New Feature in Beta Testing - Deal Display

Quote from bryantq : Its funny that you don't like the background color in the OP since its pretty much the same as the background color in all the other replies? We believe pictures on the side make more sense, especially when people attach lots of images which clutters up the page significantly. The community deal details are important because if the community helps categorize things properly, it will improve search results, and if people use it correctly, will eventually allow us to include more specific searches, such as filtering or sorting by price, store, brand, etc. What do you "really hate" about the related deals?

I think you wanted to hear feedback from community. But based on above reply, it sounds like you want to tell people that they are wrong anyway. You may want to put explanation or the reasons of the specific changes you are making in the OP. After that, let the community decide what they like or not, (if feedback is really wanted).

LIKED:
Automatic Reps --- I think this is very important for a community based site. This is the most liked change.
Community Voting (But please provide option to be neutral)
I bough this (since it will group all those threads where I had bought stuff)
Report Expired.
Did you find this post helpful.


DIDN'T LIKE
Relate Deals --- as this is not really a shopping site, i don't think this is really useful to SD community. Remove it or make it collapsed at the bottom.
Community Deal Details -- somehow don't like the background color. Also, maybe we can keep this section towards the bottom.
OP Location --- should be at the top.

Quote from mrfixx : What I would really like is the ability to sort by price and vendor on the hot deals forum front page. Would be helpful if I only have x amount to spend for a gift or I want to use a coupon code at a specific web site.

Without community deal details, we wont have sufficient data to allow people to sort by price or shipping or brand etc. Some people barely post enough stuff in the OP, which is why we want to rely on the entire community to help normalize the data into something that we CAN sort and search for.

Quote from NoDealsHere : I think you wanted to hear feedback from community. But based on above reply, it sounds like you want to tell people that they are wrong anyway. You may want to put explanation or the reasons of the specific changes you are making in the OP. After that, let the community decide what they like or not, (if feedback is really wanted).

This is a discussion. People's feedback prompts a discussion so that I can explain our rationale, since it may not always be apparent. I can also help answer people's misconceptions if they exist.

We've already taken some feedback and added it to a list of changes we're going to test, but make no mistake: we are not just going to blindly listen to people's suggestions. But I will at least listen and consider what people have to say.

People are free to have opinions, but i'm more interested in constructive feedback that helps us improve. Rather than people saying "you should fire your developers" or stating "i dont like it" without any reason, I'd like people to at least explain why they don't like it, and we can work to fix any real issues.

Some people will dislike it simply because something changed at all. Some people won't even give it a chance. Some of it is trial and error, some of it is experience and research, and some of it is intuition, but I can say with certainty that if we didnt make change and make progress because we were afraid, we'd be stuck in the stone ages.

The explicit neutral option will no longer exist because we dont think that it's very intuitive. Our plan is to make it so that you can "unvote" simply by clicking again.

So if you Thumb Up, and then you change your mind, you'll click the "Thumb Up" link again (which will now look different), to unvote. We'll work on the display mechanics to make this a little more obvious.

Quote from kmsimpson : Just out of curiosity, why are you asking what people like/don't like if all you are going to do is tell them they are wrong?

We'd like feedback, and ideally constructive feedback at that Its not intended to be a yes/no poll, its so we can improve the beta features.

It doesnt help us much if someone makes a short post that's just like
"I HATE EVERYTHING" and nothing else. (Other than making us feel bad obviously). But more than that I was just trying to explain what those sections were for, and the benefits of having them

Quote from bryantq : We'd like feedback, and ideally constructive feedback at that Its not intended to be a yes/no poll, its so we can improve the beta features. It doesnt help us much if someone makes a short post that's just like "I HATE EVERYTHING" and nothing else. (Other than making us feel bad obviously). But more than that I was just trying to explain what those sections were for, and the benefits of having them

One of the few things that pretty much everyone in the thread so far has agreed on is that the "Related Deals" is intrusive and unwanted by most people. Everything else seems to have a mixed response of some sort. I really hope that you decide to omit it or at least include an option to remove it!

Quote from vip00 : One of the few things that pretty much everyone in the thread so far has agreed on is that the "Related Deals" is intrusive and unwanted by most people. Everything else seems to have a mixed response of some sort. I really hope that you decide to omit it or at least include an option to remove it!

You might've missed it, but I did take the feedback and we will be adding an option to collapse it.

I hope this is what the new SD's will look like because the way it is right now is annoying. Right now if you click on a front page deal it will say Permadeal and you'll go into this weird looking page. Then you click on "View Forum Thread" and it will look exactly the same, only it will be like Slickdeals the way it originally was. I don't understand why there are two versions of the exact same page it makes no sense to me at all.

As far as soliciting the public's feedback I wouldn't listen to any of these people. You think Steve Jobs went into a public forum and asked people what they wanted in a smartphone? Ask yourself what looks good and use your best judgement. Find a graphic designer and have him/her make the page. They have the best artistic eyes, find yourself a Jony Ive and stick with him. If you listen to the average person you'll wind up with an average product.

I think I'd prefer the "Community Deal Details" to be where "Attached Images" are right now.

I prefer the "attached" section (images and otherwise) where it's been, below the post, and large enough to be able to tell it's worth clicking on them to see full size versions.

I wish there was a way to better include pictures inside a post, for creating step by step instructions.

The "Helpful Posts" is a great thing, and I hope it is somehow tied in to giving people rep and recognition for contributing to the community.

I think the OP should remain reasonably prominent, at the top of the post, again as a way to give them recognition for contributing to the community.

I prefer thumbs up thumbs down. I've TU deals on products I don't like, because they were good deals. We already have enough TU/TD for Apple and Microsoft and other "political" companies, changing the phrasing to "like" I think will make for even more of that.

TU/TD and Like/Dislike also would be used differently, I might TU a deal that I don't want to be associated with, but LIKE a deal I want to be associated with and share.

I'm going to chime in with all the others that HATE the idea of "related deals". I don't want to be looking at pencils and see deals for mopeds. That said, if the related deals were limited to either the same category item (TV's showing more TVs, computers more computers, etc.) and/or the same STORE (Staples being a good example) I could see it maybe having some usefulness. But if it's just whatever someone happened to look at next...no, please, no. The related stuff on Amazon is useful because people will buy sets of things from Amazon. A pot AND a pan, but sets of deals are going to be pretty limited on SD.

I often right click open in new window on Reply (and other things). That doesn't seem to be working.

Quote from bryantq : You should ask your fellow shoppers why lol, right now it's 100% based on what other people are viewing. This beta test will give us a chance to adjust it to make it more relevant. Thanks for participating!

That came across poorly and somewhat rudely... People are telling you pretty consistently that they hate the related deals idea. If you do have reason to disagree with them, at least consider making it optional.

Could I suggest allowing the option to turn on/off as much of the new layout as possible? Your team will tend to follow the ideas of whomever is loudest, and enthusiasm for an idea can get an echo effect going where soso ideas seem a lot better than they are. If you allow folks to actually adjust what they see to what they WANT to see, you're going to learn from the number of people that toggle things on and off what's actually useful. You might even consider having the system "default" to the most common settings of anyone that makes a change to their setup. (Versus the folks that never find the settings section) When you find settings that are almost never used, you remove them, to simplify things.

I TRULY wish you'd done this with the new FP. The "deals you may have missed" is a constant irritation to me... I'm hating more over time, not less, because I browse from multiple computers, phones, browsers and tablets, and it's made it hell trying to pick up where I left off. It's NOT helpful, and I really wish I could turn it off.

Quote from bryantq : Without community deal details, we wont have sufficient data to allow people to sort by price or shipping or brand etc. Some people barely post enough stuff in the OP, which is why we want to rely on the entire community to help normalize the data into something that we CAN sort and search for.

When the first post, no matter how crappy, gets to be the "Original Post", and the person that takes the time to really do up a good original post gets ragged on for being a repost, they feel screwed and put in less effort the next time. Or don't even bother posting at all. Or take Selma's route and just spam everything, minimal OPs, and hope something sticks.

A couple of suggestions to help with that:

You might take the quality of the OP into account when merging posts to decide which is to be the new OP, rather than just posting time.

Possibly time stamp when editing a post begins, and use that to decide the OP.

In other words, don't penalize people for contributing, reward them!

Quote from bryantq : This is a discussion. People's feedback prompts a discussion so that I can explain our rationale, since it may not always be apparent. I can also help answer people's misconceptions if they exist.

Hopefully if the feedback is strong enough, you'll actually consider more than just tweaking a feature, but whether or not to add/remove the feature.

Quote from bryantq : We've already taken some feedback and added it to a list of changes we're going to test, but make no mistake: we are not just going to blindly listen to people's suggestions. But I will at least listen and consider what people have to say. People are free to have opinions, but i'm more interested in constructive feedback that helps us improve. Rather than people saying "you should fire your developers" or stating "i dont like it" without any reason, I'd like people to at least explain why they don't like it, and we can work to fix any real issues. Some people will dislike it simply because something changed at all. Some people won't even give it a chance. Some of it is trial and error, some of it is experience and research, and some of it is intuition, but I can say with certainty that if we didn't make change and make progress because we were afraid, we'd be stuck in the stone ages.

All valid points. But you will, I hope, still LISTEN to folks. I think some of what you're trying to add, like the related deals thing, works on a shopping site rather than a discussion board. I have to wonder how many folks come to SD looking to buy a specific gadget, versus folks that come looking to see what new deals have popped up, and folks that actually just enjoy the community.

Honestly, I see most of what you're doing as improvements (please put OP back on top, pics back on bottom, community details to the right, keep helpful posts where it is, and DUMPSTER the related posts idea unless it's REALLY targeted.) but I would MUCH rather see the phone/tablet experience get some attention. Where are the official apps?

Followed by that, an improved editor would be nice and some design thoughts towards community building and rewarding folks that contribute with cyber-pats-on-the-back so they keep doing so. And discouraging the folks that are nasty to others or encourage law breaking. (coupon fraud, copyright infringement, hacking shopping carts, etc.)

I'd like to see SD do something similar to other referral-cashback sites. I'd rather give you folks my business than Mist Are Reeeee Bates (see how annoying it is to have "urlhasbeenblocked" and do stupid crap to get around it?) for example. And I'd like to see the juvenile blocking of competition sites cease. It's pointless and really irritating. If you HAVE to make a big deal out of it, leave the site but maybe put a red asterisk next to it that'd explain why you dislike it. If it's just that you lose the referral business, figure out how to keep the business, don't try and make the alternatives disappear. Serve the community first, and SlickDeals will continue to thrive.

Quote from stevenq : As far as soliciting the public's feedback I wouldn't listen to any of these people. You think Steve Jobs went into a public forum and asked people what they wanted in a smartphone? Ask yourself what looks good and use your best judgement. Find a graphic designer and have him/her make the page. They have the best artistic eyes, find yourself a Jony Ive and stick with him. If you listen to the average person you'll wind up with an average product.

That's what Microsoft did with Windows 8, and look how that's working out :p

Or maybe a better comparison would be Digg, a site I truly loved, and which has ceased to exist in everything but the name they sold for a few hundred grand to new owners after so many users bailed due to "design improvements" that the site couldn't support itself any longer.

Going completely your own way is a LOT riskier than give and take with users.

Quote from bryantq : You might've missed it, but I did take the feedback and we will be adding an option to collapse it.

I did miss that, and thanks for adding the option.


As a related thing... SlickDeals is important to people. I've saved literally thousands of dollars thanks to the site and I'm sure I'm not the only one. When you start changing something around that folks depend on, they get mighty nervous It's a wonder you don't get a lot more pushback over changes than you do.

One more thought before I head off...

One problem I, personally, have is finding longstanding "FAQ"''sh sorts of posts and posts for ongoing events.

For example, there's a great post with a lot of detail on how to do Staples ink cartridges, and another on StaplesEasyReabtes. I can never seem to find them when I want them.

The posts for places like Walgreens and CVS and how to do their deal programs are easier to find, but still often buried as well.

Maybe SD could use a Wiki section? Hmm, maybe the "wikis" could even end up in the "related posts" section.

Okay, time to head home and get some sleep. Have a nice night/day whatever!

The white color for author and title and large black box areas don't adhere to the theme, so it feels visually clashing. It's like looking at a person with non-matching clothes.
I tried changing the colors using some css tools to more closely match the comments and it seemed more visually appealing.

When images are clicked on and displayed in the larger middle of the screen format, there's no way to zoom in. (in spite of it saying to click to zoom )

Sometimes folks take pictures of price tags and bar codes. It'd be nice to be able to zoom in to try and read them without having to download the picture.

My first thought on seeing the "Related Deals" stripe was "Why didn't Adblock remove it?"

After realizing it wasn't an ad, the second thought was "Wow, there really is no coherence to what people look at here."