All New Retrobike Auction Watch

[john]

One of the oldest parts of the site has finally been upgraded. The retrobike auction watch section has been totally revamped and updated for 2014 and can be found here > http://www.retrobike.co.uk/auction . New features include

Shows both ending soonest and newly listed items
Geotargets to show results in your country
More ability to customise search
Quicker and more flexible overall


Hopefully you'll find the new version much better (the old one is still up here > http://www.retrobike.co.uk/auctionold for a few weeks). Comments are welcome, sure there are a few rough edges to the tools I can improve on.

For discussion of search terms or additional search terms please post here > viewtopic.php?f=26&t=291382

 

[pete_mcc]

Re:

Looking good John - nice and easy to navigate with the old favourites still in place.

Change is a tough thing, especially when its done for no reason (like the way ebay constantly change their front page and search format) but this is a genuinely useful update keeping the best of the old and adding some excellent improvements.

To quote every Italian-American gangster in every film ever - 'Noice'!

 

[ti_pin_man]

can you refine the Funk search and remove all the german bike computers of same name? oh and the toddlers funky bike too? The chances are this will return zero finds, rare as hens teeth, but it'll save trawling through the rubbish looking for needles in haystacks? c'est possible?

p..s looks a lot better than before.

 

[john]

Thanks for the feedback chaps. Glad someone is still using it. As alluded to elsewhere the change was mandated by ebay - the old underlying tool I used is being retired this year. However it was certainly time for a change (AW has been as is for 8 years more or less) and I hope the new tool is much more useful.

 

[john]

can you refine the Funk search and remove all the german bike computers of same name? oh and the toddlers funky bike too? The chances are this will return zero finds, rare as hens teeth, but it'll save trawling through the rubbish looking for needles in haystacks? c'est possible?

Be good to discuss such matters on this seperate thread here > viewtopic.php?f=26&t=291382 . Will however have a look at Funk. You can test the searches yourself using the followin syntax for the search Funk -(terms to exclude). For example I have the following so far which seems to work better Funk -(computer, FAHRRAD COMPUTER , FAHRRADCOMPUTER, rocker , VDO , ANT+ , Funktionen , SKS , Lefty , Sigma, Anderson , radcomputer , elite , ciclo , cateye).

 

[john]

One final point I am looking for feedback on is which countries to cover by default.

Currently the default is to show

*Matching items available on your local ebay (national + international) - for the UK this will be ebay UK
*Matching items available on a second ebay site - for the UK this will be ebay US.
*Matching items available on a third ebay site - for the UK this is ebay DE.

Often items can be found on the 2nd and 3rd sites which are not shown on the 1st. Either because they have not paid the extra for international visibility or because they have indicated they will not post.

Do people find this approach useful? There is a performance hit here because the tool queries three sites.

Considering splitting things as follows,

1. All items available on your local ebay national and international (possible default).
2. All items available on your local ebay national and international plus items on two or three further ebay countries.
3. All items available on your local ebay national results only.

Hope this makes some sense....

 

[doctor-bond]

Re:

Liking the revamp muchly - especially title and description option. I would miss the full range of international coverage (.fr .it etc) though. Appreciate the extra oomph it needs: could the default option be the 3 countries, with an option for the wider coverage?

 

[Ian Raleigh]

Much better and use it daily. Thanks John.

 

[john]

Re: Re:

@Ian - thanks

Liking the revamp muchly - especially title and description option. I would miss the full range of international coverage (.fr .it etc) though. Appreciate the extra oomph it needs: could the default option be the 3 countries, with an option for the wider coverage?

I could setup an extra option to query more countries. Which extra would you wish to see on top of GB-UK-DE ? The issue is more page load than any server load, each query to ebay takes a couple of seconds.

 

[doctor-bond]

Re:

I'd be happy with the full range currently on offer in the old search, but admit there is often overlap on .com and .ca; .befr and .benl etc.

I'd say .it .fr .es are well worth keeping though.