My main feedback is that I don't know which step to take next. I see 6 links in the yellow bar ... be a little more deliberate/forceful in directing me on what to do next.
Not that you asked, but here's some wacky/random ideas off the top of my head:
- Do Stripe checkout in addition to PayPal (ask for Stripe API key & secret over SSL)
- Provision a Twilio phone number for each list after registration. Use it as a temporary way for sellers to call the buyer, for notifications, and to add/remove items via SMS
- For quick mobile integration, use MailGun to post incoming email messages to your app and turn them into listings. That way people can add items & pictures from their smartphone. I've done this and you can literally get it going in < 1 hour.
- Allow me to sell a digital file. If I add a [d] to a line item in my list, prompt me to upload a .zip file or high-res JPG. BOOM, instant store for selling stock photography, ebooks, or WordPress themes.
We're keen to add Stripe, but we're based in the UK and it's not available over here yet.
Excellent recommendations of Twilio and MailGun. We'll check them out.
We'd allow digital file upload by choosing a file instead of an image. Then list would alter it's behaviour to suit.
I agree with this one. There's already a "Now Click Here" button at the start. I'd suggest extending that concept to successive pages until the seller has filled in whatever info you think most pages should have. Sidebar and config come to mind as two that most people will want to fill out.
And perhaps during that first time there should be a stronger visual emphasis on the top buttons so that customers are more likely to link them to the options they're seeing.
On the whole, though, it looks great. Nice MVP.
Basically, the mention of paypal email address is what throws me off. It implies that this is not just a listing site, but something more, with a payment processing attached to it. This leads to another can of worms - is it an escrow service, what about refunds, returns, etc...
In general:
* ebay - big, bloated, complicated, high shipping costs
* craigslist - too scammy/spammy
* shopify - considered it, but seems overly complex for non-geeks
* etsy - what we were going to try next
A stock photo might introduce more problems than it solves. The user might not realize that they can easily change it, it might be slightly irritating if the image is 'wrong', and they'd have to find a set of images that are free/cheap and safe for commercial use.
That said, you also make some good points why stock photos are bad for both.
That's copyright infringement. Just because they're available on Google Images doesn't mean you can use them on your own site.
Be careful about feature creep. The reason why Craiglist works is because it doesn't try to do too much. I think this can definitely have a similar sort of success given how freaking easy it is to use!
If I were a serious seller, I would want a shopping site with bells and whistles (a detailed admin area, user accounts, reviews, discussions, etc) that might contribute to the selling part.
This site would be a fantastic tool if it worked with craigslist/ebay.
One thought: although the text area is cool for us geeks, what value does it add for the typical user over a more structured data entry approach? I think the text area leaves too many ways for the user to make mistakes.
If we detect the user is making a lot of mistakes, we'll fall back to showing them a traditional form with fields.
Changing the order of items is trivial, you can copy and paste stuff, it's easy to email the whole thing to someone for review (say, before publishing)... That's for the typical user. For geeks there's more: it's easy to keep archives of old versions, easy to see what's changed, trivial to backup... text IS powerful.
Some small comments:
* When I click on "checkout", a few things are not clear: how much is shipping (seems to be free?), how long will shipping take, etc.
* I put something with an "&" in the title into my shopping cart. On the PayPal landing page, it turns into &. Also, the item description is "shopid: x, itemid: y", which is not very helpful, especially if it's two months from now and I'm trying to remember what I purchased.
* The list of item in the shopping cart should be links, not text.
* It's an MVP, so I'm sure this is on your "next steps" list, but it would be nice to delete specific items from the cart instead of having to clear the whole cart.
* There's a Login/Signup link at the top, but it's not clear what the benefits of Signup would be. Clicking on the link doesn't reveal the benefits either.
Again, this is awesome.
Really great effort!
Hum, I don't think adding a Change your background function should be included in a minimal site.
Who are your target users, people using Etsy or eBay? Are you competing with other services like those on ease of use alone? For people looking to buy things, will you provide some search across all users or are you just giving your sellers a link they can promote?
I'd see this text field becoming more and more intelligent over time with other functions!
+quantity for multiple item sales, ie +5 #tags for categorising, ie #electronics
further ideas welcomed
What's your market?
It's not ebay or craigslist. You'll never get enough buyers and sellers together; then there is the fraud/scam issue.
I don't think it's existing merchants with websites.
So who is it?
Works magnificently well for techies because we are all familiar with store admin areas, publishing a site etc. Great if techies are your target market.
For an average Joe it might be a bit confusing. People may not even realise they are building a store, and instead think... 'Why can anyone just add a listing to this page?'
To help with this a guided tutorial may be useful.
All the best.
A few notes:
- When I click on an item thumbnail on your sample list page, it takes me directly to the image hosted on S3. Having the image appear in a lightbox would ensure that users are kept on the page.
- The title tag for every page reads "List of Things for Sale". I would populate the title tag with the name of the user (e.g. "Matthias McGregor's List of Things for Sale")
- Add FB/Twitter/Email to Friend links, which would provide three one-click marketing channels for users to share their for-sale items with their immediate network.
- Populate the page with Facebook Open Graph metadata. That way if users want to post a link to their store on Facebook, they'll get a nice link description and thumbnail automatically.
- I like the single-page experience, but I can't help wondering if it would be better if the app would generate discrete pages for each item users are selling. This might make it easier for users to share each item discretely, instead of just point people towards a single store page.
Really nice work!
- We've debated the pros and cons of lightboxes for a while now. We don't like them and prefer to see the image without chrome, but our users may feel differently. We'll soon see!
- Excellent point. I'm really looking forward to making loads of little tweaks like this.
- Yep, totally agree - it's coming.
- Thanks for the tip. It will be done!
- Item pages are on our list of things to do, although it's another tension between minimalism and e-commerce.
Invite them to upload an image or click to suggest one from a catalog of images (maybe search Flickr for cc/commercial use images).
To some extent, though, you are going after the Craigslist market by focusing on one-time sales by individuals. Not easy. I wonder at which point an online store becomes more sensible to users than the classifieds model?
Any thoughts about where precisely in the e-commerce sphere you see yourself fitting in?
We think there's also a gap in the market for one person companies who want customers to visit them in person. List could help them sell to existing customers, who are most likely to buy something else.
Also I have a bug. If I write "iPhone 3GS $70" it does not show. If I add a description it shows.
I have a lot of books I'd want to sell to my friends/networks, because they'll pay me more than Amazon or EBay. While a monthly subscription wouldn't be feasible for a user like me, I'd gladly fork over $10-20 to set up a one-time-use online store.
I really, really like it. Excellent work.
It is very cool though, I am loving the interface of it.
I couldn't add more than one item, even when I copied and pasted your code from the front page (sample) directly.
We'll have warnings showing to users when a line can't be parsed.
An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. Please try again in a few moments.
If you are the application owner, check your logs for details.
You might want to mention that users can drag and drop images as well... that was a nice surprise.
