Show HN: Our attempt at solving the wishlist problem.. | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Our attempt at solving the wishlist problem..

ultimategiftlists.com

27 pointsjbbarnes48 comments

You might want to make the GiftMark more prominent, like a popup as part of the initial welcome. I just focused on the main area and thought it was only possible to add what was displayed on the page. The only reason I went clicking was to help evaluate the app, and I tink under normal circumstances I never would have clicked a menu item for "Add gifts from around the web"

Cool idea all around. Good luck!

Yeh we completely agree - looking at stats and how many people are installing 'giftmark' we knew we had a problem. We'll look to address it - thanks for the feedback, it's much appreciated. Would you make the giftmark part of the site as part of the sign up?

Well done! Some feedback: Resize your product images ("/images/I/8137AFcYkrL._AA1500_.jpg") or request smaller ones. Remove whitespace before DOCTYPE. Try to avoid session/state URL's: dzYzMzJfNTAzNg==. Specify Canonical or apply www to non-www redirect. The homepage contains content, but this is only accessible with javascript and styling, or without javascript and styling. Consider a <noscript> warning or giving a user and searchbot access to the content with styles on, but javascript off. Adding to this a matter of taste: The background is like the background for iOS touch browsers when the end of a website is reached. That texture has some meaning attached to it for some, that make it in my opinion rather unsafe, to use for other design elements on the web. There is (possibly due to heavy load) a good 6-7 seconds between the dissapearance of the loading graphic, and the loading of new content "tiles", maybe you can add an onload callback for removal of loading graphic.

And a question: What is your organic SEO strategy? Will all visitors come from social? The website behaves like a web-app, so there is very little content to rank with. Are these personal shopping lists publicly available? What happens if people share these shopping lists? I don't see them indexed (yet), so they might not be flowing any link juice. Could you add a blog or something?

This is great feedback. I would add:

- Load your ToS and Contact pages in new windows. I didn't notice that they had appeared in the gift list zone - this definitely doesn't feel the right place to put them.

- I would consider exposing the list ID as part of the URL so that users can copy and paste them around in chat windows / email / twitter, in case they don't want to use your sharing services.

- I would second the idea of a blog as a way of promoting interesting and/or useful gift ideas.

This is great! Thanks so much!

I use the add-on Ghostery, which filters out page elements that are known as trackers, including the ShareThis buttons. So I couldn't see any buttons below the statement "Share this list using the buttons below."

One solution to this problem is to offer at least one share button that is provided solely by your site.

The idea's great, but I think the look of the site could do with a rework. It feels a little dark and cramped.

From a personal standpoint, I think the web design is quite attractive, but I would be looking for something simpler and more functional. The only reason that I would approach the site is for gift ideas, (I would use Amazon for buying, actually storing a wishlist of hopeful transactions). My train of though it to start with the person who I'm buying a present for, and brainstorm what I should buy them based on what I know about them. It seems that the site is organized in a way that assumes you already know what you're looking for.

If your loved one isn't considerate enough to use Ultimate Gift Lists: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4865223

Haha, us hustler's work is never through. Like the different approach.

Cool idea, good job on executing so quickly (2 weeks!).

Small note: this is totally fine for the MVP you have, but I found sorting items alphabetically to be annoying. Why would I want to see things that happen to start with letters nearer the beginning of the alphabet first? As you iterate, might be something to think about. Maybe price point or popularity would be more helpful ways to organize the stuff.

Thanks, glad you seem to like it.

Yeh we'll definitely sort differently in the future. We'll also allow users to drag tiles around and arrange their list in anyway they want..

Looks interesting, congrats on shipping! A few friends of mine actually built something similar recently, more about sharing Christmas lists with your family and making sure no one gets you the same thing, etc. If you're interested, it's called Scrooge Buster (http://www.scroogebuster.com/)

Not loading, but what is the wishlist problem?

That every Christmas and birthday my family ask me what I want for Xmas/birthday and that I have to email them a bunch of links as to what it is that I want. Maybe it isn't a problem, but it bugs me and my mate so we built something that we found useful that we thought could be beneficial to others. thanks!

Same here... Over 10 years ago my mom gave me a paper list of gift ideas for the whole family. I was supposed to cross off what I was buying to avoid duplicates. Didn't take long for me to write a web app to manage it. I rewrote it last year after 10+ long years of solid usage: http://www.gifttracker.net/

It's a slightly different take on the wish list "problem" in that mine isn't about getting gift ideas, it's about sharing lists and reserving to avoid duplicates.

Pretty clinical approach to gift-giving? Were socks and new underwear on the list? How about a 12-pack of WD-40 for dad?

Wait until you get married, then you'll understand ;) Wedding registries, baby registries... And in many cases that type of gift-giving extends to Christmas and birthdays.

Married for 30 years. 3 brothers, 2 sisters, 13 nieces and nephews. Still haven't resorted to asking people what they want. What's the point? They can get that for themselves.

I deleted my previous comment as perhaps I am taking your comment too personally.

I agree with you that it is nice to be surprised. I am just pointing out that there are legitimate uses for the "clinical" approach to gift giving: wedding and baby registries are quite common. If you don't know the newlyweds/parents nor the contents of their house very well, the registry can go a long way to giving them a gift that they actually need and will use.

Cheers

Yeah; I guess there's the class of obligatory gifts that social circumstances extort out of us. We no longer question why we're going to a wedding of somebody we don't know.

Still, the idea that somebody has set up a list of 'acceptable gifts' sticks in my craw.

I have a friend that always gives a wooden trencher board as a wedding gift for anybody. Different enough not to be duplicated.

Ah I see where you're coming from. The list I was speaking of originally was a wishlist. It wasn't a "buy only these things or you're no longer family" ;) Incidentally my app supports "secret gifts". You can enter a surprise gift that everyone but the recipient can see. That avoids duplicate gift buying even when someone else had the same great idea for a "secret gift" that you did :)

Cool implementation, but wouldn't use it personally. Mostly because my immediate family already knows about Amazon wishlists, which also let you add anything (even not on amazon). I'll admit the interface is a lot cooler here. Have you looked at Amazon's implementation?

Thanks - glad you liked it. Yep we've had a look and we think one reason that ours has an advantage over theirs is because of the big feature of our site, which may not of been obvious, the 'giftmark' bookmarklet - this means that you can add any items you want when you browse the web rather than just being limited to our default items. If you drag that bookmarklet up to the toolbar and then when you see an item on the web you like, you click the 'giftmark' button and it adds that item to your list (with a picture). With this feature added to the picture based layout we hoped we could get the edge over them - a tough ask i know.

Glad you liked it though. Say if we let you import your Amazon wishlist? Would that make you more tempted to use our service?

Well, Amazon also has the exact same ability to add anything on the web - add-on/extension available for most browsers. Importing my existing amazon list would be an incentive for me to at least try it in more depth. However, I might view it more an an extension of my current amazon list rather than a replacement.

For reference: http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/get-button

I guess the business model here is affiliate marketing. I noticed that the URLs you use to redirect to Amazon.co.uk product pages don't include the "tag=your-associate-id" query string parameter. Are you still eligible for commission?

Yep it is affiliate marketing - we just launched to friends and family here in the UK to begin with but have just applied to SkimLinks so will turn any of our links into affiliate links.

But you don't make any money right now, right? Because there is no "tag" parameters in the URL.

Correct - we are waiting for Skimlinks to approve our application. We just wanted to test the idea first..

VigLink does the same as SkimLinks (has been around longer too, and is backed by Google Ventures) and they don't make you wait if you're referred by another VigLink member. You can use my referral link (if you'd like) to at least get your monetiziation up and going ASAP. http://www.viglink.com/?vgref=6106

That's really kind - thank you..

In addition to that, don't Skimlinks take a cut of your comms? It really seems easier (and more profitable) to use the Amazon Affiliate Program. Someone correct me if I'm wrong though!

Nice idea and execution but I didn't find anything interesting... I don't need to make a list if I want to buy someone iPad or Kindle fire... but that's my taste, maybe other people find new ideas from there.

Hi thanks for the feedback. The big feature of this site, which may not of been obvious, is the 'giftmark' bookmarklet - this means that you can add any items you want when you browse the web rather than just being limited to our default items. If you drag that bookmarklet up to the toolbar and then when you see an item on the web you like, you click the 'giftmark' button and it adds that item to your list (with a picture).

I completely missed it so I guess you should do a better job introducing it to your users as a main feature, also create browsers plugins - bookmarklet might work for HN user, but not for 99% others, it also gives you a little more publicity.

Also I did find something interesting from Gadgets section but the width of the "pinterest style" boxes are so narrow, the pictures small and no price tags - it's hard to get my attention at least.

Ok cool - we'll make it much more prominent. With regard to the second bit of feedback - we'll be adding price soon and will continue to iterate so the pictures are sharper and better quality, and bigger, but we wanted to get it out there before xmas and get people's feedback. We'll add it to the list. Thanks

This was submitted just 2 days ago for anyone wishing to see the existing comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4857287

Yeh hope people don't think we are spamming - we wanted to launch on a quiet day (Saturday morning) and just get some stats to see if people knew that the bookmarklet existed (if they installed it) and if they knew to save it. Based on this we've made improvments over the weekend ready for launch today.

FYI, our WebSense filter at work filters this for "potentially harmful content." Likely a mistake on the filter's part, but thought you'd like to know.

Cool thanks - we'll double check to make sure we haven't got anything controversial as part of our default content!

We've spent around 2 weeks or so developing this and we'd love any feedback you may have...thanks in advance.

Seems like a pinterest clone, even the bookmarklet seems copy/pasted.

Is there a special reason why you chose ASP.NET for this project?

I am not the coder, my friend is - I will let him answer you. From my limited knowledge I know that my friends skills lie with this technology and therefore he built something using a technology he is comfortable with. As I say he'll answer you properly in a bit..cheers

Is there a special reason why you're asking this?

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The curse of the HN homepage - we are taking a look at it, sorry for the outage..

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