New Car Site

sicruise

Hi,

I just stuck up a new site, it is in beta but I am already getting a good bit of traffic. Most of the people are doing searches for cars though and aren't actually sellers.

Just thought i'd leave a quick note about it incase you guys are looking for a free place to advertise cars...

http://www.irishcartrades.com

If you have any ideas about what I could do with this site it would be great. I want to make it useful to people )

Anyway, let me know what you think...

prospect

not sure the Mods will be overhappy with you advertising your site here...

Mc-BigE

nice looking site, like the way the car preview comes up in the search.
but does it offer any more than the existing, carzone.ie or autotrader.ie?

sicruise

Well the plan is to just keep it free/have much better search functionality... give it a nice easy to use feel. I can't stand the searches on cbg where you have to re-enter everything any time you want to change your search...

Mc-BigE

like the idea that its free, it will def. catch on if thats the case (but free for how long) a bit like Pistonheads.co.uk

one thing i noticed, is there a pull down,button to distinguish between private and dealer seller?

smash

so now there's carzone, carsireland, cbg, autotrader and irishcartrades and a lot more...

I wonder which one the dealers will choose and the rest will then fall!

smash

another thing.... why list make and models when there's none in the stsyem? I know you say (0) but it's kind of redundant.

and this doesn't work - http://www.irishcartrades.com/Controller/dealerregistration

sicruise

It will stay free for private users forever... need to think about dealers pricing...

Didn't think of it before... will look into implementing that...

do you mean as a search selection and have the ads flagged appropriately?

Mc-BigE

sicruise wrote:

It will stay free for private users forever... need to think about dealers pricing...

Didn't think of it before... will look into implementing that...

do you mean as a search selection and have the ads flagged appropriately?

why not both,

Just put (D) or (P) at the end of the description

and also a pulldown if you want to filter each out separately.

smash

ye, if the cars aren't there, just don't list them

prospect

Okay, constructive criticism,

Can you add a grouping level for Petrol and Diesel?

smash

and auto/manual

and a few more bugs, you have listed 3 porsches but there's only 1 there actually, and 1 aston listed but there's none there.

all small things.

mike65

How do I toggle the pages?

Mike.

jjbrien

site doesnt seem to work for me wait it now up but took 60 seonds to load

smash

search box's on homepage are a bit too short to show full model names. and you can't select cars from homepage to get more info on them.

sicruise

steve06 wrote:

another thing.... why list make and models when there's none in the stsyem? I know you say (0) but it's kind of redundant.

and this doesn't work - http://www.irishcartrades.com/Controller/dealerregistration

Yea still working on the dealer section functionality... it will be down every so often over the next few days... should have it in good working order by the end of the week.

smash

yeah, well they're all small bugs, but I'd check out the javascript errors first, there seems to be a bug in there somewhere.

sicruise

mike65 wrote:

How do I toggle the pages?

Mike.

Hi Mike,

You should just be able to click in the radio button and it auto-changes...

Thanks for all the info guys... will try and get these bugs ironed out asap.

Gregor Samsa

I really like the way the car details come up in the middle of the listing page when you click on a car. This is a simple but very effective bit of UI design that is idealy suited to a site like this.

Obviously a few bugs to fix (the bottom radio buttons for going from listing page to listing page doesn't work for me, the top ones do), but hey, that's what beta is all about.

Best of luck with the site!

sicruise

phutyle wrote:

I really like the way the car details come up in the middle of the listing page when you click on a car. This is a simple but very effective bit of UI design that is idealy suited to a site like this.

Obviously a few bugs to fix (the bottom radio buttons for going from listing page to listing page doesn't work for me, the top ones do), but hey, that's what beta is all about.

Best of luck with the site!

Why thank you

Yea that works in firefox but not ie... need to figure it out... but as you said that's what beta is all about!

Seth Brundle

1. The logo looks like a caribbean holiday site logo! Get rid of!
2. Change the date format on the homepage (2007-07-17).
3. Move the "Per Page" filter towards the bottom and make the default 20.
4. Change many of the options from drop down to multi-line selects so that I can choose say both BMW 3ers and 5ers.
5. You model list seems a bit ad hoc - "316 4door saloon"
6. The sell page - move the text from the left.
7. Where is there a facility to report dodgy Nigerian listings?
8. Where is your privacy policy (a legal requirement!)

fletch

Personally I like to be able to search in my own defined price range rather than in steps of €5,000.
I'm not sure I like the UI of your site to be honest. I like the way for example with carzone and cbg, you can have multiple different pages open at the same time (using tabs)(makes it easy when comparing cars)...you can't seem to do this due to the nature of the way your site expands the details on the same page as the results screen.

Edit - Oh btw I do like the way you can refine your search on the fly...and the whole look of the site is very simple and clean

sicruise

kbannon wrote:

1. The logo looks like a caribbean holiday site logo! Get rid of!
2. Change the date format on the homepage (2007-07-17).
3. Move the "Per Page" filter towards the bottom and make the default 20.
4. Change many of the options from drop down to multi-line selects so that I can choose say both BMW 3ers and 5ers.
5. You model list seems a bit ad hoc - "316 4door saloon"
6. The sell page - move the text from the left.
7. Where is there a facility to report dodgy Nigerian listings?
8. Where is your privacy policy (a legal requirement!)

Thanks for the comments, what do you mean by point 5?

Never thought of point 7, i'll get on it

As for privacy policy we are working on all that... beta

sicruise

fletch wrote:

Personally I like to be able to search in my own defined price range rather than in steps of €5,000.
I'm not sure I like the UI of your site to be honest. I like the way for example with carzone and cbg, you can have multiple different pages open at the same time (using tabs)(makes it easy when comparing cars)...you can't seem to do this due to the nature of the way your site expands the details on the same page as the results screen.

Edit - Oh btw I do like the way you can refine your search on the fly...and the whole look of the site is very simple and clean

We actually made a conscious desicion not to allow users to input search parameters to make the site easier to use for the lay person... prob doesn't suit everyone...

So an open in new window for each car would suit your needs for the second point? Or how a about a user login system where you can save ads to your account?

First one for now though

Seth Brundle

sicruise wrote:

Thanks for the comments, what do you mean by point 5?

If you search for a BMW (and presumably others marques), the model options seem to be many. However, its not a complete list of all models and some of them are unnecessary such as the 316 4door saloon I mentioned.

Seth Brundle

Also change your error500 page to a redirect or something. By changing the querystring, from a Long (which is the required model type), I get the spurious message that will scare many people (see http://www.irishcartrades.com/Controller/search?Makes=sfsadf&model=&x=41&y=10)

mike65

Its does look like a travel site does'nt it?

Soz if this has been mentioned but re-ordering the cars by the criteria listed across the top is always handy ie by age/price/milage

Mike.

fletch

sicruise wrote:

We actually made a conscious desicion not to allow users to input search parameters to make the site easier to use for the lay person... prob doesn't suit everyone...

Fair point

sicruise wrote:

So an open in new window for each car would suit your needs for the second point? Or how a about a user login system where you can save ads to your account?

Yes something to that effect and so I can send a link of a car to a friend/colleague etc. Rather than having to tell them to search for a particular make/model and telling them that it's the Xth one in the list.

sicruise

First of all, thank you guys for the great feedback yesterday...

I made a few changes to reflect some of the suggestions yesterday.

1) Date is fixed on main page/
2) Search is now available for transmission/engine type
3) Front page minor changes...
4) Updated BMW car list to support what I hope is all models


I'm working on all the others and will let you know when they are up...

Thanks again!

Simon

mike65

Its not very Opera friendly (v8.54) tried to switche pages and it won't so have to load all examples into one page.

Mike.

Seth Brundle

Get rid of the time on the homepage.
The recent additions section on the homepage should link to the description of the car.
Don't use google adsense on the site as most adverts will be for your competitiors!
On the search page list - the first column containing the pic is too narrow for the text 'Page x'.

Out of curiosity and Im not sure if it was asked/answered - how long do adverts last for? Will they be automatically removed after a certain period? It might be helpful to see the date they were added to the site.