Ask Hacker News: What do you think of this shopping cart on my new startup that just launched?

by wmeredith • 18 years ago

30 73 18 years ago

Good morning all. I just launched a t-shirt sales site, not exactly a web app, I know. But we have a freaky business model, which required a correspondingly freaky e-commerce cart. My buddy essentially reverse engineered Ticketmaster's cart. Anyway, I love this community and respect it's opinion greatly. In fact, I learned most of my web/customer-experience design stuff by reading things I found here.

Anyway, I'd love to know what you think of the site's usability etc... I opened with the cart, because I figured hacker types would be most interested in that, but all comments/criticisms are welcome.

wmeredith19• 18 years ago

coglethorpe• 18 years ago

That's an interesting way of dealing with scarce items. I liked the timer as well. I agree with comments about the need for better design, but it's a good start.

shafqat2• 18 years ago

OK, I just finally figured out what the timer is for. Anyone who doesnt go as far as the shopping cart won't know why there is a timer...

tstegart3• 18 years ago

Yeah, while the counter is great, it could use a sentence or two more of description. Keep the counter, add a fun sentence about why its there, not just what it does.

wmeredith19• 18 years ago

Done.

jmatt• 18 years ago

I like the site. I would be more inclined to bid for the higher cost shirts if I knew some of the profits went to fund a defense fund for the RIAA (like FSF fund). When it's appropriate I think it makes sense to give a small % of profits up so that all the customers get that extra smug feeling when buying their shirt. Again, interesting idea definitely more rewarding than buying from Cafe Press or Threadless!

wmeredith19• 18 years ago

"Again, interesting idea definitely more rewarding than buying from Cafe Press or Threadless!"

Oh, god, thank you so much! That's what I wanted to hear.

msb• 18 years ago

I am probably viewing a much revised version of the site at this point, because everything is looking really nice right now. I am loving it.

Really friggin great idea.

The name is perfect. I wouldn't worry about blokes crying NSFW here today, you shouldn't be shopping for T-shirts at work anyway. Plus I think the name will go over well with the crowd that typically purchases these types of shirts.

mpfefferle• 18 years ago

I'd look at it but the domain makes me think its NSFW.

immad4• 18 years ago

"What's with "200 Nipples?"

That's how many nipples we assume will be covered by any single run of our high-quality shirts. (We'll have the third-nippled buyer in there occasionally, but we didn't want to count on it when naming the company; this is serious business, after all.)"

I think its a interesting way to brand it.

wmeredith19• 18 years ago

We debated loooooong over the naming issue. We decided to go with something not easily forgotten and a little funny/edgy over something that is safe.

It's a boutique shop anyway, so we're after the 20% rather than the 80% of our market. (Which made safe and bland much less desirable. In fact it made it wholly undesirable.)

jbenz2• 18 years ago

It is safe for work. It's a non-objectionable t-shirt site.

shafqat2• 18 years ago

Hey dude - I love it. Great concept, good execution, very fun site. Didn't understand why there was a timer counting down on one of the items. Instead of trying to figure it out after 5 seconds, I went to a different page on the site.

Anyway, great job. Not sure about the first t-shirt. I didnt find it that funny. Maybe I'm just lame. But overall, great site. I'm hoping the next t-shirt will be so funny that I pee a little. I'll surely be coming back to check out future designs.

wmeredith19• 18 years ago

Nah, you're not lame. We expected that some designs wouldn't appeal to some people. This is especially pronounced with the one-design-at-a-time business model. Just subscribe to get a new design notification and come check the next one: http://blog.200nipples.com/2008/06/shirt-reminder/ :-)

JimEngland• 18 years ago

Cool idea, weird name. http://200nipples.com/showcart.php Everything is there that needs to be when you select a shirt to order, but the presentation is really lacking. Try making some parts of the text a lot larger, throw in a picture of the shirt, and maybe make an icon for "releasing it into the wild."

Also, a lot of the screen is wasted with the top header. You want to make sure people see your content above the scroll; I'd suggest making things more compact. Good work though.

ashleyw• 18 years ago

I like the site and cart setup, but the "we will reserve your item while you checkout" model is already used at most e-commerce sites, although your info on how many are being reserved is public. (plus the time limit is likely shorter)

Still, I wish you luck!

jbenz2• 18 years ago

Mine says it will ship August 7th. Why so long?

I really like the "Chicken Exit: If you don't want to purchase this shirt, click here to release it back into the wild."

The whole goal is to get a customer who really likes a design but maybe isn't sure if they want to spend the money. Well, they know their time is limited, panic starts to set in, and of course they end up buying it. Smart.

But I didn't really dig the RIAA design. Maybe next time.

tstegart3• 18 years ago

Launch tip: if you're posting during work hours with a URL that suggests NSFW, put that its a t-shirt site and its safe for work in your title or post. I bet you lost a ton of people who looked at the URL and moved on because they were unsure. They might not have come back to check out the comments to know its ok. You have to realize, there are serious consequences for some people at some companies for going to a site with a bad URL, even if its not a bad site, it puts you on the bag guy's radar.

jonknee2• 18 years ago

You should really note what kind of shirts you're printing on. By the sizing chart it appears to be American Apparel (nice shirts, I wear one of theirs about every day).

But I'm not going to buy a shirt, especially after the first few cheaper ones sell out, without knowing the specs.

wmeredith19• 18 years ago

Done

immad4• 18 years ago

I think instead of labeling the shirts #1 to #100, you should consider $1-$100. Would make it a lot more intuitive to understand the grid.

Also the top line said sold and was all dark, which made my mind think of it as a title bar to the table and ignore it, not sure what a good way of dealing with that is but that made it harder for me to work out what was going on.

immad4• 18 years ago

Also I like the concept. I think anything around improving e-commerce websites especially with variable pricing is smart.

One issue is that as you hit $100 it may seem pretty unfair to buy something that someone has bought for $1 previously. Maybe the pricing should be non-linear compared to quantity. As in there are 10 shirts available at $50 and 1 at $1 and it not going all the way to $100. Just a thought, but I guess if in practice you find that the $100 are easy to shift then...

babul• 18 years ago

T-Shirts: You need to get better designs. They are not that special and limited edition does nothing for them. Limited editions only really work if other people know the item is a limited edition, or the design is very unique. There are lots of markets out there filled with handmade items that are "limited editions" most people will not be aware of. Try and get something like a XKCD design that only is seen on one of your limited edition shirts.

Cart: Nice idea and implementation. Emphasise the sold items less (i.e. not in black) as it is counter intuitive. Also have some basic images explaining what is going on (especially with the release-to-wild concept) as I only really understood it when I went through the process and not in the first 5~10 seconds of visiting. 4 or 5 should do it outlining the workflow i.e. look, select, buy, or release.

Name: You can come up with edgy mnemonic names that won’t put people off.

cia_plant• 18 years ago

Are people really going to pay more than $30 for a t-shirt? I would think that people who like to spend a lot of money on clothes usually buy things other than t-shirts.

Xichekolas4• 18 years ago

There is a store in my hometown that sells 'designer t-shirts' for $80 each. Never underestimate the psychological effect of 'pricey = exclusive'.

wmeredith19• 18 years ago

There are also a few of these in Kansas City.

Xichekolas4• 18 years ago

I think the concept is great... definitely in the vein of woot.com. Also an easy way to make a quick $5k on a T-shirt design.

Have you thought of reversing the dollar amounts? Have the #1 in the series cost $100 and the #100 cost $1. People are always willing to pay more for the first of any series, especially a limited one. I personally have no drive to pay $99 more for something that is the 100th of it's kind, but I might pay $99 more to say I had 'the original'.

(Also: Hello fellow citizens of KC area!)

jey3• 18 years ago

I think it would be better if it was labeled with the dollar amount instead of the sequence number as Immad suggested. This would both be less confusing and make the "value" of the item clearer.

tstegart3• 18 years ago

I agree, having the first is valuable, but also getting the last one before they're never made again is also valuable. Maybe the middle ones should be $1, and the ends cost more.

immad4• 18 years ago

Feedback: If I leave the page open the cart becomes out of synch and I need to reload the page. Either it needs to poll the server or a quick hack would be to make it refresh after a certain delay.

Or you could have a refresh link next to the cart

cmos• 18 years ago

love it. Let us know how many of the 'above market' shirts you sell. I'd be very impressed if you can get enough people to buy all of the ones above $45.

And I'm a big fan of the name as well. Note that you have more comments here than in most posts.

jacobbijani2• 18 years ago

Maybe I'm missing something, but why is the last shirt printed more expensive than the first? Exclusive items with a lower item number are generally more valuable.

Why don't the timed items revert to a regular item once the timer is expired. Remove the grey background, basically.

gigawatt2• 18 years ago

I don't think you can really think of them as #1/100 like an art print. The increased price has more to do with the relative scarcity of the item when it was purchased.

jacobbijani2• 18 years ago

That makes no sense. Number 100 is $100 when there are 99 others available and when there is 1 available.

And that is precisely what you can think of an itemized limited edition anything as -- that's what it means.

wumi3• 18 years ago

Ships: August 7th, 2008

Why so long?

wmeredith19• 18 years ago

We send in our print orders at the end of the month. This is by far the weakest link in our business model.

wumi3• 18 years ago

i like the product btw, but personally, I wouldn't want to wait that long for a clothing order.

Xichekolas4• 18 years ago

How much would it cost to just pre-print 100 of them? You could always do an end of the year grab-bag of any that didn't sell (like woot.com's woot-offs).

You'd probably not come out ahead on all designs, but I'm sure people paying $100 for the shirt would love to have it asap.

Mistone• 18 years ago

confusing as heck - took me a while to figure out what was going on - how about a quick: here's how is works section - would be helpful -

jey3• 18 years ago

I'd like to file a bug report.

  javascript:var GM_JQ = document.createElement('script');GM_JQ.src = "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.2.6/jquery.min.js";
  GM_JQ.type = 'text/javascript';document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(GM_JQ);function GM_wait(){if(typeof window.jQuery == 'undefined'){
  window.setTimeout(GM_wait,100); }else { $ = window.jQuery; letsJQuery(); }}GM_wait();function letsJQuery(){alert("starting");haxor(1);}function haxor(idx)
  {if(idx > 100) { alert("done"); window.location.href="http://200nipples.com/index.php"; return; }$.post("/options.php", { "design_id" : 2, "series_number" : idx });
  setTimeout(function() { haxor(idx+1); }, 100);}

Put that all on one line so that it's a URL and copy it, then go to 200nipples.com and paste it in the location bar. It just posts { "design_id" : 2, "series_number" : idx } to "/options.php" for idx in [1,100], which reserves all the shirts so that nobody else can buy them until the timer expires.

I don't think an IP ban is the best way to deal with this problem.

wmeredith19• 18 years ago

Thanks, we were looking for that.

mildweed3• 18 years ago

IP ban certainly isn't the best way to deal with it. Its just what I could do untill you guys told me how you did it. Thank you for revealing your method so I can repair the hole.

jey3• 18 years ago

Great, now can you unban me? :-)

tlrobinson• 18 years ago

Quick... if he sells all 100 shirts for $1 to $100, how much money will he make...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss#Early_year...

wmeredith19• 18 years ago

$3854.96 (net) :-)

ngvrnd• 18 years ago

Fail.

khangtoh• 18 years ago

seriously, i had to think twice (nsfw .. when I saw the url).. please change it.

subwindow• 18 years ago

I think the price points should be adjusted a little bit. Very few people are going to want to pay more than $30 for a shirt. This means that for almost all of the shirts, 3/4ths of them will never sell. It kind of looks bad.

Its not as catchy, but $10 + (Shirt Number/4) seems like a better formula- $10-$35.

radley2• 18 years ago

FAIL. sorry =(

http://www.vcwear.com/fund-the-shirts/

wmeredith19• 18 years ago

Don't be sorry, just be glib. :-P

radley2• 18 years ago

It's hard enough to create a design people will not only wear, but actually pay money for.

The pricing scheme is fun for programmers and number-concept fanatics... but has no place in reality. As an example, I posted a link to a site with a ton of online attention who tried a sales gimmick to sell t-shirts for $100 each.

Months later they sold a total of 18 shirts.

Compare this to Threadless.com who can sell 100k of a single design, offer 100s of designs at a time, and build a community around potential designs... and still have a small boutique profile.

Finally, it's really uncool when a company doesn't have enough faith in it's product to actually stock the product.

To finish on a positive note, I like the name. It's funny. I also suggest:

- Print & sell the shirts at cost + shipping. - Keep up the excellent blog & artist profiles. - Create a community voting page wherein if enough people pledge to buy, you print.

mildweed3• 18 years ago

Being a limited edition product, we're only printing the shirts that are bought. If you bought shirt #1, we want to make sure its the right cut and size for you. Therefore, we can't print it till you buy it. Similarly, we can't print the whole run till the purchasing window is closed.

wmeredith19• 18 years ago

"Print & sell the shirts at cost + shipping." What the hell kind of a business model is that? (Hint: there's no profit.)

"Keep up the excellent blog & artist profiles." Thanks for the compliment, we'll try.

"Create a community voting page wherein if enough people pledge to buy, you print." That's a good idea, and it's what Threadless does. It's feature-bloat we've discussed for the future.

epe• 18 years ago

I think it's brilliantly executed. The /index.php page tells me everything I need to know -- contrary to what some people are saying, I found the cart instantly understandable. (To be clear, I'm talking about the version with "These are all the shirts. If a shirt is counting down it is in someone else's shopping cart. When someone clicks ..." in red. I'm not sure if that was there when you first posted or not.)

wmeredith19• 18 years ago

That's the new version.

shawndrost• 18 years ago

Congrats on launching! The SOLD boxes shouldn't be links... it's confusing that my mouse changes on mouseover but clicking them doesn't do anything. When a shirt times out and is released, its box stays dark grey... shouldn't it be light grey? And how about using red/yellow/green for sold/in progress/available instead of white/dark grey/light grey?

tipjoy• 18 years ago

Very clean site.

The white/gray/dark gray color scheme of the cart part isn't working for me. They white ones look most like links, when they're the sold ones. The grey ones look disabled, when they're the ones you want me to click on.

Also, I agree with others that the dollar amounts should be switched, and the first one should cost the most. Do you label the shirt with the number (as in 1/100 like prints do)? I think that would add value but it isn't clear to me if my run # will be on the shirt I buy. Update, now I see that it is on the shirt as shown in pictures #4 & #5 but you should definitely emphasize this A LOT more. This is the reason someone would pay more when they don't have to.

I don't really like the red treatment. Those are the instructions, not an error message. And here's a tiny nit which might make things a bit clearer: how about "Click a shirt number to get started"?

Ask Hacker News: What do you think of this shopping cart on my new startup that just launched?

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