The Epinions Search function: NH
Aug 26 '03
The Bottom Line The lousy and non-functional so-called Search function deserves everyone's attention; if you can't find the product you want to read about, why come to Epinions at all?
I've been a member for going on four years. In all that time, I've never figured out how to make the so-called Search function work.
Maybe that's because it DOESN'T work.
Here are my major gripes, all from the perspective of some poor innocent who wanders in, thinking s/he will actually be able to find the item s/he wants to read about.
1. Not all categories are tabbed across the top of the home, or any other, page. That wimpy "More" tab is useless. If you have a category for it, put it on the Home page. Don't make me search for it.
2. When I click on a tab, I get a sub-category that is likewise incomplete. "View more" doesn't cut it for me. If you have more, show them. If you don't have room, put the major sub-categories on that page and let me see every sub-sub-category when I click on one of them.
3. Give me a multiple-definition Search. If I'm looking for a stainless steel skillet by Cuisinart, all I can do right now is look for each quality, one at a time: stainless steel, skillet, Cuisinart. I can't enter all three definitions at once. So each of them will give me a whole lot of stuff I don't want. There's no way to cross-reference them so the system does the sorting.
4. More than half the time, when I enter a product in Search, I get a zero report back. But when I seek it more specifically, by trolling the categories, I usually find it. why doesn't the Search function recognize the stuff on the database?
5. When I find an item and want to see more of the same, the path across the top of the review page usually skips several steps and then stops short of the precise place where I found the first item. So I can't use that path to find more. Example: I'm doing a series of reviews on hummingbird feeders. The obvious path would be Home-Home & Garden-Pets-Wild Birds-Feeders-Hummingbirds. (That assumes that Pets is the appropriate place for wild bird products, which I don't think it is, but that's another story.) But that's not what I get. It skips Pets and Wild Birds, goes from Home & Garden to Feeders, and omits any mention of hummingbirds, or any other kind of bird, wild or otherwise. And when I click on Feeders, they're listed by brand of domesticated bird feeders - nothing for wild birds - and the items I've been reviewing aren't among the brands listed. They also aren't listed categorically, so the innocent visitor thinks Epinions doesn't have any reviews on wild bird products. Worse yet, my reviews can't be found via Search - the only way anyone will ever see them is from my Profile page. And, of course, the more I post, the lower on my list of reviews they will sink.
If you're going to have items on the database, why hide them so even experienced members can't find them? How can a casual reader ever find anything?
6. It used to be possible to indicate at the start of the search whether you were looking for a product or a member. That ability has been removed, and the visitor seeking a specific member gets a zero Search report. The Member search link is at the very bottom of the page - if it's there at all, which it isn't always - and unless you know that it's there, you think there's no way to search for a member. Not such a problem when the page is short and the bottom is on the first screen, but if you have to scroll down past a bunch of product hits, you'll never know that there's a way to find a member.
7. When I do a detail search for a product, and click on "View more...", I often get hundreds of pages of products. But there is a tremendous amount of duplication on each page. Example: I recently did a search through Cooking Tools, by rating, starting at the end of the list. There are 15 items on each page, and on at least the last 25 pages of the category, at least ten of them are duplicated. Not variations on size - the absolutely identical items. Ten of 'em. On each page. So there are really only five unique items on each of those 206 pages. I don't know how far into the category this duplication goes, but in those 25 page alone, you could delete 16 pages from the listing and make it less bulky and easier to navigate.
8. In that category also, the items aren't arranged in any discernable order. If I want to see all the ladles, I have to scroll through the whole list. There'll be spatulas, a cleaning product, a cheese grater, a ladle, a timer, another spatula or three, a potato peeler, two more ladles... You get the idea. As long as I can't search by more than one definition at a time, it would be helpful to have the larger listing in some sort of order.
9. There are items being reviewed that aren't visible from any index on the site. The only way to find them is to happen across one written up by a member. Specific food items are a case in point. There's no category for them, so there's no way to find them. What's the point of having reviews that no one can find?
Those are my major gripes about the Search system. There are lots of smaller ones, but I won't bore you any more than I already have.
I've been an eBay user for longer than I've been an Epinionator. I've mostly bought, and done some selling. I'm always impressed by the ease with which I can navigate through that system, which at any given time has more than 4 million items on auction. For sellers, the listing category search begins with larger categories and gradually gets more and more specific. And the path at the top of every auction page includes EVERY step along the way. So you can always find your way back, or find similar items.
Epinions exists ostensibly to provide a resource for consumers to obtain information about the goods and services they may want to purchase. For that reason alone, if no other (and there are plenty,) it behooves the PTB to make sure that the entire site is as intuitive and easy to navigate as possible, and that everything on the site is available to whomever wants to find it, regardless of their computer expertise. Anything less than that actively works against the best interest of the site and its members, owners, and investors. Fixing the Search function ought to be the Number One priority of the entire staff, even before the adding of new products.
But it's not, never has been, and probably never will be. In this case, it's management that seems to assume that "good enough" is good enough.
But "good enough" isn't. It never is.
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Epinions.com ID:
Penguinlady
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Location: I'd rather be in Antarctica
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