Making forum easier to navigate: Find A Deal

Meta
#1

Thank you all for participating in the poll on Marketplace title format! There’s great desire for more structure, yet we do agree with some of the concerns voiced. So instead of standardizing Marketplace titles, we looked first to leverage our existing tagging system and search functionality to make Marketplace more navigable. In the coming few days, we are launching a quick search tool (Find A Deal) for Marketplace deals and adding tags for price range. This is what it will look like:

We are breaking the price range into the following tiers: #0-199, #200s, #300s, #400-600, #600-plus, and #any. @brokers and @dealers, feel free to update your posts with the applicable price range tag(s) now before we launch the Find A Deal tool.

The best practice for advertising monthly payment in this community is to calculate based on “no down payment, only drive-off fees due at signing.” Regarding what incentives to apply – know your audience and use your best judgment.

Business Directory – Find A Seller Search Tool

We are also making an effort to make businesses easier to search. Users can now quickly connect to the right seller based on their region and preferred brand. Note that this Find A Seller tool searches based on your review page tags – so if you want to be more visible, we encourage you to update your tags and create a review page if you haven’t done so.

Here’s a link to the Guidelines for Review Pages, which includes the tags every review page must include.

Here’s a master list of all the tags for reference.

We hope you will find these improvements helpful.

Victoria and Michael

9 Likes
#2
#3

The tags link is incorrect, should have an “s” at the end. https://forum.leasehackr.com/tags

I like the way this looks, just not a fan that it isn’t standardized for the payment, merely a suggestion. If there was a way to enforce it, that would be awesome and much easier to use.

1 Like
#4

Yeah we had a few rounds of debate on how to present price range that is meaningful and not too cumbersome to search and present. We recognized consumers seeking cheaper deals are more sensitive to pricing, so it makes sense to break the lower-end price range down into smaller increments; at the same time we don’t want to create a “race to the bottom” situation and set unrealistic expectations. If we standardize the price range tags in $100 increments across all car segments, it is cumbersome to tag and search for middle- to higher-end cars, which general straddle over a $200+ increment. We also don’t want over-tagging that it becomes meaningless to readers. When it comes to nomenclature, we wanted something easy to input for the OPs, so we thought starting tags with a number is the most intuitive.

At the end of the day, we wanted to make information on this forum easier to access and digest without over-categorization or -standardization. We welcome your suggestions for improvement as we experiment.

#5

This is really great, thank you! I did notice that the parameters reset once user clicks search, is there any way to retain those parameters to make adjusting easier?

For example, I if search NY under 200s and click search, the search bar resets back to California, so if I wanted to stay within NY and just change the price/make, I need to start all over.

1 Like
#6

Perhaps instead of just individual state tags you could do regional tags. I do a lot of deals in the south, midwest, and west coast bc even with shipping im typically cheaper then local dealers. However I can’t tag those states as I’m only allowed so many tags. Just a thought as most people are willing to travel or ship for a great deal.

#7

I do agree with your idea of region but for the sake of making the website easier, I like the states individually tagged.

As for the concern of tag limitations, I think it should be easy to remove the limit for the broker or dealer set of users.

Another suggestion would be to make it to tags are shown in a different way so its not 10 lines of tags.

2 Likes
#8

In response to comments, we’ve made a few changes to improve Find A Deal:

  1. All new Marketplace threads are now required to select price range tags.
  2. We’ve increased the number of tags allowed. Feel free to add all the applicable states to your heart’s content.
  3. To reduce clutter, we’ve hidden the price range tags so that they are only visible to admins, dealers, and brokers.

Thanks again to all the @dealers and @brokers who’ve added price range tags to their Marketplace topics: #0-199, #200s, #300s, #400-600, and #600-plus.

7 Likes
#9

She’s dead Jim.

All these changes might be great for you, but they don’t work for us.

We use the forum to drive Hackers to our deals on a spreadsheet.

Until recently, at any given time there are as many as 30 active users looking at our spreadsheet, and Calling us to do Hacker deals.

Well, with the changes that have been made, and the Tags taken off our posts, we have finally hit ZERO.

Right now, on the last day in the biggest month in our history we have ZERO people looking at our spreadsheet, and Hacker activity is down 60%

On top of this we have multiple hackers behaving EXTREMELY poorly which I won’t go into just yet.

If we can’t make needed changes, we will have to opt out of the forum.

#10

The changes here definitely seem like they should in theory do a better job of helping people find you rather than the opposite. Other than perhaps some growing pains as things get aligned with the new format, what do you think isn’t working for you?

1 Like
#11

What isn’t working for us is that the new changes have made us irrelevant. We have 0 Hackers looking at our spreadsheet.

#12

Ok, but why? Let’s try to sort out what the problem is.

Is your thread not being properly discovered? If so, is that because there’s a problem with the searching so the tags you have entered aren’t causing you to pop up? Is it because your tags haven’t been updated, so if someone searches and utilizes them, you’re not found? Is it because postings from other brokers/dealers are stealing traffic?

The goal in these changes is to make the marketplace easier to use. That should be driving more traffic to you, not less. It certainly shouldn’t be cutting off all traffic, so let’s figure out why.

3 Likes
#13

When does this go into effect? I’m still capped at 15 tags

#14

These are pretty useless, IMO. Brokers advertise lowest payments where their $200s become $350s-$400s with taxes, broker fees and “inceptions” included.
Also, most brokers include loyalty and/or some other incentives that many may not even qualify for.

7 Likes
#15

I agree. It doesn’t help those advertising low drive off deals. Also, easier for OP to add all range tags and they magically appear under every search then.

1 Like
#16

I’m glad we’re being proactive in implementing changes but what I had in mind was hiding of state tags or at least a drop down. I think the price tags should stay visible.

#17

Agreed. It is a thoughtful idea though, but perhaps having a standard for advertisements would give it more purpose.

#18

If you advertise with incentives to lure people in then you’re just going to have more tire kickers, hence creating more work for yourself. I don’t get it. I get enough people asking me why I advertise $170/mo+ttf then when I quote them $210 all in they get mad… or ask for 24/15 and wonder why the price is higher then advertised. I couldn’t imagine including college grad and military into my deals

5 Likes
#19

Hi @rubbergash,

I just took a look at your latest posts’ edit history. Unlike all your previous posts, you have left the tag field blank for your November post, so @michael added the tags in for you last night, a common practice among us moderators when we see posts have not been tagged according to our guideline or have been mis-tagged. Since our implementation of Find A Deal, a lot more shoppers are using it to target their search, so make sure you tag your posts appropriately.

3 Likes
#20

We just increased it to 20 tags.

2 Likes