Comment by adityakothadiya | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adityakothadiya | Hacker News Reader

adityakothadiya

Hi HN, I've been working on http://shopialize.com application in the part-time since quite some time now. I'd really appreciate your feedback, critique comments, suggestions to improve, or new ideas to take this to the next level.

I'm not explaining what, why, and how aspects of this web-application here because I want to see how much of it is clear from the website itself. So please visit http://shopialize.com, explore different pages and let me know what's your first impression.

I understand that there are many social components that need to be developed for the viral distribution of this application like Facebook, OpenSocial and iPhone apps. But first I wanted to release the core idea and learn what exactly people want, so that I can continue building this application from their feedback.

Believe me, this is just the beginning - so please - pour in your thoughts and ideas about how you want to improve the social shopping experience on the web. You can also email me at aditya@shopialize.com.

Thanks, Aditya

Only had time to take a quick look, but I think the design is too "done by a programmer". Not much consistency bar size for the front page icons. Padding and borders is inconsistent too.

There would have to be some very glowing press or recommendations for me to come across this in the wild and sign up. Then again, I don't buy things often enough to be in your probable target market.

Best of luck though!

Notes from a copywriting point of view:

(1) Switch the first two paragraphs: Nobody cares what shopialize.com is, but what problems it solves.

(2) Remove the passive voice of the second paragraph. Suggestion: "Tell your friends about new products and the best deals in town. Discover opportunities your friends have found. Review products and ask your friends before you buy."

(3) Remove "or login using Twitter" from the first action box. Move it to the "Register" page. Three options are confusing.

To be honest, I don't like the Sign Up Form on the front page. I'd remove it, distribute "Use Shopialize to..." on two columns, and repeat the action box "Take the tour or ...". I'd also add a box with testimonials (or a small list of the latest entries), and then show the last box.

I'd also animate the slideshow. I'm also wondering why you have no second password field to catch typos? Did I miss something?

Note that English is not my first language so correct the above suggestion if necessary.

All suggestions are valid, so I'll think about which changes will make sense or not. Thanks for your inputs.

Small things I really like about your site: 1) "share the love" icons; 2) ability to log in using my twitter account (you should make it more visible, missed it the first time); 3) the way updates are formulated: <user> <action> <status> (particulary "user replied to another_user" is so much better than Twitter's); 4) rocks!/sucks! reviews

Good luck to you and many satisfied users!

I'm glad you liked it :)

What differentiates this from all the other social shopping sites out there?

Shopialize primarily focuses on sharing "post-shopping" updates quickly and frequently like micro-blogging way. Other social shopping networks primarily focus on "pre-shopping social bookmarking" and "wishlist creation" aspects. It doesn't tell if your friends or community members are really buying those items or just recommending it.

Also, I'm not trying to build another social shopping network. I'm looking more towards Twitter+FriendFeed integration. Twitter may-not provide better shopping related feature-set. Similarly, FriendFeed may not add all social-shopping services like Kaboodle, ThisNext, Kirtsy, etc., which I'm planning to add soon.

These are primary reasons. Hope this answers your question.

It's more of a communications medium or vehicle, correct?

The idea is compelling when you extend an API considering the giants of ecommerce tend to close off their reviews, recs or community posts on their sites.

We should talk more offline as I've been working on something that could mesh well with your app throughout the entire shopping experience (pre, during and post checkout).

Yes! Exactly, it's geared more towards communication aspect rather than just bookmarking aspect. Yes, API is definitely way to go, so that people can build awesome apps that I haven't even thought of yet. I'm interested to talk to you offline. Email me at aditya.kothadiya@gmail.com. Looking forward to talk to you.

i like the clean css and layout i like the simple approach to pushing data to the page. obviously i notice many Getting Real concepts well implemented here. is this a rails app?

Thanks for the kind words! No, it's not a rails app. It's a PHP app.

I like the layout, too, but only after I enabled Javascript using NoScript in Firefox. My first impression was a jumble of overlapped markup over half the page. I hope you can work on progressive enhancement for low end browsers, mobile, screen readers, etc.

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