

Feedback on our startup: a personal shopping service - ken
http://clayvalet.com

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Tichy
I hate this modern trend to trick users to sign up: on the first page, pretend
all will be easy and peachy, no sign-up necessary. As soon as you enter
anything, the evil "sign up first before you can see anything at all" pops up.

What I am saying: I saw a "sign up" form. Not very impressive, seen those
about a zillion times before.

Edit: not saying you can't require users to sign up eventually, but please
show me SOMETHING about what benefits to expect before I sign up.

~~~
seregine
We only require you to sign up when you're submitting a personal shopping
request (i.e., engaging people to do work on your behalf). Looking at other
people's requests and reports is entirely free to unregistered users.

Thanks for expressing your frustration: we need to design that part of the
user experience better. Our conversion goal is getting people to sign up and
submit a request. We don't want people to abandon the page because they feel
tricked into signing up.

~~~
Tichy
I also tried recommending something to a user in the box to the right, and
also ended up seeing a sign-up form.

The first thing I tried was to enter something into the "shopping request"
form, but I don't know yet what it is supposed to do. So I don't know that it
will make people work for me, and hence I don't appreciate the sign-up form.
If you require the sign-up before I can do anything meaningful, please show me
what to expect in some other way (like a movie).

If I am not allowed to do something, don't show me the option to do it-
please!

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dangoldin
I like the site - at first I was a little put off because I thought I needed
to register to see anything but then realized I can still see other people's
requests/answers.

The colors seem a little dull to me in this "Web 2.0" world - I think if you
make the design look more lively it 'll increase the appeal of the site.

Also, are you you are allowed to use the images you are using? I have no idea
what the Amazon TOS are.

~~~
seregine
Thanks, glad you like it. Dull colors, and you're not the first to say that.
Hmmm.

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alex_c
One small nitpick, but it always bugs me: don't rely on browser resizing for
images! Especially for really small thumbnails. This is what I see in Firefox:

<http://www.clutterme.com/users/alex/thumbs_unresized.png>

This is what I could see if the images were resized before being sent to my
browser:

<http://www.clutterme.com/users/alex/thumbs_resized.png>

(I resized the middle two thumbnails from the original images)

~~~
seregine
Yeah, that's clearly subpar. We'll have to do something about it soon, but
it's not quite our top priority yet (report quality and site navigation are).

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jsjenkins168
Do you manually make recommendations for each request or is there some sort of
natural language parsing algorithm that you've built? If the latter, then
really cool this has potential..

~~~
dbreunig
How is it scalable? Also: do you not plan on using ad revenue? As a consumer
reports-ish site it seems like ad-fare might damage your cred (read: your
entire product).

~~~
seregine
We show ads to users who aren't signed in. We're experimenting with
affiliates, but we're careful to put in affiliate tags after recommendations
are generated.

If ads and affiliates become a serious concern for our users, we'll ditch
them.

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dbreunig
I think it's neat, but it seems like something that would exists as a B2B
licensed product, rather than a consumer-facing tool.

~~~
seregine
If you know businesses interested in licensing a version of ClayValet, please
send them my way.

~~~
dbreunig
I'd just start setting up meetings with major online retailers. Especially
ones with offline components.

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Dylanfm
When I view this request, for a monitor, you are recommending a laptop:
[http://clayvalet.com/r/an-lcd-monitor-with-dimensions-of-
at-...](http://clayvalet.com/r/an-lcd-monitor-with-dimensions-of-at-
least-22/f5e44b40-d6bc-012a-7b37-123136003df3)

~~~
seregine
True. The older a report, the more likely we are to have 'misfire'
recommendations. We still have some, but they're getting much less frequent.

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OpenWebU
I like the idea, too -- neat!

Perhaps include a field where an inquirer puts a price range of what they are
willing to spend (including tax and shipping) would be helpful for you to
select something a gift that the person inquiring can afford.

~~~
seregine
Thanks for the suggestion. You know, we've gone back and forth on offering a
variety of more structured forms. In this case, it probably does make sense.

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sohail
I like the idea. More details about how you make money would make for better
feedback.

~~~
seregine
We plan to charge for a premium version of this service (underway).

~~~
sohail
Did you consider using affiliate links as well?

~~~
seregine
We're showing some affiliate links (when the recommended merchant happens to
be an affiliate), but we're concerned about possible misperceptions of bias.

~~~
sohail
Good point. Post on your progress, I'm interested :-)

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nazgulnarsil
if you did language parsing you'd be in for a big buyout from someone like
amazon.

~~~
seregine
If I had a working AI, I'd be sitting pretty.

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rokhayakebe
Very good idea. I would touch up the design using better colors and that's
about it. Huge potential.

~~~
seregine
Thanks! Now all we've got to do is execute.

