 
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
|
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
69.50.14.243
To reiterate a few observations that I think I may have posted earlier, and to add one or two more:
The format within the ad with all the pertinent information at the bottom is strange and not very user friendly. Take a hint from eBay or A-gon. Maybe there's some info, such as some shipping details, that you can reasonably keep at the bottom, but too much of this information is very important and should be up top.
A little styling would go a LONG way. The underscores on links are the first thing that should go. They make reading the lists difficult. The bold links serve no purpose, but they do take up space. I notice that bold is only used within the category pages.
Outside of Craigslist, I think I could count on one hand the number of web sites still using a serifed font or the browser's default. Sans-serif fonts, such as Verdana or Arial are so much easier to read on a computer screen.
The 'big camera' is fugly and takes up more space than needed. How about a smaller camera immediately after the subject, where it's more easily associated with the ad? Link it into the ad - no reason not to, unless you maybe plan on one day having it pop up a photo set in its own window.
I think I'd shorten up the allowable subject line. Maybe by a lot.
In the lists that show the product category, link the category text to the category list.
I would prefer to see WTB and WTS ads in the same category listings. Have the user select WTB when posting a listing (by default, ads would be WTS), then display "WTB: -title-" for any wanted ads. The current structure pretty much guarantees that nobody is going to ever see the wanted listings.
I haven't posted any ads, but did look at the form. Does the Brand/Model/Title format serve a purpose? Seems restrictive to me.
The 'location' could be filled in using the location on file for the user's account, but allow it to be edited. It's more important for a classified ad than for general purpose, so maybe someone would want to change their 'United States' to 'Detroit'. This is particularly important for anyone suggesting local pickup. There are any number of reasons why the location might be different. Selling something for your brother-in-law, for instance, or selling the speakers you left at home when you were transferred to Saudi Arabia.
Follow Ups:
Thanks for the feedback.
Yeah, putting the item info at the bottom is different. I felt that people would be more interested in the ad info upfront and then would find the other data if they were interested in the item. Flipping it to the top is simple. I'll ask people which they like better.
You're also right, I haven't purged the bold from all the code for the links. Underline or not is a preference I suppose. Linking the categories is simple. And including the WTBs on at least the new Today/2 days listings is a good idea.
The camera was just a graphic that we had around and I agree. A smaller, different icon would be better.
On fonts, actually that is an option in the user profile. Personally, I prefer the standard roman font, but you can change it in your profile under the Default Style. Do you think Verdana is better? I hate it, but that's me.
Brand and Model are there to support future advanced search and alerts for specific items that come up for sale. These are added to the title field. And titles could be shorter or displayed in a smaller font as Agon does it.
Locations are editable, but are taken from the user profile. Adding a field for it in the ad might be useful though and it'd be easier to edit directly. If we added city and state, it'd help with an advanced search if people wanted to search by state.
-Rod
> And including the WTBs on at least the new Today/2 days listings is
> a good idea.
I really think they shouldn't be different categories, but should mixed in with the for sale ads, with a WTB: prefix on the title. I just can't see anyone browsing WTB ads, even if they have something for sale.
> On fonts, actually that is an option in the user profile.
I hadn't seen that. Thanks.
Two things, though... The default size is too large. It should be about the same size as its default serifed counterpart, or the same size as is being used up in the header links.
Second, I think someone else mentioned this elsewhere... This really makes that style unusable. Both the forum lists and text in messages have _no_ line spacing when using this style. Not sure if a simple 'line-height' CSS style would affect the ul lists or not. Try something like:
line-height: 1.33;
Maybe if used in the 'body' style it would cascade to both the lists and text.
> Personally, I prefer the standard roman font, but you can change it
> in your profile under the Default Style. Do you think Verdana is
> better? I hate it, but that's me.
Serifed fonts are generally harder to read on a computer monitor, from all the studies that I've read. Among the common sans-serif fonts, I tend to prefer verdana over arial. Again, just easier to read.
> Brand and Model are there to support future advanced search and
> alerts for specific items that come up for sale. These are added
> to the title field. And titles could be shorter or displayed in a
> smaller font as Agon does it.
For searches and alerts, you can really only do a substring searches through the title, maybe with some simple wildcard matching (ala eBay). Well, you can try to make it more complicated, but why? It just makes it more likely that searches will fail. So you don't gain anything by breaking out brand and model.
> Locations are editable, but are taken from the user profile. Adding
> a field for it in the ad might be useful though and it'd be easier
> to edit directly.
Right. That's what I mean. You don't want a user to have to edit their location just to have it come up differently in an ad. Looking at many user profiles, you'll see many locations that are purposely obscured or some attempt being made at humor. That's not at all beneficial within a classified listing.
Yeah, it could be twekaed a bit. I did so with the Grey background Vendana css, aaSansGrey.css. The issue is that for some reason we used percentages and IE has some bugs where it applies the percentage to the percentage. I changed it to a body font-size: 12px, The line-height was ok, but the body didn't use it for the default table tag, so I added that. It still would need some tweaking as we also have an aamin.css that is used for sponsor forums that also needs to get changed.
Anyway, what font-size parameter (px, pt, em), is best for browser compatibility and to also allow scaling? I hate it when you can't scale up a site's fonts when my old eyes can't read the tiny text.
I hear you on the brand/model thing, but we're also considering adding an Ajax type widget to pull up consistent data to try to get good info that we could also normalize and make an advanced search or even a Bluebook based on listings useful. IF users put in inconsistent junk, then it's a waste of time.
Locations should be an easy tweak, it's just another field.
-Rod
Post a Followup:
| FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
