HiFi Hock - New High-End Audio Classifieds Site

[dragan]

Dear Fellow Audiophiles,

I would like to invite you to come to HiFi Hock: High-End Audio Auctions & Classifieds and get
acquainted with a powerful new tool for your on-line sales. HiFi Hock is
a full-featured, high-end audio classifieds and auctions website. It
allows, among many other things, complete management of listings, fast
and easy communication between sellers and buyers and an interactive
set of features to make certain pages unique to you and your business.
Please come and visit this good-natured, easy on your pocket site and
see why it is different than any other site out there.

When you register you'll get an opportunity to try it for free: list
your items for sale, upload pictures and enjoy full html-capable
description fields. As a welcome gift, you'll also get a six-month
"StoreFront" subscription for free. This feature allows you to
customize a set of pages that provide you not only the opportunity to
highlight your listings, but also the advantage of profiling your
company. When site visitors click into your StoreFront they
will experience a personalized look at the listings, logo, unique
category browsing, personal extra pages, newsletters, and more. The
greatest thing about this feature is that each StoreFront has its own
unique URL path on our domain. As a subscriber, you can promote your
StoreFront URL on your own website and through other resources, in
order to experience increased traffic.

Advertising option available, all free of charge.

Thank you!

Dragan Z.
HiFi Hock
HiFi Hock: High-End Audio Auctions & Classifieds

[Xert]

No "Headphones" category?

[grawk]

What makes this better than audiogon, ebay, or the headfi for sale forums?

[dragan]

Xert, my bad, one will be created over the weekend as well a sub for headphone amps. My apologies for not being mindful...and I thank you for bringing it to my attention.

Grawk, HiFi Hock is designed as an alternative, whether it's better then the rest, time will tell. It's a new site, I went live with it about four months ago and it's slowly gaining traction. I've been communicating with folks very actively, listening to them and adding features as time goes on. One I'm working on right now is particularly valuable. If I can please not specify what it's about for the time being.... It'll be free of charge like many things on the site.

If I can get you to come, register and click around, get to know the site a little, some differences between it and others will pop right at ya, some will become more visible as your visit more. In any case, I appreciate your comments and hope to see you there.

[Stevesebastianb]

Quick need to add a headphones and head amps category =)

[dragan]

..me again... Xert and Stevesebastianb, I'd like your opinion on this - I can place a subcategory for headphones in Loudspeakers as parent category. Would this be sufficient or would you like to see headphones as one of main categories?

I owned them and appreciate them too much to put them in accessories. Accessory they are not...

Headphone amps should also get a main category status. What do you think?

Thanks much!
Dragan

[dragan]

OK kids, headphones category has been created. It has been added as a main category and within it you can find subs for headphones, amps, cables and accessories.

Sorry I didn't wait for your comments, I was too anxious to redeem myself :-)
Please let me know your thoughts.

[Xert]

Originally Posted by dragan

OK kids, headphones category has been created. It has been added as a main category and within it you can find subs for headphones, amps, cables and accessories.

Sorry I didn't wait for your comments, I was too anxious to redeem myself :-)
Please let me know your thoughts.

That seems the best option to me!

[XXII]

Good luck on your website, Dragan. Here's a suggestion: one thing I really hate about audiogon is the poor search function. For example: when I want to buy a pair of RCA interconnects, I would immediately like to be able to filter out the XLR interconnects, the cables that are too long/ too short, silver/copper, DIY or not etc. and not have to wade through pages and pages of cables to find what I want...

A good categorization system would allow one to implement something like this. Do you think something like this could be done?

[dragan]

XXII,

Thank you, appreciate it very much!. I can do something like that, no problem at all. As long as you everybody agrees that main categories are in place and covering all products (I know I can do little better and I will in the near future - like: audio furniture etc), I can create as many subcategories as need be.

One small issue I see at the moment though would be when placing ads... It may be a bit "too much" for some folks to have to drill-down from the main category on down to the appropriate sub... This method though would definitely allow for better, more narrow searches.

Give me a few days to think about it and then I'll post here what I come up with. Right off the bat, to use your example, I can do something like this:

CABLES

-Interconnects
>rca
-->1m
-->1.5m
-->short
-->long
-->other
>xlr
-->1m
-->1.5m
-->short
-->long
-->other

-Speaker
>spades
-->6'
-->8'
-->short
-->long
-->other
>bananas
-->6'
-->8'
-->short
-->long
-->other
>other

-Power

-Video

-iPod

Let me know if this jives with what you had in mind.

It is a great suggestion and I thank you for it.

[XXII]

Dragan,

What you've suggested would be a good start IMO but you are right that it maybe too early to implement this sort of thing since you are just starting out.

One disadvantage of a tree-like structure you suggested is that it fixes the order of categorization. For example, your method is all good if I'm looking for an RCA interconnect under 1 metre (say) but what if I didn't care so much about the termination and I was just looking for a 1 metre interconnect? Then I would have to click twice at both the RCA and the XLR section which is not as convenient. I hope this makes sense!
I read somewhere that a study showed that the number of clicks it takes for a consumer to find what they want on a website influenced the likelihood that they would return to that website.

What may be better would be the following: When the seller wants to put (say) an interconnect up for sale, he fills in a form with a series of questions e.g.

1) How Long
2) Material
3) Termination
4) DIY

the answers of which are provided in some pull-down menu. When a potential buyer wants to search for an interconnect, then he fills out a similar form and then he is provided with the search results that match his requirements. A good analogy would be how a travel website like expedia.com works.

Of course, you would need a different form for each category of product.

The advantages of this approach would be anyone who wants to browse your site the old-fashioned way would still be able to without being bogged down by having to navigate a huge tree. You could still offer a regular search function as well.

[dragan]

XXII,

I think you'll be very pleasantly surprised to learn that there is a feature like you're describing already. All I have to do is develop a few cable-specific (for example) pre-valued dropdowns and that'll be it.

If you go to the site and click on Search in the menu bar, the Search page will load for you to specify search criteria. Now, this is where you can see this feature in work.... Narrow your search by choosing a specific category... This action will add more search criteria to the bottom of the page, all pre-valued dropdowns.

I'd like to explain pre-valued dropdowns real quick: they are developed by me and used by sellers in the listing process to make it easy and to provide for some easy input of relevant info - like: condition, shipping, weight, etc. etc..
These are the same values carried over to the search page and used as search criteria. Cool eh?

So again, all I have to do is develop few cable specific questions for sellers to answer as they list items for sale and we will have it for the search as well.

Try it and let me know what you think. I believe this answers it fully. In a few days, I'll have more questions added and the site will be better yet.

Thanks again for a really good suggestion!

[dragan]

It's done! Take a look at it and let me know your thoughts. Test it as I described in my previous post.

Go to search page, select cable category, check the bottom of the page.. Please let me know if I missed something, cable connectors or whatever. I can make correction.

[XXII]

Yes, that's exactly what I envisioned. Well done! So you can consider doing this for each category.

One suggestion: I think your "cable length" category should be a bit more flexible. i.e. someone looking for a 1m interconnect should be also shown the 3ft interconnects etc. Maybe reduce the number of categories? <3 ft , 3-6ft, 6-9ft etc. Or even better, let the user type in the value he wants.

Also, I think currently, there's too much going on on your search page. You should consider getting rid of some categories. Or maybe move most of them to an "advanced search page".

[dragan]

Done! It is now a blank input field. I'll have other category-specific questions done as well in the next week or so.

There are three levels of search on the site:
One on the home page allows to specify category to search within as well as to make a choice to search the description field or the listing title field.

The next one would be a quick search that only allows for a keyword input and no other criteria. It appears on all category browsing pages.

The third one is the advanced search page. This page is accessed by clicking on the Search button in the menu bar. It contains all possible criteria there is on the site.

I'll think about taking some of the criteria away from that page.

Appreciate your input!