Review my app: ValueGrapher | Hacker News Reader

Review my app: ValueGrapher

valuegrapher.com

14 pointsJesseAldridge10 comments

The name made me think of an equally interesting service:

A web service which tracks the value of products over time. Pull in data from e-tailers, eBay, Craigslist, etc. Essentially a big horizontal graph of the value over time. This would be useful for people looking to resell goods (approximate cost) or for people comparing what brand of item to buy to get the highest resale cost.

For the monetization strategy, allow retailers to buy exclusive brand placement on a given product. Or affiliate links.

I've got this exact concept (sans the monetization strategy) scrawled in my list somewhere. Idea was to scrape eBay's completed listings data, but I never got round to implementing it.

Interested in throwing something together?

Google might be working on a price index like that - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/deeb985e-d55f-11df-8e86-00144feabd...

I had that exact same thought quite a while ago and have built my startup around it:

http://www.happybuy.com/

This was launched approx 8 weeks ago.

We currently track & graph pricing across Amazon, iTunes and the Apple App Store and have plans to add additional stores in the future.

Would be great to hear what you think or any feedback you may have.

Nice! My immediate feedback is this:

Your "What does this do?" text, "We save you money by tracking prices on millions of products and recommending when is the best time to buy" is quite small. I would try to emphasize that point more on the homepage.

Naturally the functionality it quite limited right now because you've only got pricing data going back a month or so (at least on the few products I search for). I think this is something that becomes more useful the more data you build up (1+ years).

I was going to comment about including mini-pricing-graphs on the home page but then I realized you already have them. They were not obvious enough to me when I first (and second) glanced that they were graphs. I thought they were just buttons. Maybe fuss with the design on those for something that is more apparently a trend line.

Finally, after you get some good solid data you should consider adding an API for real-time stats or a way to buy historical pricing data.

Thanks - I agree with those comments; especially re the "What does this do?" text.

We realise the graphs for the example products are below the fold on the homepage and are looking to do a mini-redesign to bring them higher.

That's an interesting app. I reckon a lot of people will ask you why this is better than just using a spreadsheet.

If you could automate the value input for each task that would be make it easier to use. Instead of arbitrarily deciding the value yourself, can you link it to some external metric (site visitors, users, likes, sales, etc)?

A few people have mentioned Excel, yes. My answer is this is easier to use than a spreadsheet. And it would be hard to get the labels in Excel.

And yeah, people don't like inputting data manually. But tying to some external input seems like it would complicate things and the tool would lose some flexibility. I don't know... I'll keep that in mind.

Thanks for the feedback.

One thing you could do to simplify the UI at least for now is only ask for one input at a time. The list of textboxes is a bit overwhelming.

Even better, if people keep asking you the Excel question, tell them how much you love Excel and make it possible to copy and paste data straight from Excel. I suggest this because I did it for my app.

I made this tool for myself and recently decided to put it on the web. I have doubts that I'll be able to convince others to use it as-as. Still, any feedback would be appreciated.

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