New classifieds site, now in Beta

[Stuart]

We've been working away in the background on the new PistonHeads classifieds site since the New Year, and for the past couple of months testing with a reasonably large group of PHers. All the issues and feedback with the last (admittedly disastrous) launch have been taken on board and acted upon.

The site is now in beta so that we can test performance, flush out any bugs and see how everyone gets on with it.

At present the beta site only lets you browse for things, so there's no ability to upload cars for sale. It takes cars for sale from the old site as its reference point (although there will be a few differences because the old site isn't tremendous at removing stuff which has expired) so you might see a little bit of lag after you upload a car for sale on the current platform.

Anyway, we'd like you to have a play. We're not planning to replace the old site with this one immediately, and hopefully you'll see plenty of improvements over what we launched before Christmas, specifically:

- Nice big images.
- Improvements to look and feel
- Works on iPad
- Performs well with lots of traffic (although this phase is specifically to test this in the real world).

If you notice any bugs it'd be good to have as full as possible a description, ideally with the browser and OS (ie Firefox, PC) mentioned as well.

http://beta.pistonheads.com

Thanks,

Stuart + the team

[Pheedbak]

Now would be a dandy time to look at it to take some load off the old dbs! Pretty please

[Baryonyx]

Just had a go of it there and it works better than it did when it was first launched, fingers crossed this ends up a successful venture!

[gazchap]

Why have the X buttons on the Year, Price and Postcode boxes?

I'd perhaps make the "Browse makes and models" button a bit more... buttony, I was expecting there to be a list of makes underneath and that the "Browse makes and models" was a heading, but admittedly I don't know why I thought that as it blatantly wouldn't work that way anyway.

How about a "Retrieve last search(es)" feature, where you can recall the criteria for the last few searches you've carried out?

The "Show Results" button should probably disappear when there's no search results on the counter. Alternatively, if one of the criteria is distance (i.e. 5 miles from postcode) then perhaps if there's no results, behind the scenes extend that range out until a result is found, and then notify the user with a balloon tip?

[rhinochopig]

If you click on the picture you get a 'Pistonheads also found' instead of the detail of the ad.

ETA and when you click on the heading.

[Steffan]

I think this is a positive improvement, Stuart.

Considerable improvement in fact. Keep at it, this could be the basis of an excellent system, and a significant improvement on your main competitors effort which are dire. Well done.

[DanDC5]

Is there a search part ex option on there? Can't seem to find one, and IMO it's the most useful searche on the old site.

[Vantagefan]

Great improvement, much easier to use - could one of the filter options be mileage? Would be great to rank that by highest/lowest.

[Pheedbak]

DanDC5 said:

Is there a search part ex option on there? Can't seem to find one, and IMO it's the most useful searche on the old site.

Indeed there is as it was one of the most asked for features.

More filters -> part exchange

[DanDC5]

Winner.

[66comanche]

rhinochopig said:

If you click on the picture you get a 'Pistonheads also found' instead of the detail of the ad.

ETA and when you click on the heading.

and if you click on the 'full details' link. Doesn't seem to be any way to get to the full ad?

ETA: Also if you go into view pictures and use the 'see the full advert' link

This is on Firefox.

Edited by 66comanche on Wednesday 2nd May 14:14

[Pheedbak]

gazchap said:

Why have the X buttons on the Year, Price and Postcode boxes?

How about a "Retrieve last search(es)" feature, where you can recall the criteria for the last few searches you've carried out?

to the right youll see "Recent searches" ... does exactly what it says on the tin.

[Stuart]

DanDC5 said:

Is there a search part ex option on there? Can't seem to find one, and IMO it's the most useful searche on the old site.

yes there is. It is one of the additional filters. This search has it enabled. That is admittedly slightly more fiddly than on the current site, but the actual number of people who use Part Exchange search is very low indeed, and we didn't want it to get in the way of the free text search. Would welcome your thoughts on how well this works.

http://goo.gl/MVq4v

One of the things not on the site yet, but only because it hasn't cleared testing yet, is the equivalent to this page on the old site.

http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/index.asp?c=13

That should be live in the next day or so, and it works in exactly the same way.

[paulrussell]

DanDC5 said:

Is there a search part ex option on there? Can't seem to find one, and IMO it's the most useful searche on the old site.

There is. If you clink on more filters you'll see part exchange on the bottom right of the filters.

[kayzee]

I thought PistonHeads had reconsidered after all this time, the current ones just work perfectly!

Unfortunately my browsing will now go out the window as Javascript and Flash are not installed nor allowed on my computer. For instance I can't even use the beta site as I can't click on the X for 'Close this help screen'

Will there be any alternative to use? For instance when they changed AVForums I could not longer log in, but admin sent me a link to the old style log in screen and it still works fine for me so I was happy with that!

[gazchap]

Pheedbak said:

to the right youll see "Recent searches" ... does exactly what it says on the tin.

So it does. I'd suggest that could be made more obvious - being right underneath the advert space made me think it was just a text advert.

[Stuart]

kayzee said:

I thought PistonHeads had reconsidered after all this time, the current ones just work perfectly!

Unfortunately my browsing will now go out the window as Javascript and Flash are not installed nor allowed on my computer. For instance I can't even use the beta site as I can't click on the X for 'Close this help screen'

Will there be any alternative to use? For instance when they changed AVForums I could not longer log in, but admin sent me a link to the old style log in screen and it still works fine for me so I was happy with that!

There isn't any flash on the site at all, but you're not allowed Javascript? A lot of people have it disabled because of ad-blockers, but they should be able to add PH to the exception list without any problems. Presumably it must affect a lot of your browsing of other sites too? Just out of interest, what sort of office environment are you in where things are locked down to that extent?

At the moment we've no plans to introduce a site with no javascript, and whilst the old site will still continue for a while, it will ultimately be retired. The only thing I can think is that perhaps the mobile site (which can be accessed easily from a desktop) might work?

[Pheedbak]

kayzee said:

I thought PistonHeads had reconsidered after all this time, the current ones just work perfectly!

Unfortunately my browsing will now go out the window as Javascript and Flash are not installed nor allowed on my computer. For instance I can't even use the beta site as I can't click on the X for 'Close this help screen'

Will there be any alternative to use? For instance when they changed AVForums I could not longer log in, but admin sent me a link to the old style log in screen and it still works fine for me so I was happy with that!

If you hit f5 a couple of times on first load the overlay should disappear. Its a good point though and will add a bug.

[DanDC5]

Stuart said:

yes there is. It is one of the additional filters. This search has it enabled. That is admittedly slightly more fiddly than on the current site, but the actual number of people who use Part Exchange search is very low indeed, and we didn't want it to get in the way of the free text search. Would welcome your thoughts on how well this works.

http://goo.gl/MVq4v

Just had a quick play about and it seems to work well so far. Going to take a bit of getting used to but definitely an improvement over the old site.

[yahtzee]

66comanche said:

rhinochopig said:

If you click on the picture you get a 'Pistonheads also found' instead of the detail of the ad.

ETA and when you click on the heading.

and if you click on the 'full details' link. Doesn't seem to be any way to get to the full ad?

ETA: Also if you go into view pictures and use the 'see the full advert' link

This is on Firefox.

Edited by 66comanche on Wednesday 2nd May 14:14

me 3 looks good though