the site is
about in about 2 seconds. Great job.

I'm learning the ropes of design myself for an upcoming project and I'm
curious about why you used the multicolor strip at the very top of the page.
I've noticed this feature as a mini-trend in Web design and I'd love to know
if there is an intentional thought behind it, besides "it looks pretty."

Is it supposed to liven up an otherwise somewhat dull page?

It seems like a lot of people advise sticking to no more than 3 or 4 colors,
so I'm really intrigued by the breaking of that convention in this case.

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JonLim
Everyone has already addressed the duplicate card issue, so the only beef I
actually have is not being able to hit the arrow keys to select the stores
that turn up in a search.

For example, I type "Amazon" and I see "Amazon.com" in the drop down, so I tap
the down arrow to select it but I can't seem to.

Other than that, love the site and its design. Good luck!

~~~
lachyg
Thanks for the compliments on the design. We'll fix those two issues.

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frankdenbow
Love the design and the idea (the company I work for could have used this, as
they just bought a ton of giftcards). It seems like there are many similar
results for the same seller, which I didnt fully understand (seeing as they
link to the same thing: <http://cl.ly/1s3P1I3T2v3c0I3N1Z28>). Will come back
to this site when I need to buy come giftcards again!

~~~
joshkdavies
Thanks Frank, much appreciated feedback too. I'm Lachy's co-founder (and
designer) on this one, very excited to have it up and running.

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mrgreenfur
I typed in amazon and pressed submit and got a 404.I think I pressed 'submit'
before the ajax could return a reply (I'm on a slow cellular connection). I
clicked the 'buy' button on the homepage and it couldn't find the host for
"<http://www.anrdoezrs.net>, which I guess is a referral program?

Cool idea though. Work out some of these kinks and add vendors!

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eykanal
I love the idea. A few small comments:

\- On the front page, the little arrow-in-a-circle image rotates on mouseover,
and rotates back on mouseout. This occurs whether or not the display is down.
I think it makes more sense only to rotate when the item is actually expanded
(if you want to indicate it's clickable, maybe you could use the color change
thing for that purpose).

\- After doing a search for amazon, it found nothing, but... (\ _) there was
still a horizontal list of letters A-Z, and I have no idea what that's
supposed to do, (\_ ) the most prominent link on the page is the "back to
top", even though I'm at the top already, and (\\*) there's no obvious way to
re-search other than to click on the search bar at the top. I would think
that, if nothing was found, you should have a "search again" box with the
cursor already in it.

I absolutely love the sliders for the amount of discount. Very nice.

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lachyg
Thanks, we'll fix those.

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jk215
Pretty cool idea. Nice design! I may be nitpicking but on the about us page
you have "Shopping's fun, but it could be funner.."

Technically "funner" isnt a word. But since the branding of your product seems
to play towards younger people you can probably get away with it.

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lachyg
Yeah, my co-founder and I had a bit of a debate about this and I won, hah. We
let it go because it sort of fit our audience.

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pedalpete
Awesome idea, great looking site, great usability.

The first thing i wanted to do was get a list of cards sorted by highest
discount. It's almost like showing me where I can save the most.

I'm not sure how you're deciding on the original set on your homepage, seems
quite random. If you showed me the highest savings, it promotes your site as a
great way to get deals.

Now, it seems more like a place to get gift-cards with 'some' savings, often
less than 10%.

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bostonOU
Looks good. Couple of issues:

When I search for Best Buy cards and sort by Discount (descending), the top
result says a card value of $25 with a price of $24 is an 8% discount. It
should be a %4 discount.

When I click the buy button for that Best Buy card (the seller is Cardpool),
there isn't an option to buy the $25 gift card. Only $50 and $100 options are
available.

Site looks good overall. Nice work.

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JakeGonzales
Looks amazing!

On the Rock Melt browser the search function on #filter-store disappears if I
hover in the input field. Just a heads up. :)

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mixmastamyk
Nice design, although the text seems to spill out of the buy/sell/about boxes.
May have to do with my system using large fonts, but I'd expect the divs to
stretch anyway.

Is there any guarantee for the buyer that the cards will be valid and not used
already? I wouldn't want to deal with multiple entities if a bum card came
through.

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lachyg
Each of the sites we support provide guarantees, yeah.

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decadentcactus
Less important of an issue, but about the main image with the text "Cardnap
finds the cheapest gift cards for your favourite stores".

I'm probably being pedantic, but the text slightly clashes with the
background... I thought a 3-4px white stroke would make it clearer.

Otherwise, the design is great

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bobbywilson0
One thing I noticed immediately is the duplication of cards. I wanted to sort
by the biggest percent discount and basically the whole first page is the same
1-800-flowers.com cards.

The execution is very tight from what time I spent with it.

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lachyg
Thanks -- someone else noted this. we'll fix it asap.

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AjithAntony
Prepaid mobile phone refill cards might be a good addition too. Not sure if
there are existing sites to scrape for those like the gift cards. I usually go
to ebay and expect to get 10-15% off refill cards.

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relix
If I press "submit" without typing anything, I get a big fat nice 404. Might
want to change that, maybe have it automatically search for iTunes, as is
described in the example?

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lachyg
Woooooooops! Will fix that.

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premchai21
This also happens with "submit" after any entry whatsoever if there's no
JavaScript around. Basic search forms should ideally not require such things.

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lachyg
We'll fix that as well as keyboard shortcuts on the autosuggest. cheers

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prpon
Am I understanding 'Balance Checker' functionality right? Currently, it shows
me the same results as finding discounted gift cards.

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jeffepp
Well done Lachy! Good start, and a great MVP. Looking forward to watching it
develop..

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samgranger
I remember you showing this to me last year I believe when it was still being
designed, nice to see it live!

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raarky
cool idea. What did you build it in?

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lachyg
Kohana / PHP

