Rahul Pathak : My Personal Blog

Last Friday, we had an important release at Judy’s Book which included several new features. Some visible to consumers, others more in the back end, but all of which should lead to higher quality deals on site.

The primary elements of this release were:

• Deal Approval Queue
• User Posted Local Deals (supported by Local Editors in select geographies)
• Map Improvements
• Fall Promotion Support 

You can see some of the results of this work in Seattle, New York, Atlanta and Chicago.

The entire team came together and cranked to make this happen in a very short period of time and I’m really excited by how things turned out.

For those of you who are interested in the gory details:

Deal Approval Queue

The intent here was to provide a way to support UGC but to enforce quality standards. User contributed deals are of no value if they are spammy, irrelevant, miscategorized etc. The approval queue allows us to solicit content from users but provides a mechanism for us to ensure that only high quality deals make it onto the site. All user posted deals go into the Deal Appproval Queue and remain there until they are explicitly approved. The system also stores the history of approved and rejected deals so we can use it to train spam detection systems.

Content quality is a critical part of the user experience (something Erin & Chris have pounded into me - thanks guys) and you need to be very focused on keeping it high.

User Posted Local Deals

To this point, we had supported adding online deals to the system but we didn’t have a public way for users to contribute local deals. One aspect of the local deal post process that creates complexity is the fact that you have to provide a way for users to add business listings without creating duplicates in your data. In addition, no one wants to type in a complete address, so you have to facilitate search. Oh and by the way, you need to prevent people from spamming your listing database. (Dave has a great post on some of the fun things that happen in local listing spam.)

The Deal Approval Queue was the strategy we came up with to control the flow of data into the system. Because we had a mechanism for screening content, we wanted to make it as easy as possible to participate. This led to us to move from a model where posting was for Judy’s Book members only to a model where all you needed was an email address. If at some point in the future, you sign up for membership, all your deals will be available in your profile.

In addition to supporting user generated content, we’ve been actively recruiting local editors in select geographies to ensure a high quality base of local content. Erin’s written about this on the Judy’s Book blog and I’d touched on the subject earlier in a more generic way in my post on aggregation and UGC.

Map Improvements

The map now displays stores with the most popular local deals in any given category. In addition, you can pan and drag the map and it will continually update in order to provide you with a list of the best local stores that it can.

Fall Promotion Support

We’re currently running a daily giveaway where users can win a $25 gift certificate to a local boutique of their choice and there’s a $1,000 grand prize at the end of the promotion. We needed to put in a significant amount of work to support the marketing efforts around this promotion. The goal was to provide very prominent placement without being intrusive or degrading the user experience for those who weren’t interested in the promotion.

I think the team did a great job coming up with an implementation that works. If you come to the site looking for the promotion, or click on a promotion call out, we use javascript to grey out the screen and present you with an overlay that provides a streamlined way to participate. In addition to signing up with your email address, if you post high quality local deals, you gain additional entries into the giveaway.

The user flow around the promotion is quick and easy when you step through it (as it should be). Features that are easy to use, however, are typically features that required a great deal of thought and effort. This implementation was no exception. In order for something to feel easy for a user, a lot of people put a lot of work in behind the scenes.

Sorry for the recent rash of local deals posts, I’m just excited about the direction we’re going in. I was just checking out the Seattle Deals page today and came across information on a sale at Ian, a clothing boutique in my neighborhood. I had no idea this was taking place. It’s really cool to benefit from the value proposition we’re trying to deliver for our users.

The best way to figure out what works and doesn’t work in your product is to watch a member of your target audience using it. Prior to our recent release we conducted a number of simple focus groups at Judy’s Book where we had people come into the office for individual 30 minute sessions with our site.

One point to note here: don’t ask users what they want. Observe them doing the actions they want to do. This will tell you far more. Also, while individual sessions may seem inefficient, they avoid group think, so you get an honest opinion from each person rather than one collective opinion.

The Process:

The sessions had the following format:

• Initial impressions with no guidance - we just put the site up on a screen and asked for their reactions.
  • What do you think?
  • Who do you think this site is for?
  • What catches your eye?
  • What’s the first thing you would click on?

• Targeted Questions
  • How would you find deals in your city?
  • What does that heading mean to you?
  • If you click on that link, where do you think it would take you?
  • What do you think of the store logos on the right of the page?

• Observing Simple Tasks
  • If you were looking for a digital camera deal, how would you go about doing it?
  • If you wanted to find deals from Amazon, how would you start?
  • If you were looking to see if a store offered free shipping, how would you go about it?

What we learned:

Putting even a handful of users through this exercise is incredibly instructive, and humbling. No matter how well you think your site works, watching someone new try to use it makes you cringe from time to time. When you’re closely involved with something it’s hard to see all its flaws but three 30 minute sessions with new users will bring them all out into sharp relief.

We learned a lot from these sessions but in this post, I’m going to focus on the challenge of displaying online and local deals on the same site. Prior to this release at Judy’s Book, our site showed users online only deals by default and then after clicking on a link labeled “View Local Results” you would be shown the local deals that were relevant. This seemed logical enough until we asked a user to see if there were any local deals she cared about. She didn’t have a clue how to proceed.

Once we showed her, we then asked her to find a deal from Amazon and she started trying to find it in the
Seattle store directory. After seeing a couple of users proceed in this way, it became clear that the distinction between online and local deals was meaningless to users. They just wanted to see the deals relevant to them.

From the user’s perspective, it became clear that they wanted to see the deals they could access in one place. Sitting in Seattle, I can buy from my local Target, but I can also buy from Amazon.com. The distinction between online and local isn’t relevant when I’m browsing deals - it only becomes relevant when I try and act on what I see.

What we did:

This insight led to a fundamental change to the site. Instead of creating silos of online and local content, we blended the two. As a result, users see all deals that are relevant to them, whether online or local. Using filters in the left nav, they can narrow the list if they want.

As a result, on our Seattle Deals page, a user now sees our best local and online deals blended together. This is a much more logical and natural experience. You don’t have to toggle between “Online” and “Local” to find Amazon.com versus your local Target. In hindsight, we probably should have thought of this earlier, but watching a real user wrestle with this issue in person really hammered the point home.

Going Forward:

It’s hard to find the time to invite people in and have them use your site but at the end of the day, it’s a very cost-effective way of improving things. Even though it can be hard at times, and it inevitably leads to changes which can also be problematic, simple usability testing like this is critical. The payoff in terms of feedback, for what is at the end of the day, a very small amount of time and money, is staggering.

We’ve been working hard to find creative ways to get hard to find local content into the hands of users - basically, doing work so users don’t have to. As most people in and around the local online sector know, it’s hard to get great local content. I think we’re starting to figure it out - check out our Seattle and Atlanta local deals pages.

The deals rock and they are relevant and unique - this data isn’t available elsewhere on the web. I’m really excited about the quality of the deals on these pages and I’m looking forward to them getting even better.PS: If you want to sign up for a weekly email with the top 10 local deals, just click on “Get a Deal Alert” in the left nav of the pages above.

With last night’s release, as Dave mentioned, there were a bunch of changes to Judy’s Book and I’ll be writing more about those next week as we shake out some of the outstanding issues. One feature that I’d like to mention in the near term is Deal Alerts. In the left nav on every page, you’ll see a box that allows you to sign up for a Deal Alert for the page that you’re viewing.

The signup process is streamlined and after you confirm your email address we’ll send you new deals that match the criteria you select. So, for example, you could sign up for “Seattle’s Best Shoe Deals” and receive that regularly via email. In keeping with the notion that you should control the communication you get, you can manage all your alerts from your profile. Membership is not required to sign up but if you do become a member, we bring all your preferences forward.

Like any new feature, perfecting this will take work, but I’m thrilled to have this released. In general, in spite of some issues we need to work out, last night’s release was a big one for us.

Facebook is offering its members the ability to post free classified ads. Some interesting snippets from the MSNBC article:

• Facebook has over 22 million members
• Craiglist processes over 17 million ads per month
• Real Estate and Recruitment are the most profitable categories for newspaper classifieds.

Apparently, cars and other for sale items are at the low end of the classifieds food chain.

UPDATE: The importance of recruitment is supported by the fact that both Microsoft (Career Builder) and Yahoo (consortium of 176 newspapers) have partnered with newspaper companies for recruiting ads.

A basic truth of startups is that there are many important tasks that aren’t always fun to do. Another basic truth is that no matter what role you play in the organization, you’ll find yourself doing a lot of these. One great example is partner category mapping.

One of the really fun parts of aggregating local deals is the need to map the category trees of your partners to your own. And when I say fun, it’s about as much fun as getting your wisdom teeth out. It’s especially awesome when working with local data providers because the local classification systems are so granular. For example, there are categories for things like “Junior’s Wallets and Accessories Cases” and “Miscellaneous Sprinkler Systems.” Sometimes you can automate the process of mapping inbound data to your category structures, other times, you have to review a list of thousands of items and make judgement calls.

While this is painful, it’s important to do it correctly to ensure users have a good browse experience. Otherwise, you either end up with data in the wrong place or your ‘uncategorized’ bucket getting incredibly large.

Dave and I were talking about a complex mapping that is on the horizon and that will take a good chunk of time to do correctly. We were exploring automated ways to do it and drew a blank. At that point, I said that I was ‘happy’ to do it by hand. Dave corrected me and replied that while I was probably very willing to do it, he’d be surprised if I was happy about it. He’s right. I don’t think I’d ever choose to do this for fun, but it needs to happen and it will get done. Actually, come to think of it, I’m willing to do it and Dave is happy that I am.

Wait a second. What’s wrong with this picture?

Last week, we released an update to the site that makes Valpak coupons mappable and searchable. The coolest part of this for me was navigating to the Seattle Restaurants page and dragging the map around and seeing which restaurants had deals in the neighborhood I was browsing. I’ve never paid any attention to the Valpak envelope that shows up in my mailbox but I found myself exploring the categories to see what was available and also to see what deals were available in my neighborhood. I’m excited about this release and for what’s to come in the next few weeks.

Was bound to happen. Damn this company knows how to innovate and execute. From their page on Google Labs:

Welcome to Google Voice Local Search

Google Voice Local Search is Google’s experimental service to make local-business search accessible over the phone.

To try this service, just dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone.

Using this service, you can:

• search for a local business by name or category.
  You can say “Giovanni’s Pizzeria” or just “pizza”.
• get connected to the business, free of charge.
• get the details by SMS if you’re using a mobile phone.
  Just say “text message”.

And it’s free. Google doesn’t charge you a thing for the call or for connecting you to the business. Regular phone charges may apply, based on your telephone service provider.

Note: Google Voice Local Search is still in its experimental stage. It may not be available at all times and may not work for all users. We’re fine-tuning the service to get better at recognizing your requests. It’s currently only available in English, in the US, for US business listings.

Thanks to doggdot.us and the Google Operating System Blog for pointing me to this.

UPDATE: Used this in the morning to track down a couple of phone numbers. Quick, efficient and worked really well. Very cool. Also, I wonder how this will tie in to the Google Phone…

Earlier in January, we called florists across the country to get the price of a dozen roses and saw an incredible variance in prices. We did the same exercise a few days ago to see how prices have changed and most florists raised their prices by about $20! You now have the privilege of spending up to $140 for some red flowers for the love (or lust of your life.) You can check out the details on our Valentine’s Day Flower Guide.

Will  you be buying roses this year or do you have a means of escaping the insanity?