http://www.browseology.com<p>Browseology is real time collaborative browsing over Twitter. You can
instantly connect to your friends and experts to browse and shop
together with no installation required for anyone. Browseology is
completely web based. And when we say collaborative browsing we mean
you're actually seeing what your friend sees in real time. When they
move their mouse to a product, you see it. When they type in a search
term, you see it. And when they go to a product, you also go to that
product. It's a really fun way to shop together.
OK, I've given it my usual one minute test...<p>1. Love the concept, the idea of someone hand holding me through (say) buying an LCD TV is interesting.<p>2. The 1 2 3 Workflow failed the first time I tried it, since apparently there were no registered experts for the particular item I searched for. However instead of saying 'Sorry there aren't any experts on this area at the moment' it displayed a "Everyone's an expert Become a personal shopping expert" banner, which confused the socks off me. I was about to come here and say 'the workflow is broken' until I happened to try another category where there was an expert. Make the 'sorry no-one available' message explicit rather than coughing in an embarrassed way and saying 'look - over there!'.<p>3. Having clicked on the expert's (JoeBloggs) face I got a brief bio and link to "Request JoeBloggs and get connected". Apart from the grammatical horror, I'm a shy soul. What would happen if I clicked? Would my Webcam suddenly turn on and I'd find myself talking to this bloke? Very Scary stuff. I bet you get 80% of people backing out at that point.<p>But because I'm a kind soul, I put my trousers on and clicked. Phew I got an input box and a suggestion to "Please describe the type of product you're looking for.
We'll notify JoeBloggs privately with your request. We can't guarantee response times, but being polite and descriptive usually helps."<p>OK that's a lot less scary. My strong suggestion would be to put That text and the input box on the preceding page with the experts profile. I don't want to click some 'message him' link without knowing exactly what I'm in for.<p>Lots of other thoughts, but those are the main starters.
Firstly - its a neat idea! I liked it.<p>I gave it a spin and here are my comments:
A. Are the similar products really similar products?
(Eg. <a href="http://www.browseology.com/#v=iZ9o4v&g=/amazon/item/Sony_LCS_CST_General_Purpose_Soft_Carrying_Case_for_Slim_Cybershot_Digital_Cameras/B00091S0WA/" rel="nofollow">http://www.browseology.com/#v=iZ9o4v&g=/amazon/item/Sony...</a>)
(this is a pouch but the similar products are more camera realted and not camera pouches)<p>B. It will be nice to show the prices along with similar products.<p>C. I am on a 1024x768 resolution. it overflows on the right
It _may_ be better to show the similar products below the prod description or somewhere where it does not overflow out of the screen.<p>D. On typical shopping sites, I can "browse" more products..
I felt that lacking on your site. i.e there was nothing much to browse after I clicked on a search result.
On top of my mind:
Can you show the last few suggestions from the best experts on that catergory?
It may not be abt the specific camera(product) in question but I would like to surf and see more stuff before buying.
Personally, I will follow him/her only after seeing a few suggestions - making it visible may help user engagement on the site.
Interesting idea, but... if I'm a new user arriving there, why should I start using it instead of, say, amazon? You need to make sure there's a good reason for me to use it even if I don't have any friends on the system, or else it will be very hard to get those first users.
It's a preview launch right now, and we have a ton of features that we're going to release soon, but we're looking out for your feedback to validate our ideas and give us suggestions!
Good news, we've re-launched Browseology.com based on the feedback we've received from the community. Check out our new Hackernews Post: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=617236" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=617236</a>