Classified Ads With a Kick, For a Particular Product Line
This website will deal with a specific type of product, which I will keep confidential for the time being. The type of product involved does typically have an expiration date. The site’s primary content will be “descriptions” of many of the hundreds of products that fall within this product line we are dealing with. These descriptions may be created by admins or by registered users of the site. Users will attach free classified advertisements called “tickets” to these descriptions. The site will initially begin with no content at all. All content will be added by the site admin (me), or users. Users will have an eBay-style private message area where they may receive and respond to messages from site admin and other users they are completing a deal with. A blog and community forum will also be attached to the site.
The site must be compatible with IE 6, 7, 8, and Firefox. An per-existing or custom content management system will be necessary in order to allow me to make changes when necessary. The CMS must afford differing levels of control between system admins and site moderators. Written in Pphp using a LAMP setup (Linux, Apache, MySql, php). I would like the ability to add one-line text ads throughout the page. I would like to be able to add Google AdWords text ads on the sides of the page.
The timeframe for completion is 3 and one half months, with a two week beta testing period.
Please provide separate quotes for coding, design, and both together. You may separate the optional items or include them in the quote as you wish.
The descriptions will include the following information: product title, product description, retail price, optional link to corresponding forum post, optional expiration date, optional links to product info, and number of completed sales of this product on the website IF greater than zero. This sales number will of course be dynamic content. There will also be a place for users to vote the described product up or down. A description may only be edited by the creator, the site admin, or a moderator that the admin has assigned.
The home page will show various featured product descriptions. There will be a search box to search for product descriptions by key word(s). The search results may then be sorted by the following fields: Featured (default), Popular, Rating, Newest, Most Available, and Expired. Continue reading for descriptions of these fields.
The home page will have navigation tabs at the top, which sort the descriptions in different ways for the user. The tabs will be: Featured (default), Popular, Rating, Newest, Most Available, Regional, and Expired. When clicking on a tab, the entire web page will change. I would like to limit the use of AJAX and advanced technologies. No Flash is to be used.
Here are how the descriptions are sorted either by clicking tabs, or by sorting a key word search:
-Featured: Description order is determined by internal site administrator (me)
-Popular: Products described that have the most completed sales on our website come first (see below for more information on how this sales process works)
-Rating – The product description’s rating as voted by users. Users points may be weighted (see below under optional items).
-Newest – Most recently added descriptions
-Most Available – Descriptions with the most classified ads (tickets) attached to them
-Regional – Clickable map above. Below, sorted by state and then city with a number in parentheses showing how many offers exist for the particular city. Cities can be added.
Connected to the descriptions will be free classified advertisements called Tickets. The site will enable registered users (free registration) to post free classified tickets for the exact product in the description if they have one that they would like to sell. In the same way, users may also post a tickets under a product description if they are looking to buy one of the described products.
Tickets will include the following information:
-Product Title – This is automatically populated from the description that the new ticket is being connected to
-Link to the “Description” the ticket is associated with. Again, this is automatically populated.
-”For Sale” or “Looking to Buy” designation
-Price (determined by creator of ticket – This can be the same or different from the retail price on the description
-Payment methods accepted or offered, depending on whether it is a “For Sale” or “Looking to Buy” ticket. (eg. PayPal, Google Checkout, personal check)
-Any information that will be needed or given upon completion of the sale (ex. Name and address, telephone number, etc.)
-Detailed user score information – This is the score of the individual posting the ticket. It is derived from e-Bay style feedback from other users in prior transactions.
-The creating user’s ID or name will be kept anonymous at this stage
After you click on a product description, you will see the tickets below it that users have added that are associated with that product. If there are more “For Sale” tickets, these will show first, and there will be a tab to click for “Looking to Buy” tickets. If there are more “Looking to Buy” tickets, then the opposite will take place. There will be a couple of boxes you can check above the tickets to select “show only FOR SALE tickets” or “show only LOOKING TO BUY tickets”.
Users will then have the ability to sort tickets after clicking into a product description. They can sort by the following fields:
-Ticket creator’s user score high to low
-Ticket creator’s user score low to high
-Ticket price high to low
-Ticket price low to high
When a user accepts a ticket (ex. They want to buy a product offered in a “For Sale” ticket), the original creator of the ticket (not necessarily the creator of the description) is notified and asked if they would also like to accept. This gives them a chance to look at the receiving party’s detailed user score before completing the transaction. The receiving party is also kept anonymous at this stage.
If the offering party accepts:
-Both parties are prompted to make payment of our fee to the website. The fee will initially be heavily discounted for the first months of site operation, but they need to see that in the future, the fee will be the greater of $2 or 10% of the product cost. We will accept payment via PayPal or Google Checkout, including credit cards used via either of these payment gateways,
-When payment is made, usernames are revealed to the two parties, and the two users may begin to communicate through messaging each other in the user message area (not the forum messaging area) to exchange pertinent information.
-User messages must be automatically filtered to prevent the exchanging of email addresses, etc.
o If attempting to submit a message with a filtered word/s, the writer gets a
notice telling them “Unless you wish to edit, the following words will be
removed from your post in accordance with our terms..” The removed words
will be highlighted in red in the message. They will then have the option
to click “Edit” or “Submit”. An alert with the original message as typed
before filtering will be sent to the board moderator and site admin for
their information.
-The two parties are able to rate each other any time after payment. Ratings will include:
o An overall rating of one to five stars
o Sub-category ratings (these do not affect the overall rating)
_ Timeliness of money transferred
_ Accuracy of the ticket information
_ Communication
o An optional text review of 140 characters or less
-The two parties’ ratings of each other are not published until BOTH RATINGS have been submited, unless:
o If the receiving party’s rating has been submitted for 5 full calendar days
already with no rating submitted from the offering party. In this case, the
receiving party’s rating is published and the offering party no longer has
the opportunity to rate the receiver.
o If the receiving party never completes a rating, then no ratings will be
published, even if the offering party has submitted a rating to be
published.
If the offering party does not accept the receiver, the offering party is asked if they need to block this kind of offer or this user in the future, leading them to a new page
-Offering party may block
o the same offer from the same user,
o and/ or the user altogether,
o and/ or the same offer from all users
User Forum considerations
-users can add to each others’ forum reputation scores as at slickdeals.net user forum
-separate forum private messages
-filters on posts and private messages (with clear warnings as in the main site user messages above)
-free registration
-normal forum capabilities for registered users – search, avatar, etc.
Optional Items
*Even if these items are not implemented initially, the site must be constructed so that they may be added later if desired.
-The ability to add a ticket to your “Watching” list of tickets you want to consider for the future.
-A link beside the search box for “Ticket Search” where you may search only tickets b(not descriptions) by a key word(s)
-If a product expires before the expiration date, a user can tag the description as expired through a link on the description that says “Mark as Expired”. When this is done, a statement in red text will be put on the description that says “A user has tagged this product description as expired. Please vote it expired or active here.” The product will become expired when it reaches a certain number of votes of expiration from users. If the point balance goes to zero or a negative number from people voting it active, the warning in red will go away.
-Safari compatibility is a plus.
-The ability to change the site’s background/ wallpaper from time to time is a bonus.
-When users vote on the rating of an offer, or whether an offer is expired, their points are weighted. Here are things that give weight to a user’s vote:
o 10 points for completed sales transaction
o If 4 stars user rating, multiply transaction points by 2. If 5 stars,
multiply by 3
o 2 points for each level of Forum Rating attained
o 1 point for each portion of a year as a user
o 1 point for each 10 Forum posts
- User’s points can be set to 0 by admin if I don’t want their vote to count.
Graphic Design Considerations
-The “For Sale” And “Looking To Buy” tickets should be differing colors.
-A female graphic artist is preferable.
-no Adobe Flash
-appealing to both genders and a variety of ages and demographics
-clean looking
-offers should be enclosed in an empty, rounded rectangle
-tickets should be enclosed in the shape of a luggage tag
-minimal javascript if any
-800 pixel fixed width – non-scaling, but with a backdrop/ wallpaper color or pattern behind it
-pleasing color scheme, with colors used to highlight important areas of the page
-logo stands out, is trademarked and integrated with surrounding graphics and slogan
o I can provide some direction on the logo
-rounded corners
-shading and reflection for depth
-good use of white space
-unique, eye-catching
-very obvious search bar
-possible use of elements from US paper currency
-favicon
