Ask HN: Review our startup, Browseology

[joepestro]

http://www.browseology.com

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.

[Angostura]

OK, I've given it my usual one minute test...

1. Love the concept, the idea of someone hand holding me through (say) buying an LCD TV is interesting.

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!'.

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.

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."

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.

Lots of other thoughts, but those are the main starters.

[kineticac]

Wow Angostura, that's some fantastic feedback! Thanks for the time you took to go through it. I'm also glad you put your trousers on at some point ;)

Looking forward to your later feedback as well.

[epoweripi]

Firstly - its a neat idea! I liked it.

I gave it a spin and here are my comments: A. Are the similar products really similar products? (Eg. http://www.browseology.com/#v=iZ9o4v&g=/amazon/item/Sony...) (this is a pouch but the similar products are more camera realted and not camera pouches)

B. It will be nice to show the prices along with similar products.

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.

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.

[kineticac]

Those are all really good points!

A. Unfortunately Amazon's supplying us with those similar results, I can probably get some more smarts out of them. Tracking what shoppers view and buy will help us further get our own similar/recommendation engines in better shape.

B. That would be helpful definitely

C. The sizing of things are definitely being worked on. The design of the site will be going under major work, but thanks for bringing this to our attention!

D. This is a really good idea! We're going to be tackling these issues with our recommendations after we've captured a good amount of trends.

Thanks again!

[swombat]

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.

[davidbnewquist]

The site does imply (and this may not be true) that someone always gets a commission on every purchase through the site. So if I want to buy a new camcorder, maybe I could ask a friend to be an "expert" and we could split the commision? That may be a strong initial incentive--effectively its a discount over a direct buy amazon.com.

This would seem to be an exploit, but it may still be a win-win-win for the friends, amazon.com and browseology.com.

Later down the road, established experts may be able to create real value for potential shoppers. I like the concept of being able to "shop" for my salesperson. Often time I go into Bes..err.."a big electronics retailer", hoping to get expert advice on a product but get stuck with a sales staff that can't answer my questions.

I would actually feel good about awarding a commission to a sufficiently knowledgeable salesperson.

[kineticac]

very good point, the point should be made extremely clear that you can invite anyone even off the system. Our signin process is really for experts who want to hangout on the site and be requested, but everything works with collaborating with friends with the sharing of the URL. We've definitely seen this problem as well. Thanks for the feedback!!

[davidbnewquist]

I like your "big elephant leads little elephant" logo: it's inviting and representative of your biz.

[joepestro]

Thanks! That's exactly our reasoning behind it.

[kineticac]

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!

[kineticac]

Good news, we've re-launched Browseology.com based on the feedback we've received from the community. Check out our new Hackernews Post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=617236

[davidbnewquist]

If I want to buy a specific new camcorder, can I sign up as an expert and take my own recommendation?:)

[joepestro]

Yes, since only the expert needs to be signed in, you could technically take your own recommendations. It's more useful to browse together with someone else, though :)