ProductWiki - A Look at More Wiki-based Shopping
ProductWiki
“ProductWiki provides a new kind of online shopping experience: one that is both individual and collaborative. A place to not only research products, but a place to share with others what you’ve found. The best thing about ProductWiki is that we are an independent website that does not sell any products. What this means for the consumer is that we provide information that isn’t influenced by advertisers or sellers, and is instead based on what our users and the community feels is best.”
The Good - Nice Features
They have some neat Web 2.0ish features implemented. One of the things I really like was their tap board (seen to the left) which allows the users to tap the product. A tap related to the product can be that you love it, hate it, have it, or a tag. You can then connect with other users by seeing a list of who has tapped the item. Furthermore, on each product page they have a section for community. A member can participate by starting a discussion, writing an article, sharing an image, adding a relevent link, or writing a review.
The Bad - Where To Buy? Google Ads Aren’t The Answer
My last post mentioned having a viable business model using Google AdSense… I’m in pain with how ProductWiki has used Google Ads on their site! Such a nice looking site and then they pop Google Ads at the most critical point of revenue generation, eeek! Forget being told “Where to Buy”, some of the Google Ads are not even close to being relevant to the product itself! Looking at a JVC camera, Google is telling me where I can get a Palm Pilot case… Ugh.
Here is an example of one that at least is relevant to the manufacturer. The product is the
Sharp AQUOS LC-32D6U, but as you can see it does not tell you where to buy the correct model.
However, a few products do have Shopzilla implemented (not sure how that works, first I’ve seen of it).
That is good, but it is still two clicks to a merchant. Thus potentially losing revenue on the extra effort of another click. Optimally, what should it look like? Something like this:
Summary
Overall, as it is now, the site layout is very clean (love it!), and has a lot of community features. I haven’t heard too much buzz about this company so I think the company needs to do some serious PR to compete with ShopWiki… But could definitely be a contender in the long-run because of the innovative collaboration features. However, without pricing information, the site definitely loses out in the comparison shopping aspect! Note: They state that they are working on that section with merchant affiliates, so that is a plus.
Technorati Tags: ProductWiki, Web 2.0, Wiki, Shopping Comparison, ShopWiki
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Thanks for the kind words.
As for the annoyance of Google Ads, I definitely agree with you. Ultimately, we would like to have something like the mockup you’ve created in your blog post, but it requires some business development.
Eventually, we will end up at that result. For now, we are using the Google Ads as a placeholder until we can do better.
Tap board my arse, that’s SIMON! I had one growing up, hehe.
According to wikipedia a “tapboard” is a
In case anyone doesn’t remember the game, go play it online.
Good stuff, I love to see old 80s throwbacks that crop up.
Yeah… I knew I had seen it somewhere!
Ja, that first link is broken?
[…] In the email Erik told me that my original ProductWiki “blog post helped initiate the process.” It is a great feeling to know people are finding the information I post in my blog useful, and actually taking action based on it. They even did a nicer job than my quick and dirty mockup seen in my previous ProductWiki post, check out the Apple iPod 30GB Video page (”Where to buy” section seen below): […]