Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Best Used Cars Search ... Ever Built? :)

After a few intense months, we've finally launched what could potentially be the best Used Cars Search application ... on the Internet ...

I know, those are fighting words. But when you think about it, "buying used cars on the Internet", isn't really a field that's typically catered to in any kind of glamorous fashion by the Tech Industry. So one might argue that the bar was damned low. This just makes the opportunity, and the challenges to deliver on that opportunity ... all the greater. While we've overcome some of them, many more lie ahead, but there comes a point when we have to launch. And learn from actual human beings interacting with, and breaking our application.

So tonight, we finally launched :)

Once on the used cars search results page, one thing i hope will strike you, is how obscenely fast it's possible to hone-in on a vehicle you might be interested in. You might narrow-things down by Year, Price, Mileage up-top, and by a slew of possibly available options in the left column:
  • Make
  • Color
  • Dealer-Certified
  • Private Party
  • Photo Available
  • City MPG
  • Highway MPG
  • ...
These options and/or others might show-up based on the current state of your searching activity. As you might expect, each click affects all other options.

During development, we had a "Picnic Table" choice on the left. I wonder where it went :(. Who knows, perhaps it'll resurface.

Chime-in with what you think ... *gulp*. The team's already pulled-out their notepads. We do need an official blog for this stuff though. We do now :) Here's our first post.

See Also: Seeking a Web User Interface Engineer

See also: CarsDirect on TechCrunch

See also: Loan.com on N.Y. Times

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks great guys. It's screamin fast and pretty easy to navigate.

One feature suggestion:
RSS feed for any search result. I can totally see keeping my South Bay Jeep search in my Google Reader next to my Craiglist Banjo search.

One design suggestion:
It's a little hard to separate the search options on the top and side from the results; there's a lot of white background, blue border boxes. How about setting the search areas in a darker color to offset and frame the main content better?

Chris Holland said...

Yeah, i could see any combination of just about any search criteria make for a very very useful RSS feed.

A few weeks back, I was also mulling over defining a microformat for "vehicle description" and/or "vehicle summary". I wanted to surface it on individual results, if/once i'd get around to expose a hybrid markup/DWR-built page.

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Hi I am looking for a utility car, a truck would do. How much is your best price? I'd be waiting for your response. Thank you!

used cars

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