A new Irish used-car site: CarList.ie. Feedback welcome.

tw0nk

Carlist, great to see some competition to old lazy car selling websites, I visited your site for the first time today and I am very impressed. In my book it is already nicer to use than carzone and definitely faster so far although I know you have a lower amount of cars in your DB, so lets hope it scales well when more and more cars are for sale.

Now for a little bit of critisism (hopefully beneficial) on most car sites I find the sort-by column functionality very useful and I use it heavily, but I noticed that the sort-by mileage is quite slow and the sort-by "up arrow" is missing from mileage.

Also, (god I feel like a QA person here) on the addition of search criteria ie the "has photo" option, if I select to add it to search then select "yes" option then click the X button, instead of the option being removed from search, it just sets "yes" back to default option.

Hope that all made sense and was helpful, best of luck with site!

CarList.ie

tw0nk wrote: »

Carlist, great to see some competition to old lazy car selling websites, I visited your site for the first time today and I am very impressed. In my book it is already nicer to use than carzone and definitely faster so far although I know you have a lower amount of cars in your DB, so lets hope it scales well when more and more cars are for sale.

Thanks. I'm sure that I can keep it fast as the site grows. There are a lot of performance improvements in the pipeline.

tw0nk wrote: »

Now for a little bit of critisism (hopefully beneficial) on most car sites I find the sort-by column functionality very useful and I use it heavily, but I noticed that the sort-by mileage is quite slow and the sort-by "up arrow" is missing from mileage.

I've fixed the missing up arrow issue. You can see the result here. Thanks. The performance of the sort is not great at the moment, this will improve in the future.

tw0nk wrote: »

Also, (god I feel like a QA person here) on the addition of search criteria ie the "has photo" option, if I select to add it to search then select "yes" option then click the X button, instead of the option being removed from search, it just sets "yes" back to default option.

I've fixed this too.

Thanks for your kind words and feedback. :-)

L-M

Finally a bit of competition, fair play. Just one question, i searched Volkswagen Golf any year etc. and 6 or 7 VW_DELETE_GOLF came up... Dunno what this is about. Other than that it looks well and best of luck.

LM

CarList.ie

Limerick-man wrote: »

Finally a bit of competition, fair play. Just one question, i searched Volkswagen Golf any year etc. and 6 or 7 VW_DELETE_GOLF came up... Dunno what this is about. Other than that it looks well and best of luck. LM

Good catch, I'm currently reorganising some of the categories - VW and Volkswagen are being combined into Volkswagen. This should resolve itself within 48 hours.

CarList.ie

CarList.ie wrote: »

Thanks for the suggestion, I've just deployed this feature to the live site.

The 'County' dropdown now has entries such as '[Near Wicklow]' and '[Near Sligo]'. These will restrict the search to county and its surrounding counties. For example, searching for vehicles '[Near Offaly]' will search the following counties:

Roscommon, Westmeath, Kildare, Laois, Tipperary, Galway & Offaly.

I've uploaded a brief screencast demonstrating this new feature:

http://blog.carlist.ie/post/2008/04/New-Feature-Search-Near-a-County.aspx

CarList.ie

I've just deployed the latest version of the site and private sellers can now list their cars on www.carlist.ie.

If anyone here has a car to sell, please grab a free private seller account and add you car - it should take a couple of minutes. Let me know how you get on.

EDIT: you can view the private sellers here. Our first private seller just added their car.

speedfreak

thanks for link. tried to add car and when i go to save I get message saying "the change you wanted was rejected". so what do I do now?

**edit sorted with customer service on site. tks**

Seth Brundle

IMO, whilst it still looks good, there isn't anything snazzy on the homepage to make it memorable. A pic or two might brighten it up. I'm also not convinced with the colour scheme (green, cream and blue).
Why does the search list 52 cars per page - unusual number!

CarList.ie

speedfreak wrote: »

thanks for link. tried to add car and when i go to save I get message saying "the change you wanted was rejected". so what do I do now?

**edit sorted with customer service on site. tks**

Thanks for reporting this, there is a small bug when no price or year is entered. I'll fix this soon.

speedfreak

just one thing with adding car. would be good to have kms or miles option for mileage. dunno what my car is in miles...

CarList.ie

kbannon wrote: »

IMO, whilst it still looks good, there isn't anything snazzy on the homepage to make it memorable. A pic or two might brighten it up. I'm also not convinced with the colour scheme (green, cream and blue).
Why does the search list 52 cars per page - unusual number!

I've tried to make the site as simple as possible and I've avoided adding any unnecessary graphics. Would you prefer if the homepage defaulted to the photo view?

The photo view lists 4 cars per row, this is why the page size is 52.

CarList.ie

speedfreak wrote: »

just one thing with adding car. would be good to have kms or miles option for mileage. dunno what my car is in miles...

I'll add an option to the edit page so that you can either enter in miles or kilometers. I'll post again here when that is ready.

Cionád

For the time being throw 25000 km to miles into google, and watch the magic happen

Seth Brundle

CarList.ie wrote: »

I've tried to make the site as simple as possible and I've avoided adding any unnecessary graphics. Would you prefer if the homepage defaulted to the photo view?

The photo view lists 4 cars per row, this is why the page size is 52.

It looks better IMO but only select cars with a photo! Or even select a random car photo on each page load.
Whats with the extra slashes in that URL? One slash gives a 404!

CarList.ie

kbannon wrote: »

It looks better IMO but only select cars with a photo! Or even select a random car photo on each page load.
Whats with the extra slashes in that URL? One slash gives a 404!

What if I added a small flash slideshow to the right hand side, similar to this one?

I've a little bit of work still to do on the search URLs. A more complicated search looks like (BMW 316s between 3-15k and year 1992-2003):

http://www.carlist.ie/vehicles/4,5/3000-15000/1992-2003/price-d/flat/

EDIT: RSS feeds for these searches are also coming sometime next week. I'll post here when they are available.

CarList.ie

speedfreak wrote: »

thanks for link. tried to add car and when i go to save I get message saying "the change you wanted was rejected". so what do I do now?

**edit sorted with customer service on site. tks**

I've fixed this bug and have deployed the latest version to www.carlist.ie. Thanks for letting me know about this.

speedfreak

just a couple of other things which would be hepful. how do i edit my profile? I can edit car but not profile it seems. I'm not based in Dublin and can't change this. Also would be handy to have alternate email as public display email.

CarList.ie

speedfreak wrote: »

just a couple of other things which would be hepful. how do i edit my profile? I can edit car but not profile it seems. I'm not based in Dublin and can't change this. Also would be handy to have alternate email as public display email.

There currently isn't a link from the dashboard, but you can use this one.

I'll add the alternate email suggestion to my todo list and post here when it is ready.

Thanks for the great feedback!

speedfreak

no probs

Raskolnikov

I like the idea of the blog, it gives a more human element to the site and allows your customers to interact and actively participate in improving the site. You should update it a bit more. If not, get rid of it, nothing looks worse then something that hasn't been updated in months.

Also, I think you ought to lose the default search that lists the first 52 cars. To me, it doesn't present anything that the user needs to see at the front end. Also, I think that the front page could be simplified. Think a nice, simple, Fischer-Price type index page that has three simple options, search for a car, upload your car and log in.

paddyblue

It defineetly has some plus points over the other sites out there at the moment. Great interface and very user friendly, some nice features not seen before. Hopefully with a bit of luck and overcoming the inevetable teething problems it will take off for you. I'll stop in for a look now and again to see how it's progressing.

One or two things i didn't like -
Font is a bit too big
Photo quality seems not so good
(just my first impressions after logging on)

ninty9er

I was looking for this thread only a few days ago...the site still isn't showing on the first page of google for "cars online ireland"

Should be a priority IMO.

CarList.ie

Raskolnikov wrote: »

I like the idea of the blog, it gives a more human element to the site and allows your customers to interact and actively participate in improving the site. You should update it a bit more. If not, get rid of it, nothing looks worse then something that hasn't been updated in months.

Thanks, I'll update the carlist.ie blog at once a week from now on. I'll post about the recent improvements later today. Here is the RSS feed.

Raskolnikov wrote: »

Also, I think you ought to lose the default search that lists the first 52 cars. To me, it doesn't present anything that the user needs to see at the front end. Also, I think that the front page could be simplified. Think a nice, simple, Fischer-Price type index page that has three simple options, search for a car, upload your car and log in.

I'll look into creating a simplified home page. I originally wanted the homepage to dive straight into the application but I'm changing my mind.

CarList.ie

paddyblue wrote: »

It defineetly has some plus points over the other sites out there at the moment. Great interface and very user friendly, some nice features not seen before. Hopefully with a bit of luck and overcoming the inevetable teething problems it will take off for you. I'll stop in for a look now and again to see how it's progressing.

Thanks, I'm glad you like it. I have lots of nice features coming soon.

paddyblue wrote: »

One or two things i didn't like -
Font is a bit too big
Photo quality seems not so good
(just my first impressions after logging on)

Is the font too big across the whole site or just in some areas?

The photo quality is dependent on the source image. The site supports high quality photographs:

http://www.carlist.ie/vehicles/view/50339-jaguar-xj-series-dublin

Thanks for your feedback. I want to build the site into something that everyone wants and the feedback from this thread is extremely useful

CarList.ie

ninty9er wrote: »

I was looking for this thread only a few days ago...the site still isn't showing on the first page of google for "cars online ireland"

Should be a priority IMO.

It takes time to move up the organic google rankings. I am moving up on certain keywords but need to do some more work in this area. It's on my long todo list :-)

SouperComputer

Congrats on this initiative.....My 2c....

I agree on the need for a snazzied up interface. Im all for a minimalist approach but most people are expecting a bit of bling. It doesnt have to comliated, but a bit more colour would be nice.

One thing I would like to see is a search option/checkbox for "recent price reduction" I'ts a buyer's market after all

You've probably reviewed these already, if not take a look at some stateside sites..... www.cars.com www.autotrader.com www.carsoup.com

The thing that stands out the most about these is the amount of extra information linked, reviews (both professional and joe-soap), detailed specs, book pricing, average sale price. The idea of a feed from honestjohn's website for each model comes to mind.

Have you considered links to ebay auctions? Personally I dont see it as a conflict of interests, some like ebay some hate it. Might be a good way to
get some cross-polination going.

This would put you well ahead of carzone IMO.....

ninty9er

One more thing on the photos.

When you open the car link the screen smokes and a nice popup appears, but in the [+] expansion it just puts the photo on a white background in a new page (without opening a new window/tab). That's a niggly little bug, but one that bugs me.

Edit: did you get any joy with the local enterprise board?

CarList.ie

SouperComputer wrote: »

Congrats on this initiative.....My 2c....

I agree on the need for a snazzied up interface. Im all for a minimalist approach but most people are expecting a bit of bling. It doesnt have to comliated, but a bit more colour would be nice.

One thing I would like to see is a search option/checkbox for "recent price reduction" I'ts a buyer's market after all

Nice idea, i'll add it to the todo list.

SouperComputer wrote: »

You've probably reviewed these already, if not take a look at some stateside sites..... www.cars.com www.autotrader.com www.carsoup.com

The thing that stands out the most about these is the amount of extra information linked, reviews (both professional and joe-soap), detailed specs, book pricing, average sale price. The idea of a feed from honestjohn's website for each model comes to mind.

I'll take an indept look at those sites. I'm interested in ways of adding more information/interactivity to the vehicle view pages. Thanks for posting the links.

SouperComputer wrote: »

Have you considered links to ebay auctions? Personally I dont see it as a conflict of interests, some like ebay some hate it. Might be a good way to
get some cross-polination going.

This would put you well ahead of carzone IMO.....

I hadn't considered listing ebay cars. They only have 121 vehicles at the moment - I don't think that this is enough volume to make the effort worthwhile.

CarList.ie

ninty9er wrote: »

One more thing on the photos.

When you open the car link the screen smokes and a nice popup appears, but in the [+] expansion it just puts the photo on a white background in a new page (without opening a new window/tab). That's a niggly little bug, but one that bugs me.

Fixed :-)

ninty9er wrote: »

Edit: did you get any joy with the local enterprise board?

I haven't approached them yet, I'm finalising some features that will have appeal in the UK. Once I've completed these I'll get in contact with them.

ninty9er

CarList.ie wrote: »

Fixed :-)

Not quite. Not for Firefox anyways. It's off centre and the next, previous buttons are in the middle whiel the close button is hidden.