Introducing the What Hi-Fi? shopping site (beta)

[RhwDorland]

It looks great.

I feels strange thou that a Testers Magazine starts to sell stuff. Makes ya wonder how INDEPENDENT they will be...

 

[nopiano]

Just to be crystal clear, we're not actually selling anything ourselves. We're merely bringing together a basket of retailers' offers in one place on the website so it's easier for users to shop around and find good deals.

Ah ok I just assumed there was a fee for linking to products. If no money is changing hands then it is a different matter.

SB, I thought exactly the same as you. No objection from me in principle even if WHF did get a per-click fee or a percentage of each sale, but it would need highlighting very clearly. Martin Lewis' moneysavings site does this well, IMO.

More fundamentally, I think showing '5 star' items only is not a good idea (accepting this is beta) because the implication is 4 stars isn't up to snuff, which we all know plainly is not the case. And if money is involved, it could certainly be preceived as likely to influence awarding more stars to obvious money spinners - say the next Touch or Sonos item.

I'm sure Andy Clough will clarify this. And three cheers for letting us have first dibs on the beta!

 

[Andrew Everard]

The only 5 stars thing is very much part of the beta - in time, we would hope the site would expand to cover products both reviewed and unreviewed.

And don't worry – as with advertising in the magazine, the shopping site, which merely allows users to search for the best deal while staying under the whathifi.com 'umbrella'', will have no influence whatsoever on the reviewing process.

 

[nopiano]

Many thanks for the clarification, Andrew.

 

[AlmaataKZ]

Just to be crystal clear, we're not actually selling anything ourselves. We're merely bringing together a basket of retailers' offers in one place on the website so it's easier for users to shop around and find good deals.

Does WHF make money on this?

 

[Andrew Everard]

Does WHF make money on this?

I think that's the general idea – after all, we have to pay for this site somehow...

 

[Sliced Bread]

And don't worry - as with advertising in the magazine...

This is actually a good point

 

[Andy Clough]

Just to be crystal clear, we're not actually selling anything ourselves. We're merely bringing together a basket of retailers' offers in one place on the website so it's easier for users to shop around and find good deals.

Ah ok I just assumed there was a fee for linking to products. If no money is changing hands then it is a different matter.

SB, I thought exactly the same as you. No objection from me in principle even if WHF did get a per-click fee or a percentage of each sale, but it would need highlighting very clearly. Martin Lewis' moneysavings site does this well, IMO.

More fundamentally, I think showing '5 star' items only is not a good idea (accepting this is beta) because the implication is 4 stars isn't up to snuff, which we all know plainly is not the case. And if money is involved, it could certainly be preceived as likely to influence awarding more stars to obvious money spinners - say the next Touch or Sonos item.

I'm sure Andy Clough will clarify this. And three cheers for letting us have first dibs on the beta!

Yes, we get a per-click fee. As Andrew says, the site is free to users so we need to pay for it somehow.

Re 5-star reviews being highlighted, don't forget that any product for sale on the site that's been reviewed by us (5-star or otherwise) will include a link to the original review. We did look at including 4-star reviews on the Homepage as well, but for technical reasons it was easier to stick to just 5-star products to begin with. But that's something we can revise if we need to.

And as Andrew says, as with the magazine, the shopping site will have no influence whatsoever on reviews. There are a large number of products for sale which we've never reviewed – and probably never will – and the retailers supply is with feeds for the products they supply, so what they sell is up to them, not us.

 

[Anonymous]

Just something on usabliity - on searching through a list of 32in TVs just now, if you clck on a product and then try to go back to the list, using either the back arrow in the top left corner or return to search button, it takes you back to the very first page of the list every time, not to the page you navigated from. Quite annoying.

 

[Andy Clough]

Keep the feedback coming folks, all useful and much appreciated.

 

[relocated]

It'll become easier to read a review, & click a link on the same page for price comparison.

The system's been serving a beta version of 'Latest Offers' on the bottom of reviews for a while now.

My experience is that many of the beta latest offers are NOT for the product that is reviewed.

 

[Andy Clough]

The 'Latest Offers' won't always return offers on the specific product that's been reviewed as we can't always guarantee that our retail partners will stock it. So the system is designed to find an exact match if it can, but if not it then looks for something from the same brand/range, and if that fails it will look for other similar products. As more retail partners join in, we hope the matching between products and offers will get better.

 

[Andy Clough]

The new shopping site has now gone live on the main website: the old 'Where to buy' tab at the top of each page has been replaced by 'Shop'. Just click on this and it will take you straight to the shopping site Homepage. From there, you can check out the latest bargains in each category, search for a product by star rating, brand or price and click through to our reviews on those products we've tested.

 

[relocated]

Have just been to your now non beta shopping site. When it was beta I said this:

Looks well. The front page does not fit fully on my 10" netbook, the far right prices are not fully shown yet there is spare room [blank space] over on the far left.

So nothing has changed for the better because the follow on pages [different categories] are now the same as the unsatisfactory front page.

I can understand if the pages are so full that they have to be extended to the right. But when there is spare space on the left why annoy people by partially hiding content on the right?

 

[Andy Clough]

We're not promising to fix everything immediately

All comments will be passed back to the developers, and they will work through them in order of priority. No website is ever 100% finished, there's always room for improvement.

 

[Anonymous]

A couple of comments from my end: When doing a shopping comparison search, I usually expect the results to be sorted by price (low to high). Or at least clearly labelled how the products are sorted (best sellers, best rated, etc). It would also nice to see the price of shipping including in the total price, so I don't have to do so many mental calculations!

 

[Andy Clough]

There is a drop-down menu at the top of any search results page which allows you to sort the products by most popular, price low to high, price high to low, date on site - recent first, date on site - oldest first. You can also choose to display 10/20/50 or 100 products per page.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks For Sharing Thread.

I am New Here. Any suggestions for me frd... are welcome.

Thanks.

 

[Hi-FiOutlaw]

Rong thread

 

[expat_mike]

It would also nice to see the price of shipping including in the total price, so I don't have to do so many mental calculations!

The price of shipping will often vary depending on how soon you want the item (especially for smaller items like cables or headphones), eg £15 if you want the item tomorrow, £3 if you are happy to wait up to 2 weeks.

This makes it difficult for a website to use combined item + delivery, unless the site makes the starting assumption that everyone is happy to choose the cheapest delivery. If you want to use an alternative delivery option, you still have to do a mental calculation (or use an app on your phone or tablet).

 

[Stiv]

Hi,

Sorry for writing here - I'm lost. I want to post a question in the forum regarding beolab 3 speakers but I can't seem to find my way around or figure out how to post to the forum - I'm on a mobile device. Again sorry and thanks.

Stiv

 

[Andy Clough]

Hi Stiv

If you look at the Homepage on your mobile, you'll see three horizontal lines top right next to the magnifying glass. Tap that and then select the Forums from the dropdown menu. Then scroll down slightly and tap on the Hi-Fi Forum link - within that you'll find a +New Topic button. Click it, and away you go.