myoung8

Mike, thanks for your feedback. I'll respond to each of your points:

1. We optimized for the majority of our users' browser resolutions. Your not the first to give us this feedback, though, and if we get enough of it we'll switch to a narrower layout.

2. Understandable. There are 3 issues here:

a) Trying CarWoo! before signing up: unfortunately, there just isn't a way to use the product without diving right in and getting in touch with dealers. When that happens we need a way to notify the user of what's happening within the app. Once we build features that have to do with research we won't require a signup to use them.

b) Spam: you are exactly right, giving your email address to a dealer is asking for spam. It's a big part of the reason we built CarWoo! The difference is that we actually prevent you from getting spammed because we serve as a proxy, relaying all dealers' emails to your email address and vice-versa. To do that, though, we need your email :)

We are very much anti-spam. The only emails you'll get from us have to do with your use of the application.

c) Changing the signup funnel to have contact info at the end. We split-tested different funnel variations (signup first, signup last, etc.) and what we've got right now simply converted best to paying customers. At the end of the day, that's what we have to make our decisions on, even though it might rub some people the wrong way.

3. Thanks for pointing out that issue, we'll fix it ASAP. Again, we split-tested it with email-verification and password-verification and what we've got now converts statistically significantly better (without a big increase in support requests for lost passwords or emails)

4. This is actually a big can of worms, but I'll try to explain briefly: manufacturers (Honda, Ford, GM, etc.) only build cars certain ways. Even if you can "configure" it on Edmunds or Cars.com a certain way, that doesn't mean that you can actually buy a car with those options.

Letting users check off options is actually a nightmare for the buyer and for dealers because it sets buyers' expectations too high at the start and makes it seem like dealers are uncooperative.

To further complicate things, manufacturers refuse to release build information and there's no easy way to get it from dealers. So were left with being able to determine builds on an ad-hoc basis.

Finally, not all dealers get the same builds, and some add what are called "Dealer-Installed Options." At the end of the day, even if you knew exactly what you wanted, there's no way to guarantee anyone has it or that everyone has it. The only way to find out is to ask. And CarWoo! makes asking incredibly easy and noncommital, plus you won't get spammed just for asking (and if you don't buy a car because it's not exactly what you wanted, then we always give you your money back).

At the end of the day, we decided to architect our solution so it works really well most of the time (a-la Pareto Principle). There will always be cases where it doesn't, but we're not trying to please everybody.

To wrap it all up, a lot of the things we've done don't work well for people who aren't ready to buy right now. But like I've mentioned elsewhere, we're not in the business (yet) of helping people figure out what kind of car to buy, we're in the business of making it really easy for them to negotiate with dealers.

Hope that helps. Feel free to email me at michael@carwoo.com if you've got further questions and let me know if you'd like a coupon when you do try CarWoo!

Yup. Right now, we're focusing on buyers who know exactly what they want.

Moving forward, we're going to move further up the funnel and get into the research step too.

There are already sites that do research fairly well, but no one handles the actual transaction (except for CarWoo!) so that's where we can add the most value and that's where we're focused.

CarWoo! is only for new cars at the moment. We're going to get into used cars soon, and odds are we'll work with private-party transactions as well as dealers if buyers want a Certified Pre-Owned car.

So, some insight into the checkbox vs. radio button thing:

We started with checkboxes because it used to be the case that a buyer could select up to 3 trims. This gave them more flexibility, but ultimately created a burden for dealers. From the dealers' perspective, they had trouble figuring out which trim to make an offer on (and, sadly, they are generally too lazy to make offers on multiple trims).

So we ran an A/B test to see if limiting the buyer's choices to 1 trim had any effect on conversions. Turns out it actually increased conversions a little bit (more on that later, but in essence: eliminating choice is good).

Then, we just forgot to switch it over to radio buttons now that the test is over, but the new changes will be deployed to production shortly.

Anyways, thanks for your feedback!

Yes, you can switch preferences once you finish signing up.

The "stuck-in-the-signup-loop" thing is also something we're working on. It's a balance between increasing conversions and pissing some people off. We're probably going to switch to a version where you aren't stuck, though, but today we just went with the MVP :)

It's true, you would have to buy 2 plans to shop for 2 cars. The reason we do that is because there's a fixed cost per car on the back-end for us in terms of contacting dealers and getting offers, so letting users shop as many cars as they want isn't feasible unless we charged a lot more. However, most people don't want to shop 2 cars at the same time so we decided to cater to what the majority of our users want.

We'll be rolling out multiple deals/user in the near future, but for now, if you actually are shopping an Accord and a Camry, I can give you a coupon for a discount on the second deal if you're interested.

Thanks for pointing out these issues. We're working on fixing them.

We've built a reputation system, which, in short, helps ward off a lot of bad dealer behavior. I can get into more details if anyone's interested.

If you have a trade-in, you can describe it and the dealers will include a quote for that in addition to the quote for the new car.

They can also give you an estimate for financing, although for the most part that is still handled at the dealership. Financing is one of those last-mile problems that we haven't totally solved yet, but we're working on it.

This has been a long time coming. Feel free to ask us anything if you've got questions about CarWoo!

Can anyone think of ways to speed the sociolegal acceptance of this technology?

At the end of the day, I have a feeling it won't really come down to lives saved even if that's how the media spins it. At the end of the day, it has to help pad the bottom line of one of the car companies and they will then have the incentive to lobby Congress and get the right regulations inserted into the right bills.

It's not rational, but part of the Silicon Valley mindset is "go big or go home" and oftentimes people don't stop to think whether it's good for their business, they just accept it as fact.

He doesn't seem to realize that you can learn all those things they teach you in business school (finance, marketing, corporate law) as you go if you're a real entrepreneur. Sure, you might make a few mistakes early on, but there's no better way to learn.

I think people want products that are simple to use, not just simple. There's a big difference.

There are many products that have a lot of features, but employ concepts like progressive disclosure to make them easier for a wide range of people to use.

Neat demo, but the markup this produces isn't all that clean, and certainly not intuitive.

Tony's calculations are wrong because he assumed constant inflation.

There will be periods of deflation, and many think that one is starting now. It also won't be the last.

You'll have a tough time raising money from traditional angels/VCs if it's not a C-Corp.

I've heard of a couple VCs out there who want to invest in social entrepreneurship, though, so maybe you want to ask them. Check out Good Capital: http://www.goodcap.net/

You can actually get started for free if you're a developer and understand how to deploy a Rails app on Heroku...

Slightly myopic given that we're still very much in a recession, but good points nonetheless.

I would have to disagree, though, because fame and influence fades. You still have to work hard to maintain it.

99designs.com

Any particular topics you'd like to see?

Also let me know if you'd be interested in contributing.

There are various Rails plugins that take care of most of this stuff. I've had great success with restful_authentication (http://github.com/technoweenie/restful-authentication)

Hacker News

The issue with this is that it rewards users for generating pageviews instead of taking an action.

In the real world, when someone checks in at a business, odds are they are buying something, creating that virtuous feedback loop.

The only way to make this really pay off for website owners is to tie it in deeply with a more robust rewards system, but that requires fairly custom integration...which gives me an idea!

If you could build something like MixPanel meets Foursquare (i.e. develop a JS API that makes it incredibly easy for developers to build a rewards system) that would be a big win for everyone.

Good luck if you bury the way to order your product in your contact page.

I think you've pointed out a good rule of thumb: if the intrinsic value of the product is more than what most people would be willing to pay in a one-time payment, you should charge monthly for it.

Clearly there are other factors that go into it, but that's one way to look at it.

Write a guest post about a topic of interest to that blog's readership that doesn't directly pitch you product. Then insert a shameless plug (and label it as such) at the end of the post.

You want to ask yourself: is this the kind of person I wouldn't mind being stuck in a foxhole with? (metaphorically, of course)

At the end of the day, you need to figure out if they are self-motivated, can take the initiative, and most importantly, can get shit done.

Unfortunately, there aren't really good substitutes for figuring those things out other than experience working together.

A "trial period" where both of you collaborate on a project has worked well for me in the past.

the new landing site looks great, well done

Burlingame, CA (Bay Area)