

Rate My Startup - Dawdle.com Is A "Moronically Easy" Online Marketplace For Gamers - sachinag
http://www.dawdle.com

======
trickjarrett
Excellent stuff! I'll be pointing my friends to this site from here on out.

My few notes:

1) I concur with the others, excellent design that is clean and intuitive to
navigate.

2) Your seller rating stars in the left column on pages have a grey BG and for
cleanliness these need to be on white. I understand you used the same pics
from the standard ratings section which is on grey

3) There're two glitches with the top search bar where on some pages it is too
long and overlaps the search button (FF3 on Mac). Also on FF3 on Mac if
someone activates the thickbox, the grey overlay is under the search bar so it
remains white and thus looks odd.

4) Kudos for not diving in head first to the gaming sphere. Most people would
add forums and news sources and such and when you're starting out all that
does is clutter the site and require more work on your part.

Overall I think it's a sound concept, and the site is very well done. The
question becomes how the money is made? Is it per transaction? Ads?

~~~
sachinag
We process all the payments and take a 11.99% commission for our services.
That's less than eBay's 15% plus 5 cents listings for 30 day fixed price and
less than Amazon's 15% plus $0.99 for Marketplace listings.

------
huhtenberg
You had me at "moronically something for gamers" :)

As others said - a viable idea and it is already very well executed. One major
functional issue I see is this:

# Having games _and_ systems _and_ accessories all mixed up is confusing. I
would divorce these into separate parts of the website. At the very least I
would ensure that games and systems/accessories won't show up on any list
(i.e. For Sale) together, at least by default.

Few comments on the appearance and visual design:

# Logo needs to be redone. Right now it's completely unmemorable and bland
looking. In fact replacing it with just a word "Dawdle" would improve the
appearance of the page. Tag line needs to be removed from the logo too. I'd
aim at something simple and similar to GameTap and Valve's Steam logos.

# Front page feels "busy". The "For Gamers, By Gamers" insert is a high-
contrast item with too much text. It's largely useless, no one is going to
read it. I'd go with a more saturated background color and remove the text.

# Font in the top menu looks funny. One pixel size too small.

# Putting "TM" after a StandingOffer is cheesy.

# Looking at this page - [http://www.dawdle.com/product.php/resident-evil-
outbreak-pla...](http://www.dawdle.com/product.php/resident-evil-outbreak-
playstation-2-013388260270-dd6bb) \- Seller rating in the top-left corner says
"3 stars", the rating at the bottom of the page - "4.5 stars". And I am not
clear who this seller is to begin with.

# Shaded buttons on the same page are nice. But they are inconsistent with the
top menu - I'd style the menu the same way the buttons are.

Lastly, a feature suggestion if I may (I haven't registered an account, so
perhaps you already have it). Consider the fact that most gamers are
kids/teens and have very little money of their own. It would make sense to
allow their parents to fill their dawdle accounts with "buying credits". This
is not easy to implement by any means, but it may prove to be a great way to
facilitate buying part of the business.

Again, great idea and implementation. Good luck !

~~~
sachinag
Thanks - we have to use the TM because we intend on protecting the mark. It's
a key technical differentiation that we offer that Amazon and eBay don't.

Stupid lawyers.

------
gwsaines
Very mature product, I was impressed. Some of the things I noticed:

1) This many sound stupid, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what
the logo was (is it a button?). That's probably just me though.

2) I agree with zhyder that it would be best if you don't show games that have
no sellers. The whole offering a price to a seller was a little weird for me.

3) You have an impressive amount of games on the site, and the homepage banner
(the guy holding the wiimotes) is very good. Anyone just dropping by gets the
feeling that the site is very active, and that's great.

4) How does the 100% guarantee affect the company's bottom line? As a
potential buyer I think "Great!" but as an entrepreneur I think "uh oh." How
does that work out?

Again, excellent site. My brother's a huge gamer, and I'll tell him to check
it out the next time he's looking to buy the next title.

~~~
sachinag
The logo's a stylized variation on the button from the NES controller.

------
ardit33
Great design, but Fonts look awful in windows. The text is unreadable. You are
probably using a Mac, but I should remind you that most gamers use PCs. So you
should make sure the site looks good in Windows.

~~~
sachinag
Yeah - I don't know why we had so much trouble with Windows fonts. We'll
definitely be cleaning it up. Thanks for forgiving us this transgression. :)

~~~
mattmaroon
The white text on the main image is a little rough to read, especially the
last word "gaming". Also, the blue to the left of it being so bright makes the
white text there a little hard to read as well. I'm on my laptop which isn't
properly adjusted, so it might look better elsewhere, but I'd be willing to be
most users aren't properly adjusted either.

------
turtle_2
Just a couple things I'd note.

1) I swear I clicked a couple times on less than $10, and was shown less than
$25. Bug maybe?

2) If there are no items that match a filter, the filter shouldn't show up. If
you have items in the $15-$50, and I click on Less than $10, I'm just going to
be annoyed.

3) Unless I am missing something, there is no way to sort search results. I
would potentially like to be able to sort based on release date (how much are
new games?) and price (what's the coolest game I can afford?) and popularity
(what's selling best right now, a great deal?)

4) Are you just adding the shipping cost into the seller's cost and then
saying the shipping is free? The prices just seem a little weird. I guess
seeing the total price is kind of cool.

5) <http://www.dawdle.com/help/index.php/buy/> \- Your buttons aren't right,
and you don't use your Standing Offer terminology.

6) <http://www.dawdle.com/help/index.php/sell-problems/> \- I don't understand
the refund policy. So someone is going to buy my game on the website via CC,
and then if we work out an arrangement, I'm going to reimburse them via check
off-site? I understand you are trying to limit refund charges, but this seems
like one of the weakest portions of the selling process, imho.

7) <http://www.dawdle.com/help/index.php/sell-problems/> \- I completely don't
understand the answer to the question about the damaged item. Am I missing
something?

All around, this is looking pretty nice. At first I was a bit skeptical,
thinking that this doesn't offer much more than Amazon Marketplace and/or
Ebay, with much smaller audiences. However reading the responses here shows
that the lower fees and simplicity of the process is a win for the seller, if
not necessarily the buyer. You should really stress these advantages to first
time and/or potential sellers to get them interested.

Any chance you will let users offer compound Standing Offers? For instance,
I'll buy 10 copies of this item at a certain condition for X. Or I'd pay $Y
(total) for games a, b, and c.

Keep up the good work. Will bookmark you.

~~~
turtle_2
Also a vote for finding a slogan without the word moronically in it.

------
zhyder
Design looks great in general. I clicked on Xbox360. Suggestions:

1\. Don't show an item in the results if there are no sellers. Or at least say
"None available" on the results page.

2\. For items that have multiple sellers, indicate the price range (rather
than just the lowest price) as well as # of sellers. Similar to how the
Amazon.com marketplace does it.

General Q: how will you compete against entrenched players like Amazon.com and
Half.com? There's a couple of benefits on your about page (shipping included
in price, ability to filter by seller rating + price), but just those probably
won't be enough.

~~~
sachinag
We have access to inventory that no one else does through our partnerships
with in-store point of sale partners. Dawdle is the first marketplace, in any
vertical, to let retailers list their items online with one click from
_within_ their existing POS systems.

Also, our ability to let buyers create StandingOffers - "I know what I want
and what I'm willing to pay" - is the first time any marketplace, in any
vertical, has allowed buyers to initiate transactions. We're really proud of
this technology - there's no back and forth. If a listing comes in that
matches your criteria, you buy it automagically.

------
khangtoh
Very well designed. Clean and easy to navigate. Who's your designer?

~~~
jamesbritt
It doesn't render well on Firefox 2 on Kubuntu (FWIW). The white text in the
header is offset and is hard to read. And there is a big gap between that top
image and buttons below it.

~~~
jamesbritt
Curious why this got modded down; is this not useful info for people wanting
to know how their site looks on a variety of platforms?

~~~
sachinag
I modded it up - we're the ones who have to fix it. :)

------
sutro
This site appeals to me because I am both a gamer and a moron.

~~~
yan
:) exactly what I thought. Putting "moronically easy" is a bit off-putting.

~~~
LPTS
remember, when marketing to morons, you have to make sure not to let the
morons know you know they are morons, or you have to distract them with shiny
stuff so they quickly forget the insult. :)

This is a good example of the second strategy.

------
Alex3917
One quick thing is I would change the tagline to "Buy Games. Sell Games." The
reason is that the eye isn't really drawn to "Buy & Sell Video Games, Systems,
and Accessories with other Gamers Online."

I don't like the middle panel either. The text doesn't say anything
meaningful, and the buttons don't really add anything. I would change the
buttons to something like "Games", "Consoles", and "Accessories".

------
AndyKelley
You should indicate in the listings if the particular system/game does not
have any available to be sold so that the user doesn't waste clicks. After a
couple of dead ends, he'll give up, thinking that none of the entries have
sellers.

Also, I tried to make a standing offer for a sega genesis system, but nothing
happens when I press Yes to confirm. I'm using Iceweasel 3.0.1 which is
essentially Firefox 3.

~~~
sachinag
Should be fixed - give it a shot. There was an edge case we missed.

~~~
AndyKelley
Another thing you should do -

I clicked Yes, then it asked me to register, so I typed in my info. Then it
says check here to agree to the terms and conditions, so I clicked there, and
it took me to that page (normally I would have middle-clicked, but I was
pretending to be a normal user). So I read the terms and conditions, and when
I'm done I want to go back to sign up. So I press back, but my browser pops up
saying "Do you want to resend the information?" I press Yes, and all the text
I entered is blank.

Possible solution: add target="_blank" to the terms & conditions link.

------
thasmin
Here's a bug: I'm looking at Xbox 360 games and I click on "under $10" and the
criteria to remove in the box on the top left says "under $25".

I clicked on Bargain Bin on the home page and couldn't find out how to
restrict the listing to Xbox 360 games. The links I found removed the bargain
bin restriction. When I clicked in Xbox 360, I immediately got a listing which
started off with the systems, which I am definitely not interested in. A
landing page with recent releases and recent top sellers would be more
appropriate, especially if it made it easier to separate the systems and
games.

I assume your business is a game-specific price comparison portal. It's not a
bad idea, but you may need more content before you provide value over game
store sites (ebworld.com) or game review sites (gamespot.com). Along those
lines, why would I log in? There doesn't seem to be any community content that
would require me to identify myself.

------
joshsharp
Great design, easily one of the best I've seen on a 'rate my startup' here.
Browsing is also easy to use and simple to understand. I filtered down to PC
games > less than $10 and got no results, but figured out within a few seconds
how to remove the 'less than $10' filter (before I resorted to just clicking
'back'). Great stuff.

------
oofoe
Couldn't enter a standing offer for a game. Tried before I created an account
and after. Both times, it would only do anything when I clicked "no" on the
offer box.

Other than that... It was fairly easy to figure out and use (until the problem
above. ;-).

~~~
sachinag
Yup, fixed.

------
richtaur
My thoughts:

\- First thing I noticed is when I clicked "View All" in FF3 in Windows, the
menu was WAY over to the right (kinda broken). \- Also your URLs are really
ugly. This:
[https://www.dawdle.com/search.php/1/1/Video_Games=1/Systems=...](https://www.dawdle.com/search.php/1/1/Video_Games=1/Systems=1/Accessories=1/Platform=Nintendo_Entertainment_System)
just looks awful. Pretty URLs are important. \- I'd guess you'll eventually
run into legal issues with the "Buy It Now" links and using Nintendo's Seal of
Quality as your "No Listing Fees!" image... \- Oh and the server died once
when I was browsing :(

------
pclark
nice design:

bad fonts

the search button is slightly offline with the search box on the main page

"Buy & Sell Video Games, Systems, and Accessories with other Games online"
tweak that?

Can we make the URLs prettier?

I just dont get the word "Moronically"

Why when clicking the blue triangle next to "Bargain Bin" or "Hot Deals!"
(drop the ! btw) does it take you back to the homepage? I'm on the homepage.

Can we increase the font size of the "For Games by gamers" blue box?

Kudos for not using a statement like "For Gamers /Buy/ Gamers" or something!

------
songism
Make your buttons clickable, not just the text. (e.g.
<http://pixtures.s3.amazonaws.com/misc/dawdle.png>)

~~~
sachinag
You went through all the trouble to 'shop an image? You are a good
man/woman/robot. We'll get on it.

------
whacked_new
Looking at the footer section -- sort by seller rating.

Curious, is there any motivation for someone to sort by the 1-star rating?

~~~
sachinag
So you can see literally every listing that's available for sale on the site.
We'll suppress stuff listed by crappy sellers by default.

------
tyohn
I'm not sure why but on my computer I can hardly read any of the text? I guess
my machine is missing the font you used?

~~~
reazalun
The website is most probably designed in Mac and the designer forgot that
Lucida Sans and Lucida Grande do not exist in Windows by default. Although the
Arial and Verdana are also declared in the CSS, however for some weird buggy
reason, Windows fails to perfectly render the text in either Arial or Verdana,
or any other sans-serif font. That's why it looks like sh*t.

In my Linux, the text seems okay and perfect although my computer lacks any
Lucida typefaces.

~~~
sachinag
Awesome - that's the information we needed. We'll fix it. You rock.

------
almost
"Buy Now" takes me to a big page full of text rather than to stuff I can buy!
And when I scroll down (without reading anything of course) I see a price of
$19.99 which I assume is a subscription price so I leave your site never to
return...

I'll bet that's how it's going for quite a few of your potential customers.

------
zacharydanger
My only gripe is that the narrow down box doesn't contain a "By Platform"
selection. You have to start at the platform of choice then select the genre
to get results for Genre X for Platform Y.

Not a huge deal, but I had clicked "By Genre: Role-Playing" link on the home
page and couldn't narrow down to platform.

------
halo
Gorgeous design, and I think you could fill a niche with it.

Note that Buy It Now is an eBay trademark for "operating online marketplaces
for sellers of goods and/or services" according to the US trademark office so
I'd remove any and all references to that term.

------
eru
Hehe, I thought you could buy World-of-Warcraft-Gold, based on the title.

Cool site though!

~~~
listic
How can you infer anything from the title? I think it mean anything, like
Wufoo

~~~
eru
I was infering from the title of the post. I agree with you about the non-
descriptive startup name.

------
rjett
Very nice design...for all the others that love the design and can't quite
place their finger on why, visit apple.com. Same font, layout, and a very
similar color scheme. (I'm not ripping on dawdle...apple's design deserves to
be emulated.)

------
wallflower
Love your blog because you seem to meet a lot of people/go to many events.
Nice insider perspective into the business of game development.

<http://blog.dawdle.com>

------
dominik
I don't like the phrase "moronically easy," but that might just be me.

------
azharcs
Neat stuff, i especially likes the background pic of a guy holding two wiimote
similar to Prince of Persia holding swords. Good design, best of luck.

------
rokhayakebe
The site looks like an established website and tells the users that it can be
trusted. Very clean and well designed.

------
aguynamedben
the main splash image looks like a broadway dancer holding onto suspenders or
something. It took me longer to figure out the point of the site because of
this.

------
wmeredith
This is really nice. The interface is easy and fun to use.

------
shafqat
Is the site down now?

~~~
shafqat
XMLReader::open(<http://feeds.feedburner.com/DawdleBlog>) [<a
href='function.XMLReader-open'>function.XMLReader-open</a>]: failed to open
stream: Connection timed out

~~~
jonursenbach
Yeah I'm getting the same thing.

if(isset($assoc[0]['val'][1]['val'][4]['val'][0]['val'][0]['val']) &&
isset($assoc[0]['val'][1]['val'][4]['val'][0]['val'][0]['val'])) {

That's a hell of an if statement on line 235, which is funny because you're
running an isset() on the same array key twice.

~~~
jonursenbach
Actually, the second isset should be
$assoc[0]['val'][1]['val'][4]['val'][0]['val'][1]['atr']['href']

Ah accidental public code reviews.

~~~
sachinag
The very best kind. :)

------
kirubakaran
Wow! Lots of things to be learned from your app. Thanks.

------
antirez
Wrong rendering with Firefox 3 / Linux...

------
Marius
is there a way of sorting Wii games by price (ascendenting) ?

------
sabat
\- pro look. I'd think there was a large company behind this if I didn't know
better

\- good idea, the ebay for gamers. Marketing is going to be the challenge
here, of course.

------
LPTS
You forgot mac games!!! Huge oversight.

~~~
sachinag
Nope, we have Mac - they're under "View All":

[http://www.dawdle.com/search.php/1/1/Video_Games=1/Systems=1...](http://www.dawdle.com/search.php/1/1/Video_Games=1/Systems=1/Accessories=1/Platform=Hybrid_Windows_Mac)
<http://www.dawdle.com/search.php/1/1/Platform=Macintosh>

