

Show HN: Agora – A Chrome Extension To Enhance Your Online Shopping - finkin1
http://agora.sh

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mcintyre1994
This looks awesome, great job! Really nice UI, much nicer than anything these
websites make themselves.

I definitely agree that you should consider A/B testing a landing page +
example page tailored to women.

I'd definitely consider a mobile strategy really fast. [Removed this section,
plan to check out your app soon]

The tutorial wasn't completely clear for me. It might help if your example
store shown the inspect button at all times instead of only on mouse over for
example. I think the tutorial skipped step 2 for me and there's no way of
going back. I'd have preferred no sound by default but that's not a big deal.
Also when you do support more stores I'd definitely use that in the tutorial.

The extension is broken for me, can I email somebody? Nothing happens when I
visit a page (Amazon) (not sure if it should, it'd be nice if dragging opened
the belt), clicking extension at the top of Chrome shows the belt. Dragging
something there just causes an error.

Decisions could be more useful - some combination of their inspect pages would
be really neat. Speaking of which, can I view an inspect page for an item in
the belt? If not that'd be really helpful. (Just spotted it, the image that
pops up when you hover over an item in the belt has the inspect button (again
on mouseover), I'll leave this comment as feedback on discoverability there)

I'm thinking about when this would have been most useful recently, and I guess
it might be helpful to let you know. I used Airbnb to rent a place for a few
days, and was constantly just bookmarking listings. I'd definitely like to use
something like this for that. Similarly I hired a villa from a different
website (OwnersDirect, part of HomeAway) and used Springpad's visual notebooks
to track a few places there. Again this is much better (and Springpad's
closing..) I think the real strength is overcoming choice paralysis when I
really have to make 1 choice. It'd be neat if you considered adding sites like
Airbnb, I noticed they're not on your supported sites as WIP or otherwise.

Expanding on that above use case, the perfect scenario would be that your
service gives me a really useful decision overview that is shareable (with eg
other holidayers), including the info your inspect has + my comment when I
added it.

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themichaelcook
Designer weighing in...

Thanks! We're honestly really unsure of the best way to approach the marketing
of this service. That's part of what we're doing right now is for.

Mobile is an inevitability, but focusing on nonmobile has been a more
comfortable starting place for us to explore ideas. We're also working off the
at least partially education assumption that a lot of the more thoughtful,
comparative shopping still happens on desktops. That likeliness is likely
decreasing every day though.

Accidentally skipping step two definitely decreases the smoothness of the
tutorial. We'll need to get around to making it less skippable. Our quickest
fix was to add a button that need to be clicked and have it away from the
product so that people's cursors would not interact with the product
prematurely. Development priorities are the only thing keeping us from
implementing a more thorough fix. But if more people report that issue, we'll
likely bump it up. So thanks for mentioning that detail.

We plan to have continued (non narrated) tutorial messages that will explain
individual features at opportune moments. This continued tutorial would
illuminate things like accessing the inspect button from the belt, or hovering
over a decision to access it's associated workspace.

YES! Planes, trains and automobiles (and real estate) are all excited
prospects for Agora. We just started with commerce cause it seemed like a more
financially lucrative focus and affiliate commission systems are already in
place for us to monetize from immediately.

Thanks again for your thoughts and feedback.

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anigbrowl
Good concept, some nice UI ideas, bad presentation.

Animation is too herky-jerky and gets in the way of understanding. Not enough
supplementary text for the animations. Does it only work on Amazon? It looks
that way but I can't tell. It's OK if that's all it does right now and you
expect to expand later, but you should address this up front.

Also, looking at the example belt, you are firmly pitching this at guys (men's
clothes, stereotypically male interest items like construction tools). I have
heard that women are also quite interested in shopping.

I do like the basic concept, a lot. I'm all in favor of things that let the
user optimize/customize things instead of being stuck with the website
publishers frequently-awful UI. I found this _immediately_ more visually
attractive and intuitive than amazon's own offering.

Also, I hate to say it, but you should consider filing a patent on 'the belt',
or else expect to see that idea copied left and right.

~~~
anigbrowl
(After installing)

OK, you aim to work with a whole lot of sites. You should sell that, even
though it's a 'work in progress'.

No privacy statement/policy. This deterred me somewhat from crating an
account, especially since the extension already required pretty generous
permissions. Again, you could use an extra stage on the landing page to tell
me how up front that stuff works - IMHO it's worth the extra time in these
days of mass retail data breaches. If I know you're going to ask to account
link via G+, FB, or Twitter then it doesn't come as a surprise. Surprises are
bad where PID is concerned.

Good manual. You should have had that accessible from the landing page, don't
hide the menu under the logo. I do love the UI.

~~~
anigbrowl
Possible Bug:

After installing (but before signing up), I sent a comment from the Agora
page. This came back to a blank page. Now clicking on the Agora button does
nothing, right clicking on it and selecting 'Agora' takes me back to the
Chrome web store.

Version 35.0.1916.114 m. The belt works fine after I created an account, but I
have to navigate back to Agora.sh by hand, and can't find a way to access the
tutorial again.

Feel free to email, you have my address in your comment inbox. I like this
product and want to help you improve it.

~~~
finkin1
Looking into this. Thank you for reporting it!

You can access the tutorial here:
[http://agora.sh/tutorial/](http://agora.sh/tutorial/)

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allendoerfer
I am wondering if the market is big enough for a service like this. With
Google killing price comparison sites and increasing market barriers for
smaller online shops, it seems like the big players are owning their niche and
are the only way for their customers to get the items they sell.

On the other hand: These are arguments, why it would be a good idea to focus
on tooling and CTV instead of reach through SEO. Interesting to see how it
works out, best wishes!

~~~
finkin1
I believe the market for this type of tool is massive. Google/Amazon, etc.
want people to shop using their own site and it's hard to change people's
loyalties when it comes to online shopping. By offering an extension that
enhances the experience a user has while shopping on the sites they are
already loyal to we believe we can reach more people.

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razvanr
Looks promising, congrats. Do you only support Amazon at this point?

You might want to look into Two Tap, we'd be happy to get in touch. twotap.com

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finkin1
Thanks! You can check out our list of supported sites here:
[http://agora.sh/supportedSites.html](http://agora.sh/supportedSites.html). We
plan to add a lot more in the next month.

twotap looks awesome! How have I never heard of it? Please shoot me an email
so we can chat. Contact info is in my profile.

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crazychrome
Great product! i think the biggest question is how serious Google takes Chrome
extensions. As google increasingly downplays the role of chrome extension but
shifts focus onto apps (and possibly native app), I don't think it could
sustain as a reliable distribution channel for business.

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themichaelcook
Hmm. They recently made a philosophical shift towards single function
extensions, but I haven't encountered any indication that they are moving away
from or downplaying extensions as a whole. If you wouldn't mind sharing info
on this, that would be super great. Mobile apps, and even a packaged app are
in Agora's future. This stage of a browser extension targeting technical users
is primarily serving the function of building a savvy userbase that we intend
to empower and co-create value with for the benefit of a larger audience.
We're attempting to lay a foundation.

~~~
crazychrome
Sorry for the late reply. I made couple of chrome extensions and apps last
year to test the effectiveness of Chrome Web Store as a distribution channel.
Now two left: PayableForm (app), and News Tracker(extension). Both were build
during weekend, and both were little marketed.

The result is disappointing (for extensions). The installation ratio of chrome
extension is never more than 0.2%, while chrome app is constantly above 0.5%.

Google did downplay extensions. Around Nov last year, Google put Apps above
the extensions in the search result list. Google also default to expand
categories under "Apps", resulting extensions down to the 2nd to last of the
list in the left side bar, just above themes.

On the packaged app front, maybe you can use good-old-drag-n-drop.

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finkin1
We have a 1-minute launch video, too. Check it out
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjeTnfD70jM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjeTnfD70jM)

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LazerBear
Looks great. Does the name come from Hebrew? It means small coins, like
pennies.

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themichaelcook
An agora was a public space in ancient greek cities where commerce and forum
took place.

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tashaw
Looks very promising!

