Next up is Yipit. But this isn’t just about how awesome Yipit is. No no – today they launched profile pages, and in the process, further convoluted their home page. So this post is about how I would look over their site, and improve their UI and SEO.

To me, SEO is about giving the user what they want. In the case of a local search site, that relates to what they want (fishnet stockings, lava lamps, Company X, etc) and where they want it (New York City, Greenwich Village [neighborhood], 10015 [zip code], or some other informal space). It is also very possible that the user has a general idea of what they want but do not know how to exactly define it.

So – off the bat, the home page for Yipit is rather confusing. We have 1 2 3, where #1 is a non-standardized (in general UI terms) breakdown, #2 is slightly more confusing (it is pre-filled as NY – which doesn’t match either of their three criteria), and #3 is … something that should not need to be defined. Under it we have a list of Top Furniture and Top Discount Furniture stores, with a crap-ton of ‘popular searches’ that somehow relate to each business (but how?) On the right is a quick description of Yipit that seems stuffed with keywords, then twitter updates, then more popular searches, and then popular business searches.

What in God’s name of stuffing is this?

On a slight tangent – the English language can be hard. What may be X to me may be Y to you. Taxonomy is not an easy business. But the complexity in taxonomy is far simpler for Yipit – by focusing on furniture (more later), the verse of words people could be possibly looking for is greatly narrowed. Instead of a drop down – just have a box saying ‘What kind of Furniture?’ Best of all – this lets them generate a list of keywords based on what users are searching for. Eventually they may learn that 75% of people use ‘fold-out bed’ while 20% use ‘sofa bed’ and 5% use ‘bed that opens up’. Sure they may miss it the first few times someone searches for it (as it would not be in their taxonomy) – but over time they would have this incredibly rich database of words people search for relating to their own internal category. Back to the topic – replace ‘Near’ with ‘Around (optional)’ and have it pre-filled with New York City. Then a simple search submit. All of them next to each other, no #s, and maybe a few examples under the two input boxes. Forcing their categorization on me was an unsatisfying UI experience.

On a related note – the ‘definitions’ link looks like it is clickable – but it sure ain’t. Confused me there.

So – now we have greatly cleaned up the main search part – no forcing a user to figure out what you think they want – let them define it, and no need for the ‘duh’ 1 2 3 #s.

Next up – we have a bunch of ‘Top Furniture Stores’ under it. First off – all the profile page links go to the generic /furniture__ny/ page – I assume that is a bug. Second of all – why do we have 900 keywords stuffed in there? Having ‘new york’ stuffed in every single result leaves me with a bad taste. You have tags for each business. You should be using those.

But never mind the tags even. You guys have two objectives here – get people to use the Yipit code, or get people to find Yipit when searching for a popular key phrase / store. At the same time, Yipit’s authority in the eyes of search engines is still weak – it is new, and does not have a few links. So – instead of 12 businesses across two categories, list 4. Two are your advertisers, and two are either the two most popular furniture stores in NYC, or two advertisers. Ideally this would let you track how effective the home page is in getting people to use the coupon, and thus the value it generates. Furthermore, just list the tags you ahve for each business. No need to put in all these extra popular searches.

Now to the right side. The first paragraph is nice, the second paragraph throws me off with all that red text for links. Is it really needed? You already have popular searches – leave it at that. As for the twitter updates – honestly how many people care about that? You have a blog link in the footer – leave it at that. Leave those popular searches and popular business searches (though really rename it to ‘Popular Businesses’) – so your right is now a quick blurb on how Yipit does furniture (but should be slightly more fleshed out), and two quick lists on Popular Searches and Popular Businesses.

And bring the nice little footer image to the top please

So – now we have a home page much nicer and cleaner.

Next up – the directory pages in the footer. They are employing a Neighborhood directory, a Zip Code directory, and a Business Directory by alphabet. The Neighborhood directory expands into a bunch of pages for every category for every neighborhood, the zip directory the same, and the business directory just straight links.

Down the road this may work. But as I said before, personally I think that is stretching it too thin. Trying to run before you can walk. If I could run things, I would nuke the zip code directory, nuke the business listings, and only use Neighborhoods. The neighborhood-specific page would then have a list of just the businesses found in that directory. They have 337 in total – no worry of having too many in one neighborhood

The profile page I cannot complain about much. I would get rid of that Search Yipit drill down they have, and replace it back with the simple What/Where search box (with the Where pre-filled with that neighborhood). And instead of Other Searches of Interest, I would simply list the 5 closest Furnituer stores. Too many keywords (at this time) seem to be spreading yourself thin.

So we finally end up with the super confusing (to me) /d/xxxxx pages. Before I get started on it specifically, I noticed some links where /d/xxxxx_ny and some were /d/xxxxxxx_NY. That is duplicate content in the eyes of some search engines.

Now – the idea is smart. Search pages or tag pages – both are the same to Yipit. But that UI is just ‘what the fuck’ to me. At 1024 res that map on teh right is so squished. And way way too much information.

For example, I am looking at Murphy Beds. I fail to see why I care what the popular searches are on that page. I want to know name, info, and yes knowing their amount is nice. But popular searches are out. They could easily wipe out that entire blue box, giving the map a lot more space. Plus – you have a map – no need to put in the intersection. I think it should be just Name, Price (clickable with a tooltip to say exactly what $$$ means), address, phone, # of pieces, and a ‘more details’ link to their profile page! (profile pages are found nowhere on the search results page).

And as I said before – please just use a free-for-all input box for what.

I know I am not the only one confused by this page – the breadcrumbs lead to nowhere.

I would also slightly tweak the http://www.solorwell.com/ibegin-labs/ http://www.solorwell.com/ibegin-labs/#comments Wed, 27 Aug 2008 05:21:06 +0000 Sol http://www.techsoapbox.com/ibegin-labs/ So a few people have asked me … we ‘released’ iBegin Labs over 4 months ago, yet outside of this blog and the iBegin Blog we have never mentioned it.

The thing is that we have a lot of stuff that we are working, testing, and experimenting with. As I alluded to in my earlier post on our Simple Earnings Viewer, there is a certain cost in taking something we are using internally, polishing it, and publishing it live.

One little thing we have been having fun with is Lifestream. As the # of services people are using explodes all around us, and the content disperses into the furthest nooks of the internet, we’ve been trying to figure out how to target, harness, and make sense of what is going on through all these social networks.

While it may not make immediate sense in the context of what iBegin does (how does social networking feeds tie into business listings), all eventually makes sense.

The plan is now with Lifestream (the finalized product will of course utilize iBox and iBegin Share) and ‘Simple Earnings Viewer’ (in lieu of a better name) released, we can finally go live with iBegin Labs.

And maybe we can resurrect our ajax feedback mechanism.

So for example – if you use Google Adsense, you can see how your CPM levels off the course of the day, and how it varies on a day to day, week to week, etc etc basis. Throw in predictive earnings too while you are at it.

Just curious if people would be interested in using something like this? There is always a cost of exporting something from internal use to the iBegin Labs, so want to know if it is worth the hassle.

So hopefully in the next week or two we can launch a little version of our own ‘labs’ here at iBegin. Shouldn’t be taken too seriously – just some random testing, thoughts, and projects of our own (most half completed) for the world to enjoy.

Update: and it be here.

I thought I would take the time every few months to showcase a few sites using our data.

First up is Restaurant Reviews. We had a bit of hand in this product – the design was done by our design firm, Design Disease.

I absolutely love the design. I am definitely biased here, but I really think it has one of the nicest/cleanest UIs a local site has (I will admit – even nicer than iBegin’s).

The site is very fast to use, but I do wonder how they will get users involved. I talked to the two operators, Anita & Todd Cowan, and they promised me they have some interesting ideas. They did underscore that they want to remove anonymity and focus on the ‘meat’ – actual reviews, not stories and tales. Time will tell how it goes, but it does look good, and it does respond fast. I’ll do a follow up in a couple of months.

The other site is OddPath.

OddPath is an interesting one, a lot due to what happened in the background.

The site was developed by Kailash. Very smart and very talented (we acquired Commentful from him). When we had launched iBegin Source, I had showed him the site.

A few weeks later, we were chatting about performance optimization for searching through 10+ million records. After some discussion, he mentioned how he was working on a local site using iBegin Source.

One of the motivating factors behind iBegin Source was to enable hobbyists (ala Kailash) to build something local. While I firmly believe that our price point is extremely affordable, it can still be expensive for others (ala Kailash – a student). So while I had never officially announced it (I imagined it would be months before it would be useful) – we had always intended on awarding ‘free’ commercial licenses to interesting projects. They would still have to link back to iBegin Source, but otherwise they would get the full commercial data/license.

Case in point: OddPath. Kailash did the entire site himself, without incurring a dime in expenses (other than hosting). And he was able to do this because of iBegin Source.

Before I digress any further – OddPath’s best feature is its mobile search. Simple and effective, I think this is OddPath’s best feature. Other features such as ‘Buzz’ and ‘Pictures’ are interesting, but definitely need some fine tuning. The mobile feature (and its simplicity) could push him forward there.

A friend of mine and me bought billion.org a while ago. The name says all about our lofty goal But while brainstorming on how to raise money (amongst other issues), one thing that keeps coming up – do people really care?

Eg lets say I made a website – lets call it ‘CharitySearch.com’ The results were directly from Google, and all AdSense (minus the hosting fees) revenue went to charity. Personally, I would find that a no-brainer. Just change my top right search to CharitySearch.com, and done! That has to make some money. But would people do it?

We also talked about using an Adsense ID for charity. We could make one day of the month ‘Charity Day’ where everyone would change their AdSense ID to this specific ID (got approval from Google). But how many people would actually do that?

Another idea was to find some corporate sponsors, and basically act as a conduit. Every dollar you donate goes to the charity you want. But the benefit would be that under the ‘billion.org’ idea we would be doing something for the greater good. 1000 people donating $10 – no one pays attention. But billion.org raising $10,000 towards its lofty goal of $1,000,000,000 – maybe something to write home about?

But the nagging question I have always had – would people do it? CharitySearch.com would take less than a minute (changing your default search engine). AdSense ID would be more complicated, depending on your CMS. On a site like Blog Flux it would take us under a minute. The third option is harder, but it gives your donation double meaning – you donate to the charity you want to and you compel others to do the same.

Anyone care to comment on motivations there? (especially since #1 costs you zero cents).