Thinking of developing a new used bike/bike parts classified

Goodgertron

Hey everyone,

I've noticed (from personal experience) that buying/trading parts at the moment for bikes is quite difficult (maybe difficult isn't the word, arduous!) The main problems I'd say are:

1. Missing/insufficient information from ads
2. Poor presentation of ads (across all the typical sites you may try)
3. Difficulty to filter ads appropriately
4. Difficulty to manage ads quickly and easily
5. Inadequate communication means
6. Inability to easily observe feedback for sellers and buyers to stay informed and to earn a reputation
7. There's no single hub to look at ads for bikes. I personally find myself browsing pinkbike, bikeradar, singletrack, gumtree, ebay and sometimes preloved.

It's mainly because none of these sites are actually primarily for (edit: selling!) bike stuff, but it would be nice if we could all have somewhere to go to and list our stuff in the UK.

I am postulating to change that. I want to create a nice, easy to use website for people to list their full bikes and/or bike parts with a proper ad management and communications/profiling system and detailed pre-populated options for brands, models etc.

E.g. to save time, when listing a set of single crown forks, the seller will be prompted to select whether the steerer is tapered or normal from a dropdown, what range the steerer's length falls into (or is exactly) etc. This would allow for very specific and easy parts searching. The ultimate goal would be that people could use this as a hub for bike trades where a reputation can be established and classified transactions can regularly take place, with ease.

My question to everybody reading this is, would you use it if it worked as I envisage? Do others find the same problems as me when it comes to this? Would you be willing to be a beta tester if/when I have it running? (Which could potentially be very soon)

Thanks for reading, would love any sort of discussion or feedback and thoughts on this.

felix.london

Sounds good!

Goodgertron

Thanks.

This website is an excellent source for information and I wouldn't intend to compete with what other sites are doing, they do what they do well. But the classifieds tend to be a bit of an extra and I would encourage people to link to their other profiles from sites like bikeradar as well.

Greer_

If it works, yes! I spend ages trawling through ebay to end up not finding anything useful!

Goodgertron

Tell me about it!

Okay well the response has not been overwhelming so far, but I think that if it was there people would at least check it out. Like you say if it works it would be useful, I might get on developing it now then and try to get back here ASAP with a live beta version.

I'd be more than happy to take individual suggestions on board and I would try my best to implement any features people would like to see.

More than anything I just want an awesome place for me to able to find or sell parts! 8)

waby1234

I think one of the most important parts is a feedback system - I personally have been stung before by a dodgy seller and a transparent and helpful feedback system would be a must.

Greer_

For me, it would have to have a lot of check boxes etc to narrow down searches, but also be able to perform broad searches too. One of the most annoying things about the likes of ebay is you get all the BSO's and then the really cr@p parts (that can be made cheaply, and newcomers to the sport have no idea about) that you have to filter out before you can start looking!

Give the thread a bit more time! Its only been up for 2 hours. I reckon you'll get a much better response

Greer_

waby1234 wrote:

I think one of the most important parts is a feedback system - I personally have been stung before by a dodgy seller and a transparent and helpful feedback system would be a must.

Make it an 'add to basket' type site where you can only pay the seller by paypal. None of these PM'ing emails and bank details etc. Yes there'll be a small charge per transaction, but it will be far safer for the buyer.

supersonic

We have just overhauled our system - the rules are very clear, and we work quickly to sort ads out. Also have a feedback system.

Goodgertron

@waby, I totally agree. there are so many genuine sellers but there are some people who look the part but will sting you in a flash. I could potentially integrate PayPal support so transactions will be tracked and documented on the website, for some insurance and peace of mind in case anything goes wrong when you're buying something that has to be posted.

@Greer, that's also something I really would like to put emphasis on. I plan on making it so that you could, let's say, select multiple tick boxes for Fox, Rockshox, etc. Then all results would be filtered (almost like if you were on evanscycles or similar) to be limited only to that brand. Another problem I find is the fact that since people are generally free to type whatever, they will put superfluous/misleading words in there which results in loads of unwanted results through searching.

If each listing was an individual item, then the brand would be selected from a fixed list and therefore all ads would have good continuity for filtering.

Another feature I would implement is a focus on being able to filter ads by their proximity to a given place (usually your home) so that it's easier to find parts you might want to inspect physically and pay for on collection.

Glad you're as enthusiastic about it as I am. Would love to have a working example to show people in the near future!

nicklouse

If you are going to offer all this mahe sure the posters can not make the advert untill all the info has been completed. Or else it is worthless.

ricardo_smooth

I can see people not posting up on it because they have to fill in a ridiculously large form with lots of tick boxes/drop down menus to navigate through.

I find that most people will use the same description across multiple forums, hence copy and pasting to save time/effort. Any specific questions about the item can be asked by serious buyers. Let's face it, you don't just buy things without asking enough questions about the suitability of the product before handing over your cash (unless you are being rash, then you can only blame yourself!)

It sounds like a ballache to actually get an advert 'up and running' so to speak.

oodboo

Goodgertron wrote:

7. There's no single hub to look at ads for bikes. I personally find myself browsing pinkbike, bikeradar, singletrack, gumtree, ebay and sometimes preloved.

It's mainly because none of these sites are actually primarily for bike stuff

Except for pinkbike, bikeradar and singletrack.

It'd be good to see site set up just for bikes/parts but unless it's done very professionally and gets a lot of traffic / buy/sell activity then it's just not going to work. I've seen a few of these sites pop up but I'm yet to see one generate enough traffic to rival the sites you list.

nicklouse

oodboo wrote:

Goodgertron wrote:

7. There's no single hub to look at ads for bikes. I personally find myself browsing pinkbike, bikeradar, singletrack, gumtree, ebay and sometimes preloved.

It's mainly because none of these sites are actually primarily for bike stuff

Except for pinkbike, bikeradar and singletrack.

It'd be good to see site set up just for bikes/parts but unless it's done very professionally and gets a lot of traffic / buy/sell activity then it's just not going to work. I've seen a few of these sites pop up but I'm yet to see one generate enough traffic to rival the sites you list.

It has been done all ready by some other posters on here.

Goodgertron

@supersonic, I'm really not trying to detract from what you offer in terms of classifieds, it is good and I noticed the new features. With all due respect though, this site is very feature rich in many other aspects and I'm sure your the bulk of your traffic/user base is a result of those other features and content. I may be making a brash assumption but I'm quite confident that your site is so widely adopted because of all the content, reviews and information it provides. This might be a bit extreme/unforeseeable considering this a pipeline idea, but we could even potentially work on having some kind of integration. At the very least I would strongly encourage users to visit this site for all of its great offerings (and link their profiles.) Also I'd like to compliment you on the appropriateness of the site's design and robust functionality!

cooldad

AS a matter of interest, as you only joined today, where's your deep interest in all things bike been up to now?

Goodgertron

@ricardo, I understand what you mean about that. It's difficult for me to explain how I imagine the process to be, but I really do appreciate (and have thoroughly considered) that at the same time as being robust, it needs to be painless and user-friendly. My solution to that would be to use conditional logic in the form, to make it sweet and simple. I'm thinking... select whether it's full bike/part, then brand, then model, then customisable/variable specs (all pre-populated dropdowns, with the potential to enter an exact value for things such as steerer length) but which is only pertinent to what's been selected in the first three. Then allow for any additional information the seller may wish to add (about condition etc.)

With respect to the idea of having the ad in multiple places, my goal would be that people wouldn't need to list elsewhere. Just one simple ad. People could then (initially, while the site's following grows) link from other sites to their ad. As for asking sellers questions all the time, that's an inconvenience in itself! How many times have you had to ask someone countless questions about an item, because there wasn't enough information there? And likewise how many times have you found yourself answering the same questions over and over? I'd allow a questions form for ads that would publically display any questions that anyone else might find useful (if it was somehow already omitted)

@oodboo, I don't really think you could call them a hub for it, by hub I mean if enough people found the site the best way of doing this kind of thing, everyone would start to use it. After all, many bikers do consider themselves to be part of a large community of people with common ground and word could spread quickly.

Goodgertron

@cooldad, I've been a member of this site for a while now, and others longer. My active interest in mountain biking developed around the start of the year, but I always wanted to get into it. The thing is up until then I hadn't had the money to be able to afford it. I realise my post count is low on here, but that by no means is because I don't have a passion for XCing.

Goodgertron

@nicklouse, that undoubtedly would be the case. Most of the important information would be required, because after all it's in the seller's interest (if they're genuine) to be transparent about what they're selling and of course it's in the buyer's for getting down to the relevant items.

cooldad

Sorry I see you joined a while back.

Goodgertron

No need to apologise! I can see why if you thought that was the case you'd question my motives. This isn't even something I'm doing with any real expectation (as yet) of monetising. I'm just an obsessive web developer/designer and I'd really like to build my own project for once, this is of interest to me and hopefully could be useful for people!

DanDax1990

I personally think it's a good idea... Maybe if your website and bikeradar worked together so bikeradar didn't have to have their own classifieds section which I'm guessing takes up a fair bit of time and effort?

Then the bikeradar mods can concentrate on the rest of the website/forum.

Goodgertron

I'd love for something along those lines to happen, time shall tell.

First step's complete. I'm the proud owner of www.bikepush.com and www.bikepush.co.uk! Going to start developing something locally

DanDax1990

P.S I'd gladly put myself forward to help with the BETA testing aslong as it's nothing complicated lol.

My weakness is bargain bike parts even if it's nothing I need haha.

Goodgertron

Thank you! I have another person who's happy to test it out too so far. Basically by test I just mean have a mess around with it, try signing up, posting an ad etc. Then just some brief feedback on what you liked/didn't like any problems you encountered etc. If you help in that way I'll reward you on the site in some way for being there from the start (special status or something!)

DanDax1990

Yep I'd gladly help out with that

gingerrob25

Yeah, sounds like a pretty good idea...

But if there are not enough ad's then it will be hard to make it work well

Anyway it would be much better than spending hours on eBay!

Goodgertron

@gingerrob, Yeah that'll take some time, but hopefully if I could get a good few people from around here to start listing and maybe tell others about it then it could well catch on.

Greer_

It needs to be developed, then word can be spread! It would make life a lot easier, and i'd happily partake in the testing as well! It's something I can see myself using.

Goodgertron

Awesome, working on it now! I'll keep you guys updated with the progress.

felix.london

you might be onto something...

Check the end of this thread; eBay add for 2012 Boardman HT Pro advertised with a link to a 2011 Boardman Pro Carbon

http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=20005&t=12863484&start=20