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"Search2 COMPETITION - And the WINNER is..."

COMPETITION ANNOUNCEMENT:

THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED. A big thank you to those that took time to enter. A winner will be announced soon. Watch this space...

Glad you're still watching! Very sorry for the delay - there were some really good comments and suggestionss. A big thank you to everybody that took part!

The winner is (drum roll...) er-no! Thanks once again for all your valuble work.

Remember to enter all our other great competitions we have running at the moment.


We've made lots of changes to our Product Search facility.

As most of you will remember we had a very successful Gameaday competition on this a few months ago which was won by Meka_Dragon.

Now that most of the suggested changes have been implimented I would like us to do it again.


This one closes on June 7th

The prize will go to the person who finds the MOST VALID PROBLEMS across our WHOLE PRODUCT RANGE in the SEARCH FACILITY.

If you think you should be able to search on "Horror Movies", but nothing comes up, then add it to your list.

If you think people will mis-spell gran turismo, then add that too - but test it first.

Use short lists if possible but multiple posts will count together. i.e. all your posts on this subject will add up and count towards the prize.

I recommend you read the details of our searching process which you can click to from a link at Site Map. Basically we use the start of a word, so a search on "thunder" will find "thunderball". If several words are combined it must find all.

I'm not sure about this but some of the Bond films are classed "Action" while a few are "Action/Adventure" Shouldn't they all be this? And maybe when you search for "spy" you should get all Bond films rather than just one - "The Spy who loved me". "Espionage" is another word that you associate with a spy film etc.

Also my last point another box you could have is stock so people can only search for products in stock if they want to make a quick purchase.. Little ideas but make sure you get exactly what you want.

Also there is a problem. IF you search for Star Wars you get too many results as of course "Star" is part of the word "starring" which appears on every DVD. I'm not sure but if Star Wars was released on DVD (or has been - i dont think so) it might not be shown at the top of the list. There are lots of other words in Starring like ring and tar that may effect results. Maybe compensate for this problem with an exact match only option on the search facility so it doesnt search for words containing these letters.

That's it for now.

There should be a sort by price and name, which are easy to do, (usual drill) and maybe a compare function. Also, there could be more info on the products.

On a more technical note, you use a picture button to activate your search where an HTML one will do the job better. HTML will take less time to download, and supported by more browsers. Can you please explain to me why you did that? I can't seem to work it out.

Maybe more obvious product groups, eg. CD writers. I know you have specialsearch.php, but these can be hard to find.

One last thing, why do you not sell Dreamweaver and Fireworks?

I agree with the earlier points. You should be able to search for names, type (eg. n64, ps2, dvd etc..), a budget where you put the maximum amount of money you want to spend, certificate (some people won't be able to get 18s if they are 15 and this can sort that out). You may want to also incorporate another box where you either search for products out now, products not out yet or you could leave this field blank. When you click DVD or a console/pc depending what you selected you get genres available. This way people can search for particular genres they wanted. For example they might like Horror films and all they would have to select would be horror and DVD to get a huge list of them. Also why not incorporate the actors/actress field you use elsewhere on your site. To avoid taking up too much space you should make this an advanced search - all fields are optional but help the viewer get exactly what he's looking for. Perfect for the unsure person not positive on what he's after.

I agree with the earlier points. You should be able to search for names, type (eg. n64, ps2, dvd etc..), a budget where you put the maximum amount of money you want to spend, certificate (some people won't be able to get 18s if they are 15 and this can sort that out). When you click DVD or a console/pc depending what you selected you get genres available. This way people can search for particular genres they wanted. For example they might like Horror films and all they would have to select would be horror and DVD to get a huge list of them. Also why not incorporate the actors/actress field you use elsewhere on your site. To avoid taking up too much space you should make this an advanced search - all fields are optional but help the viewer get exactly what he's looking for. Perfect for the unsure person not positive on what he's after.

RastaBillySkank wrote:
> Working on the "multiformat" thing...

If a game has
> been released over more than one format and you're looking for it on
> ONE format and you type the game name in, it brings up the names of
> all the games.

Maybe you could tell your search to recognise
> format names that are put in brackets. Eg Indiana Jones and the
> Infernal Machine would normally bring up both the N64 version and
> the PC game. Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine (N64) would then
> only bring up the N64 version.

Ignore this one! I weren't thinkin! You;ve already got a format defined thing!

When the same game appears on multiformat results, I think a simple click on the word (n64) should be enough to show just the results for multiformat games on the 64...

P'raps...

Oh I've run outta ideas!

I reckon to improve the search you should have it so the user can define if he wants the most expensive items at the top of the list, the least expensive items at the top of the list, etc,

Infact this would be very useful when searching for say a N64 game, the user could search, then change the same search to display the results in a list of most expensive to least...etc.

I reckon four categories should do it,

Most Expensive First
Least Expensive First
Most Recent Release (great when seaching for say '007')
Greatest Saving (read below)

(if searching for a PC, the user could see that he saves the most on the PC at the top of the list)

I have searched for many items, and I know this would be very helpful!

Thanks
er-no

Working on the "multiformat" thing...

If a game has been released over more than one format and you're looking for it on ONE format and you type the game name in, it brings up the names of all the games.

Maybe you could tell your search to recognise format names that are put in brackets. Eg Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine would normally bring up both the N64 version and the PC game. Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine (N64) would then only bring up the N64 version.

I know this probably doesn't have anything to do with it but...

When you type in say "N64 game release dates" You get nothing. Perhaps the engine could recognise the phrase "release date" and could then provide a link for the chart.

I know that there already IS a link to the release chart but I find it annoying how that it is multiformat. Because not many N64 games are being released as the console is dieing, I have to trawl through 5 pages to get 2 games release dates.

I think that each format should have it's own release date chart so you don't have to go through pages and pages of other format releases that you're not interested in before you find anything for YOUR format.