Making the classifieds user experience more friendly
Discussion
So; I/we/my employer are Pistonheads advertisers and use it for multiple things, price research, price comparison, part exchange pricing etc. and I spent a large chunk of my day doing this so like to think that I compress quite a lot of an average persons requirements/experience/feedback on such things into a fairly small space of time.
The market leader (Auto Trader) has a search interface that used to be acceptable and easily improved but is now bloated and awful. The improvements they have made are offset by terrible design and intrusive advertising.
The interloper (ebay) still has a pretty crap search system.
When I'm looking for something I need to be able to:
Filter by age (minimum, maximum and the ability to set a range e.g. 05-08)
Filter by engine size (minimum, maximum, a range or a specific size)
Filter by price range
Filter by fuel type
Filter by gearbox...
...could probably name quite a few more (Auto Trader do actually have these to some degree buried deep and dark in the depths of a website designed by a four year old) with a bit more thinking.
Pistonheads classifieds filter system is not good; in fact most of the time I can't be bothered to use it unless I absolutely have to.
Some problems with the current 'filter' tab:
Distance by default should be set to nationwide and it should remember my post code.
Age range is fine but this should be more prominent, it needs to be somewhere easy to see and I should be able to easily modify my search without having to hit back back back and go again from scratch.
Say I want to find an Audi A4 2.0 TDI S-Line with under 60,000 miles and an auto box.
Auto Trader: Buy > Used > 7 drop down boxes and type 's line'. Very, very easy if marred heavily by the above comments. 61 cars
ebay: EBay motors > painful search process with a wait between each filter (miles, age, body type, gearbox) > then type S Line. 5 cars. In excess of 30 clicks not including the search freezing once and flashing up errors.
Pistonheads: Classifieds > Audi/A4 > filter, type in 05-08, type in "Avant S Line auto" and hit search. No results found. Even if I had found any cars in doing this I have eliminated the possibility that someone has entered 'tiptronic' or 'multitronic' 'paddle shift' rather than 'automatic' or 'auto'. I can't eliminate or filter by entering engine size. If I enter 2.0 it eliminates '2 litre' or '1986 cc' that may have been entered by an advertiser. It's just too vague and too easy to make a mistake. At this point I don't know if nobody advertises on Pistonheads, I don't know if I've made a mistake, I don't know if I need to type '2005' instead of '05'.... if I was a first time user having found 61 cars on Auto Trader and 5 on ebay (a massive difference in content and user experience) I would not come back to pistonheads. Even compucars (which nobody uses) returns 25 cars with a pretty useless search facility.
If Pistonheads can attract the numbers it does with a classifieds section from the dark ages (it really is inexcusably lacking) how well could it do if the content was more accessible?
The market leader (Auto Trader) has a search interface that used to be acceptable and easily improved but is now bloated and awful. The improvements they have made are offset by terrible design and intrusive advertising.
The interloper (ebay) still has a pretty crap search system.
When I'm looking for something I need to be able to:
Filter by age (minimum, maximum and the ability to set a range e.g. 05-08)
Filter by engine size (minimum, maximum, a range or a specific size)
Filter by price range
Filter by fuel type
Filter by gearbox...
...could probably name quite a few more (Auto Trader do actually have these to some degree buried deep and dark in the depths of a website designed by a four year old) with a bit more thinking.
Pistonheads classifieds filter system is not good; in fact most of the time I can't be bothered to use it unless I absolutely have to.
Some problems with the current 'filter' tab:
Distance by default should be set to nationwide and it should remember my post code.
Age range is fine but this should be more prominent, it needs to be somewhere easy to see and I should be able to easily modify my search without having to hit back back back and go again from scratch.
Say I want to find an Audi A4 2.0 TDI S-Line with under 60,000 miles and an auto box.
Auto Trader: Buy > Used > 7 drop down boxes and type 's line'. Very, very easy if marred heavily by the above comments. 61 cars
ebay: EBay motors > painful search process with a wait between each filter (miles, age, body type, gearbox) > then type S Line. 5 cars. In excess of 30 clicks not including the search freezing once and flashing up errors.
Pistonheads: Classifieds > Audi/A4 > filter, type in 05-08, type in "Avant S Line auto" and hit search. No results found. Even if I had found any cars in doing this I have eliminated the possibility that someone has entered 'tiptronic' or 'multitronic' 'paddle shift' rather than 'automatic' or 'auto'. I can't eliminate or filter by entering engine size. If I enter 2.0 it eliminates '2 litre' or '1986 cc' that may have been entered by an advertiser. It's just too vague and too easy to make a mistake. At this point I don't know if nobody advertises on Pistonheads, I don't know if I've made a mistake, I don't know if I need to type '2005' instead of '05'.... if I was a first time user having found 61 cars on Auto Trader and 5 on ebay (a massive difference in content and user experience) I would not come back to pistonheads. Even compucars (which nobody uses) returns 25 cars with a pretty useless search facility.
If Pistonheads can attract the numbers it does with a classifieds section from the dark ages (it really is inexcusably lacking) how well could it do if the content was more accessible?
The PistonHeads classifieds were created to work on a "browse" model, rather than a "search" one, and as such the search has never been a strong point.
It's key weakness is the keyword search, which looks for the exact phrase rather than each word separately, effectively limiting it to one term at a time.
We are aware of these weaknesses though and plans are afoot for a thorough revamp of the classifieds which will deal with all your concerns and more.
It's key weakness is the keyword search, which looks for the exact phrase rather than each word separately, effectively limiting it to one term at a time.
We are aware of these weaknesses though and plans are afoot for a thorough revamp of the classifieds which will deal with all your concerns and more.
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