Ask HN: Review our site, ListBite (social classifieds) | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Review our site, ListBite (social classifieds)

listbite.com

4 pointssoc15 comments

Question: How did you select the list of locations to use in the UK version of your site? I would have thought that you would do it based on population size but there are some rather small places in the list - eg Bath & Swindon.

Bug: When clicking the logo to return to the home page from one of the UK regional urls the site returns to the .com instead of .co.uk page and shows the US locations.

Why would someone want to use your site over the better established sites that do the same thing (Craigslist in the US, Gumtree in the UK)?

good question. We are trying to be more of a social classifieds site where for example users can chat online with the seller or private message them. Sellers can also upload a profile so buyers may feel more comfortable with them.

Also, we are aggregating other sites such as cars.com on the us site and other local classifieds data, so it's easier to find stuff in one place.

But definitely that where the challenge lies.

sorry, I can't get past the frontpage due to the schematic design

Not to offend, but that logo is simply terrible. It looks... cheap.

I think you should narrow your focus. Didn't craigslist start out with just one area? Why do you call it social classifieds? Is there a social network tied in somehow?

True, I've had some interest from some regional car dealers so definitely going narrower is an option. To really use the social features you have to be logged in and have a profile in mylistbite, but still want to expand the social network part. Also, trying to include it in facebook as an app which hopefully will give some traction.

Thx, For the UK site we picked locations based on area and population, but definitely can refine it some.

If I'm buying a game, do I really care whether they are in London or Essex? No, I don't - the game is going in the post anyway.

The UK list is a bit grim at the moment, mainly because you are mixing cities and counties into the same list. That comes across as strange, almost as if you are making a category error. Have you though of sticking to counties, or using sythentic regions (The South East, The Northwest, the Midlands etc).

True for things like games you may not care, but for furniture, cars, and personals you probably do care. I think we will probably just show a map in the future and you can pick which region/town you in from there.

If I were you I might think instead about asking the user for his/her postcode. Then the user can decide to rank hits by proximity if they want, or by other criteria.

I want the closest piano stool. I live in East London; some parts of Essex are closer to me than some parts of London.

yea, good idea. We were planning on including the postal code in the post flow so once we have that people could browse based on proximity.

I don't want to push the point in an irritating way, but I think you should think about amending the post flow....

Currently you have people selecting a region and THEN selecting what they want. It would be better to have people select what they want and THEN select how important the proximity is.

That solves (i) The arbitrary city/region issue and (ii) Lets you advertise on the home page the scope of what people can shop for, rather than advertising all the cities in a country.

I won't use it because I'm in Kansas City. Also, it looks like a parked domain.

What's the point?

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