

YCRFS 2: New Paths Through Product Space - pg
http://ycombinator.com/rfs2.html

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andreyf
Shopping is broken, by Scott Adams:

Let's say you have a problem or a need or a want, and you're sure there is
product somewhere in the marketplace that would help. You Google, and a
handful of web sites pop up that offer promising solutions. But obviously you
don't believe anything you read from vendors, so you check for online reviews.
Then you wonder if the favorable reviews are planted by the vendor, and the
bad reviews are planted by his competitors. Can you trust reviews from
anonymous strangers?

You ask your coworkers and friends if they have ever used the product that
you're interested in, and no one has. What now?

Shopping is broken.

How much more stimulated would the economy be if the people who have money,
and are willing to spend it, could be reliably connected with the products
that they desire?

What the world really needs is some way to connect you with the people who
already use the sorts of products you want, and are willing to answer an
e-mail or two about the topic.

About a year ago I had surgery to fix my voice. The information on the
Internet about that particular surgery was outdated and didn't address my
questions. The only way I could become a consumer of that surgery was by
communicating directly with people who already had it, which I did. And since
then I have answered questions for dozens of people who have the same
questions that I had.

Likewise, as my wife and I make a zillion decisions for the home we are
building, we prefer products and solutions used by people that we have spoken
to personally. The Internet is virtually useless for any of the hundreds of
product decisions we have made so far.

And what about choosing a destination for a vacation? You're much more
comfortable if you have spoken to someone who visited the same place.

The obvious problem with connecting past consumers with potential consumers is
that while people are generally helpful by nature, no one wants a million
e-mails asking how they like their new can opener. So how do you strike the
right balance?

Imagine a system that works like this: When you buy a product, you agree in
advance to answer up to four e-mails from future potential customers,
beginning no sooner than one year from when you make your purchase. It's
totally optional, but agreeing gives you access to people who already bought
the product you're considering today, to help you make your own decision. It
would strike you as a fair deal.

For privacy reasons, this imagined system would disguise your e-mail address.
And the system would have to be administered by some third party, not the
vendor selling the product, or you wouldn't trust the strangers giving you
advice.

Maybe you have a better idea for fixing shopping."

From: <http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/shopping_is_broken/>

~~~
jsankey
Interesting, but I still don't see how the fundamental trust issue is covered
by the proposed solution. The system may reduce the chance that a reviewer is
a shill, but it in no way establishes their credentials. All you know is that
they purchased the product - and frankly this already suggests a level of
bias.

People will continue to value the advice of those they know much more highly.
The challenge is to establish a comparable level of trustworthiness in online
reviews.

~~~
GavinB
You have to build a trustworthy, independent brand.

To be honest, really freakin' good graphic design goes a long way.

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GavinB
What would be best paths through product space?

My first thought was “doesn’t Amazon already organize things independent of
vendor?” But what we’re really looking for here is a recommendation engine,
and Amazon really isn’t very good at that. As I see it there are three main
steps which should be done in order. The more you know about ahead of time,
the further you can skip ahead. Here are the steps:

Step 1. I don’t know what I’m looking for.

Maybe I’m looking for a good science fiction book. Or a gift for a 14-year-old
niece. A deep gift recommendation engine alone could probably make a good
startup. The engine should ask some probing questions and give
recommendations—either specific products or product categories, depending on
the type of question. This experience mimic the experience of having an
experienced salesperson ask questions and point you towards good options. A
beautiful browsing option would be a great way to conclude this step.

Step 2. I know what I want, but I haven’t decided which brand or model to get.

Here we need a deep comparison. The ability to rank priorities would be really
helpful. Let’s say I’m buying a laptop. The site should ask me how much I care
about weight, screen size, processing power, etc. It can then recommend models
that fit within my budget. There’s a huge amount of domain-specific knowledge
required to get this right for a variety of products.

Step 3. I know what product I want.

Here we need to give comparisons among vendors. Price, shipping speed, return
policies, and other general customer feedback are important. This is where it
helps to be a trusted third party.

This problem is a huge undertaking, which is why no one has come close to
solving it yet. Frankly, unless the domain is very restricted, I don’t think a
three person team will be able to do enough specific programming and testing
to make it work.

The principles and mechanics would best be discovered in a very narrow
marketplace, and one full of confusion. Electronics would be the natural
stating place, but a less crowded market might also work.

~~~
OmarIsmail
The problem with steps 2 and 3 is that most of the time people aren't really
sure they know what they want. They may have narrowed things down to a
category, such as laptops as you mentioned, but even then you'd be hard
pressed to find someone that absolutely KNOWS they want a laptop. Maybe a
netbook + desktop would be a better combo? Or an iMac-style nettop.
Furthermore, at any given time people are usually in the market for more than
one thing, all at various stages of the buying cycle.

So now if we can simplify and treat all cases as "I don't know what I'm
looking for" then follow-up to that is "I'm looking".

In that case the experience can be optimized around the looking and searching.
I think the key concept in searching is, unsurprisingly, speed. Let me look at
a lot of products quickly, let me research an individual product quickly, jump
back out quickly, jump between categories, jump between different lists,
sorts, filters, etc.

And I think pg is missing something, as the path doesn't end when a product
purchase is made. You have all the nitty gritty of the actual transaction +
shipping, but then you have post-purchase life as well. Most stores have you
buy the product and then have you go somewhere else for support. Sure you can
review the product on the store, but what if you want to hack it? or you have
a problem? or you want to upgrade? etc etc. Is it up to the manufacturer at
that point? What if you can't find the manufacturer's support resources?

We're doing some interesting things here at ProductWiki, but our goal is to
create a great base of content and data. I imagine that one day a company will
take the open data to create a really nice and innovative shopping experience.

~~~
GavinB
You're totally right. Guiding people in the choice between even just the
various computing options is a major task. This is just a big, big nut to try
to crack..

To anyone attempting it, I'd suggest again starting in a very tightly focused
domain. My pick would be cameras -- the classic
"whattheheckdoIwanttobuyIhavenoideawhatthesenumbersmean" product.

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davidu
_"Online stores group products by who sells them."_

Do you really find this to be true?

1) Go to <http://www.newegg.com> \-- while brand/vendor is one selection
criteria, so are many of the technical specs and options. They even offer
advanced and power search.

2) Amazon is no different: While Brands are promoted (because consumers are
trained to that) they offer power on the left side here (below brand):
[http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Cameras-
Photo/b/ref=sv_p_4?ie=...](http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Cameras-
Photo/b/ref=sv_p_4?ie=UTF8&node=330405011)

While I don't think that the statement in the RFS is accurate, there is no
doubt in my mind that the online product finding experience has dramatic room
for improvement and innovation.

~~~
wmf
I think PG's point is that NewEgg only lists products sold by NewEgg. Amazon
is a little different since they have affiliated retailers, but they still
don't have _everything_.

~~~
davidu
Having everything is not what I want.

I go to Fry's for fun things, Banana Republic for work clothes and Neiman
Marcus for gifts for the girls who care about those sorts of gifts.

No website will ever give me all three in a sane format; nor do I care for it
to do that. Nor does my mother.

------
tc
_Online stores group products by who sells them._

One of the challenges of abstracting this layer is that _who_ sells the
product still adds or subtracts value from the purchasing experience because
of those mundane details (shipping speed, reliability, returns, etc.).

There are various ways of dealing with this. Amazon [1] is already active in
this space using what you might call the "user review" model combined with
enforcing some exacting standards on their vendors. Already having a huge
channel of course made it easier for Amazon to get vendors to accept this.

[1] Incidentally, I've never thought that Amazon did a great job with sorting
products within its general categories, so I always search instead. But I do
wonder, how many more people would window-shop at Amazon if their sorted
product catalog was more interesting?

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marcell
This sounds interesting. On a very high level, a good solution to this would
feel like window-shopping in a huge mall. Amazon.com is great if you know what
you're looking for, (as GavinB said), but it's doesn't work for discovery. I
can't meander through Amazon.com to check out products and I wouldn't go there
for fun. Compare that to your local mall, where people go to just hang out.

Shopping is often a pass time and a social experience, not a mission, yet most
sites are optimized for the last "stage" of shopping--the stage where you
actually make a purchase, or the penultimate stage--the one where you compare
a few specific products. The last stages are the most profitable and easiest
to implement, so that's why they came about first. But if you can grab a
consumer at an earlier stage, when they're brainstorming bridal shower ideas,
or when they're bored at work and checking out new cell phones, and if you
optimize for discovery as well as sales, they'll come back and buy from you.

The challenges/pitfalls/competitors are numerous, obvious, and non-obvious.
Good luck to the team that attempts this!

------
csbartus
Community Driven Web Shopping

Internet tends to be an open system where consumers are in the same way
important as the product makers and sellers. Success is measured by community
support and it is assured by complete transparency, trust.

Marketing your online products also cannot be done well without a strong
community. A future webshop must be completely user and community driven, your
duty as a webshop owner is to build trust and make your existing customers to
connect to your next customers.

A Classic Store vs. Auction Based Stores

Following years will be about a 180 grades shift in e-commerce. Now you are
presenting products to customers as a classic store, later customers will ask
you for products and services.

Yabe.hu -- Race. For you -- is a new approach to shopping. As a customer you
log in and tell your desires then vendors are racing to offer you the best
solution. This is the only way to assure yourself you'll get the best deal.

You don't have to choose, listen to commercials, browse social shopping sites
and do research to find what you want; just spit out a desire and let the
others do the job for you.

Until this approach to shopping hits mainstream you'll have to do the classic
way. Look for a shop who makes you feel comfortable, do the shopping, show
your items bought and generate trust for other users and would-be-customers.
Wait for your cut offered by the webshop as an affiliate program.

A Classic Webshop In Modern Clothes

    
    
       1. Browse to your favorite online (gadget) store.
       2. You are sure the frontpage is already taylored to your shopping needs (via an Automated Recommendation Engine)
       3. Select your products to be bought and check for the best price gathered from other (gadget) stores.
       4. Make shopping and later add comments, recommendations, how-to's, FAQs to your products bought.
       5. Other users will see your value added to existing products and when buying you'll get a fair cut from every sales.
       6. Too boost your revenues use widgets with your products bought on your blog or favorite social network, do the marketing and sales for the webshop you like and which pays back your efforts.

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strlen
There's also the question of "how do you arrange the products in order to
maximize profit". There's also a great deal of machine/learning data mining
that could be involved in this: e.g. market/basket analysis ("people who
bought product X, also bought product Y"). Safeway does this, Amazon does
this.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinity_analysis>

That would make this an ideal project for people with machine learning/data
mining experience, particularly from a retail/e-commerce background (Amazon,
eBay, Wallmart.com or even a brick and mortar store chain such as Safeway).

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volodia
It seems to me that a great interface for presenting products would almost
necessarily have to be individually designed for each store. I don't see how
you could use the same kind of interface to present, say, books and perfume.

Also, I have a hard time imagining how big stores could choose to use a
presentation system similar to that of other stores. Unless I misunderstood
the original idea, it seems that selling presentation software is not the
right way to address that problem.

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sheriff
So, basically FriendFeed for the consumer-facing part of online retail?

Having a good understanding of co-op advertising could matter a great deal
here. Retailers get paid by manufacturers for product placements... Someone
going after this model could try to reach similar deals with both the
manufacturers and the retail-fulfillment entities.

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davepeck
Etsy is a fanciful/artistic version of this RFS.

<http://www.etsy.com/>

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p01nd3xt3r
Why does it have to be a storefront? I think it would be better if it were an
advertising solution.

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diN0bot
sounds like guided navigation, faceted search and relational database stuff.

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edw519
_...the companies that were best at mundane things like answering questions,
taking orders, packing and shipping them, and taking returns..._

The companies that are best at these things are best precisely because they
don't consider them to be "mundane".

In customer service and fulfillment, it's a fine line between being excellent
and being out of business. These can be very difficult things to do, and the
thinner your margins, the better you have to be.

And very few companies handle customer returns well. They keep getting better
and better until they realize the best way to handle customer returns is to
avoid them in the first place.

