What Exactly Is Dontbuyjunk?

[Suhit Gupta]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.dontbuyjunk.com/' target='_blank'>http://www.dontbuyjunk.com/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"The idea for this site started when we noticed our friends and family often asking us for product advice before making a purchase. They know us as electronic enthusiasts who enjoy regularly researching about the latest and greatest products, from magazines to Internet message boards. Even if we didn't know the best recommendation off the top of our heads, we knew where to find the product information and how to then analyze it to come up with the best recommendation. However, we became increasingly frustrated that there was not a site that we could feel comfortable recommending to our friends and family that would offer accurate recommendations in a simple and personalized manner."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/dontbuyjunk.jpg" /><br /><br />Very cool site for buying tech gadgets. It has a very nice and unique sorting feature based on a slider scale of prices and checkboxes for features. The product refresh on the right based on the selection. Some very cool <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJAX">Ajax</a> work. BTW, one thing to note, when you get your results on the right, they feature about five items in various categories. Look about those pictures and below the category name to see all the products that also met your criteria but weren't featured.

[andrewh]

Thanks for the post, we appreciate the positive comments!

I'd love to interject a few additional points about Dontbuyjunk, if I may. We built it to focus on the first aspect of a purchase, and arguably the most difficult: deciding what to buy. We all had our various methods to solve this problem, from posting on a forum and getting varied responses, to reading every possible review on the Web. As our mission states, we felt there had to be a better way.

The core technology, which we call TotalRank, sorts the products using a combination of the product ratings and the system's confidence in those ratings (which is based off logical things such as the age, quantity, and consistency of the review data). It also allows for personalization of the product recommendations, by allowing the user to specify their preference in any aspect of a product (like portability or battery life for a digital camera) - this personalization feature then recalculates the product recommendations giving more priority to the selected attributes.

And just for clarification, the products presented intially for a section are not "featured" in any promotional sense - they are the top 3 products or product groupings for that type, based entirely off the review data. In everything we do, we make sure the product recommendations are concise and pure - you'll even notice we don't have any ads trying to promote a certain product.

We hope you guys like what we're doing, it's going to change the way everyone researches and shops on the Web!

Again, thanks so much for the positive comments - we always love support :).

-Andrew

[OSUKid7]

I love hearing from developers/owners directly. I read this article a few &lt;strike>days&lt;/strike> &lt;ins>ok I'm losing my mind, just a few hours (8O)&lt;/ins> ago, but didn't think much of it, and didn't go past the homepage of your site. Then I read your reply and tried it out. That's a really great site. I looked up LCD monitors and Wireless Routers and agreed with the selections for both. The site seems very streamlined and efficient, with no ads (at least I don't see any! :-D). :way to go: Great job.

[Pony99CA]

Very cool site for buying tech gadgets. It has a very nice and unique sorting feature based on a slider scale of prices and checkboxes for features. The product refresh on the right based on the selection.
Yes, it seems cool, but there seem to be some bugs.

I selected MP3 players, then checked that an FM tuner was important to me. The iPod Nano was shown as one of the Flash choices. If I click on the product link for the Nano, it says "FM Tuner: No". Is the Nano so cool that I should be shown it even though it doesn't have a tuner?

EDIT: OK, clicking on FM Tuner a second time got a red check mark instead of unchecking it. That got me to read the description of the "I care more about" section, which explained that one click was somewhat important and two clicks was very important. Indeed, after the second click, the iPod Nano was gone.

While having priority levels is a good thing, I think the current scheme isn't as intuitive as it could be. I haven't come up with a better scheme yet, but at least include some text that indicates the check boxes can be clicked like that. This system breaks the typical paradigm of check boxes either being on or off, and that should be indicated. (And, yes, I did see the graphic, but that doesn't make the situation much clearer.)

Some very cool Ajax work.
OK, show of hands. How many people know what AJAX is? The digital media arena has enough buzzwords without throwing in Web design ones, doesn't it? Why not just say "Some very cool design work?"

Steve

P.S. For those who didn't know, AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJAX).

[andrewh]

Pony99CA,

The TotalRank system we developed was modeled after how we all might recommend a product for a friend. You'll notice when you selected FM Tuner as a priority, the Confidence in the Nano ratings dropped from 100% to 50%, since there is no review data for that attribute. However, the product still has a great overall score, and when balanced with the confidence, is still ranked highly. When you emphasized FM tuner as a top priority by clicking twice, the confidence dropped to 25%.

The FM tuner is an edge case example, which we're still trying to improve - it's an attribute that will not be relevant to every product. We've been considering linking it to the FM Tuner spec filter (which you'll find in the "Only show me products that have..." section), so that when marked as a priority, only products with that feature are shown, in addition to that attribute being emphasized in the recommendations.

We've also gone through several iterations on the interface for the personalization feature. We're constantly trying to make it perfectly intuitive, so if you have any suggestions, we'd love to hear them.

Lastly, as you pointed out, we are not using AJAX to return the new product rankings, due to the complexity of the backend. The results are returned very quickly, so we didn't feel using AJAX would offer a signifigant improvement on the experience.

Thanks so much for the feedback, we really appreciate it!

-Andrew

[Suhit Gupta]

Some very cool Ajax work.
OK, show of hands. How many people know what AJAX is? The digital media arena has enough buzzwords without throwing in Web design ones, doesn't it? Why not just say "Some very cool design work?"
While it turns out that there is no AJAX involved here, why not use that terminology? As far as knowing what AJAX is, I have been using it quite extensively, both through my internship (earlier this year) and my general research. And IMHO, using the correct terminology is the right way to go. Using buzzwords willy-nilly doesn't make sense, but why not use it here? Moreover, if we don't use the right words, how will knowledge of various technologies spread, especially ones that are good?

Suhit

[Pony99CA]

Some very cool Ajax work.
OK, show of hands. How many people know what AJAX is? The digital media arena has enough buzzwords without throwing in Web design ones, doesn't it? Why not just say "Some very cool design work?"
While it turns out that there is no AJAX involved here, why not use that terminology? As far as knowing what AJAX is, I have been using it quite extensively, both through my internship (earlier this year) and my general research. And IMHO, using the correct terminology is the right way to go. Using buzzwords willy-nilly doesn't make sense, but why not use it here? Moreover, if we don't use the right words, how will knowledge of various technologies spread, especially ones that are good?
There are several reasons not to use it.

First, as I mentioned, this is a digital media Web site, not a Web design site. How does it matter to your readers if that site uses AJAX or not?

Second, even if you thought it was useful to mention here, you didn't define it. Do you really expect most of the readership here knows what AJAX is? Using the "right words" (even though they weren't right) doesn't help your readers if you don't define them (see how I did it in the P.S. of my post). Without a definition, it's just nonsense to most people.

Third, even with a definition, I bet most people still wouldn't know what it meant beyond a vague idea of what JavaScript and XML are.

Anyway, I don't think this should be a discussion about terminology. I just wanted to give you feedback to (hopefully) improve communication in future stories. The key point to remember in any communication is to write for your readers.

If you'd like to discuss this any further, please feel free to PM me. Let's get back to discussing the site, not the writing. :-)

Steve

[Jason Dunn]

Second, even if you thought it was useful to mention here, you didn't define it. Do you really expect most of the readership here knows what AJAX is? Using the "right words" (even though they weren't right) doesn't help your readers if you don't define them (see how I did it in the P.S. of my post). Without a definition, it's just nonsense to most people.

I've added a definition of Ajax to Suhit's post - enough said. Pony99CA, there'a reason boards have private messaging - if you have something to say to Suhit about his writing, just send him a message. There's no good reason to go off in the forums about it. :?