Comments on: Shopping Path’s CrispyShop

By: Gui-Leal

Gui-Leal — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 20:50:48 +0000

The basic assumption of the Shopping community is that the way products or offers should be displayed is by lists or tables, where the most relevant items should be displayed at the top of the list. Similar to models used by search engines.

The fundamental problem of lists is that people can compare only a few items (max 6) displayed at the screen. At the time, people scrolled down at the end of the list or changed pages, they forgot the relationship of the items viewed before.
How can you expect consumers to efficiently compare hundred of options? In fact consumers usually limit their choices to the first page, and usually to the first item.

Graphical representation is a classical solution for this problem. The following question is what is the most efficient graphical pattern that would efficiently represent options of Products and Offers?
People tentatively tried to use treemaps to solve it, but it is inefficient. Our answer is the ShoppingPath pattern.

Even though CrispyShop was featured at ComparisonEngines.com and at the SDforum event last Tuesday at Yahoo; the ShoppingPath experience is still early-stage and incomplete (there is a lot to come).

Most people think the actual model is cool, but wonder about its value. That is not a surprise, because the feature, which shows the value proposition is not visible yet.
At the time the product is complete, the value proposition will be obvious. For now the product is very incomplete.

If you have comments and recommendations, please send it to us at: http://www.shoppingpath.com/htmls/feedback.html

Regards, Gui

By: EarlyMiser

EarlyMiser — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 19:05:35 +0000

Classic issue is what is the problem being solved by these new UIs? It’s really hard to say but the interface at crispyshop is “designer cool” not user cool.

By: hanfrac

hanfrac — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 19:40:55 +0000

These new UI’s don’t matter (much). Not because they are mashups. But more because I don’t see people flocking to these new shopping interfaces unless they also add a lot of value. Great – you can filter by color at ShopWiki. Great – you can filter by “toe style” or “bag clasp” at like.com. Great – BrowseGoods has built a floor layout. But once you get over the newness and neatness of it, it’s hard to use. What will actually get bought through an interface like that?

They’re cool and they’re new. But they’re not useful. At least not enough and not yet.

Note – I agree that shopping interfaces seem stuck in an Amazon world. I’m waiting to see something that is innovative AND functional AND solves a problem.