HN Explorer

Ask HN: Please review my web app: WantsThis

17 points by petemack ↗ HN
We just launched last week into a pretty competitive market.

The site was built with two people, myself and my partner over roughly 8 months. I did all the design/frontend while he handled all the programming.

We'd love to hear any feedback you guys/gals have.

http://wantsthis.com

28 comments

[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 66.3 ms ] thread
Sandman
Clickable link:

http://wantsthis.com

The app seems nice, although there seem to be some minor rendering issues when viewed in FF 3.5.5 on Ubuntu 9.04 (the text in the 'sign up free' box gets a bit out of the box). However, there were other bugs - when I searched for a 'linux t-shirt', the 'next' arrow dissapeared at one point (there was a circle in it's place suggesting that it's loading). I then refreshed the page, and the previous item I added to my list appeared twice. I didn't review it any further, though, so I don't know if there are any other bugs. Hope this helps.

petemack
I am seeing the FireFox issue, I think the CSS needs to be tweaked a little more. I am investigating the results for the search items now.. Thanks for the bug finding!
pbhjpbhj
I like the bold styling but it's a bit too big and clunky IMO - you've got "Create your FREE wish list" then "Create Your Ultimate Wish List" then "Create the perfect wishlist for ..." all one after another. Instead I'd have this up next to your "WantsThis" banner with maybe one body text repitition above the fold, not 3. It's all a little bit too busy IMO.

Also perhaps indicate on the direct purchase links (images in the top products lists) that they are buy links.

Like your login box.

petemack
Excellent suggestion, other people have also told me the front page needs a bit of work and I agree. Thanks for the input
ucdaz
Cool app! How do you guys plan to make $$?
petemack
We have affiliate accounts on some online shopping sites, on those items we get a small commission for the sale.
nfnaaron
1. I really like that you can start using it without registering. I assume that the assigned name is usable beyond "now?"

2. Signup is easy and low-stress (no "how am I obligating myself" qualms).

3. Bug: before I signed up, I clicked one of the suggested wants, and I typed in a want. Then I registered. But in my registered persona, only the typed-in want was on my wish list, the clicked-on want had disappeared. Probably an edge case.

4. It looks like you make your money when buyers click on your Amazon affiliate links for the wanted objects. I wonder if you might make a little more money if you also put an explicit Amazon affiliates box/widget on the side, with a list of related objects?

petemack
1) Its usable forever, its checked by cookies but you could just return to that URL and continue using it. However its possible that another user could add remove things, which is why the password protection exists.

2) That was important to us, glad it came across that way.

3) Thanks, looking into it.

4) We have a number of affiliates including Amazon, hopefully with more traffic we can expand. We are also looking into recommendations and price matching directly related to affiliates.

DrewHintz
Looks nice. The account auto-creation is neat. I didn't see an option to change the auto-generated account name (such as a35) to something of my choice.

The Preference checkboxes at the bottom of /settings.php don't appear correctly on Chrome.

petemack
You should receive a message at the top of your list if you have an auto-created list. I'll do some testing on chrome, thanks!
jarsj
An auto-complete would do good to this app. A rich auto-complete with images, better.
ctb9
i really like it, the search works well, the design is nice...well done!

the auto-generated name thing is a great idea, but I wonder if you could increase the conversion rate by replacing the copy "Create an account now, so you can choose a better name for your wish list!" with the form itself. That copy makes it seem as if I need to register in order to select a name, but in reality selecting a name (and making a password) is the registration process.

one question: are you only pulling products from amazon and newegg currently, and if so, plans to expand?

petemack
Good idea, I'll see how feasible it is to work that in. We are slowly adding more sites as we discover their API's and such. We hope to at least cover all the main shopping sites.
chris24
I love apps like these, especially when they have domains that make sense to have usernames in them.

The amazon.com price comparisons are a little annoying to me, though, because most products don't ship internationally from Amazon.com. Not only that, if I'm entering prices that are in CAD$ and price comparisons are from a site (Amazon.com) that sells items in USD$, the price comparisons don't add a lot of value. It'd be nice if there was a way to set a locale to get price comparisons from. That way, you'd still be able to earn affiliate income, but even more than before because it's more highly targeted to the user.

petemack
Localization is important to use, especially regarding sites like Amazon, we are currently working on getting it integrated. Thanks for the feedback!
taitems
1. NSFW thumbnail in recently added items list

2. The grey boxes and text-shadows combine to form some really unreadable text

petemack
1. We attempted to white list the recently added and most popular lists by trusted sites. It seems amazon sells adult toys, so we will have to tweak that filter a bit...

2. Very true, I'll switch that to something more user friendly

Sandman
I just checked your app for sql injection. The password I chose while registering a new list was d'artagnan and, sure enough, I was granted access without any error message whatsoever, but once I logged out I couldn't log in again. I thought that you might have removed the ' character automatically, but I also tried with dartagnan and couldn't log in either.
petemack
You should be able to use an apostrophe in a password without issue as we did test for that. I'll see if I can reproduce that error.
Cybourgeoisie
Hey, this looks great; I'm signing up purely out of interest. Though, one small thing - if neither password field is filled out and the form is sent, I receive this message: "The password fields must match". Insignificant non-bug, but still not the correct error message to display. I look forward to see where you go with this!
petemack
Fix is going up for this in the next few minutes, thanks!
Concours
nice design and intuitive UI, I like it. What about sync the wish list instead of import the wish list? sync a wish list will cover import and export as well. As User, I will love this option, but sure there's a lot to do to make this work properly, if that's possible.
petemack
I think I saw this on another site, I'll see if their API allows for deleting and adding items externally.
flapjack
If a user searches for something like 27" iMac, there are no results, but if the user searches for 27 iMac, the 27" imac is found. It might be good to strip any "'s in the add field before searching.
[dead] silvershadow118
the "create your ultimate wish list" text distracts the viewer from the search
rksprst
Easy to understand and use, I just don't see how this would be useful? Or why I would use it.
petemack
Its most useful for people who do a lot of shopping online for friends and family members.