I've been putting a lot of effort lately into a project that's been three years in coming. (If you're too lazy to or just don't want to read the history, you can go to http://www.wishlistlive.com to check it out.)
A few years ago, I recieved three copies of Blade on DVD. While it's true that I liked the movie, we decided that a gift registry would be just the thing for avoiding this in the future. So we set out in search for one on the internet that would suit our needs.
We came across a few that seemed to work. Wish List was the first we encountered. It worked for a while, but there were some complaints. There were some comments that it was too complicated for certain users, specifically older parents. It you weren't internet savvy, adding URL links to the items you wanted was very non-trivial. Of course, the joy of Wish List ended when they started with their service fee, and we all had to look elsewhere for a free gift registry.
Next we tried Wish Box. Wish Box did all of the stuff that Wish List did, but in a much stranger interface. Popup windows and frames were all over the place there. It bugged me that you had to click an extra time to see the details for a gift in a list, and it would then just load the whole list again, but include the details with it. Why didn't it list the details in the original list? Also, it was difficult to categorize and add more than 20 gift suggestions. This was not a good thing.
After using Wish Box for a year, we gave up on it. We have since looked for a good gift registry, and have come upon a few that had some of the features we needed. Wish Fish seemed pretty good, but the software seems incomplete. Felicite looks nice, but more geared toward weddings, in spite of their protestations. I tried Baggle briefly, but couldn't get over their use of a Windows program to add items and the silly bag metaphor. There are a ton of other registries on the net, but they all lacked just a couple of the features that we thought would make for the perfect registry.
Here are the basic requirements for an internet wish list:
- You have to be able to add items to a list of your own and maintain them. The items should include the name, a description of any length, a quantity desired, and an approximate cost. The user should have the option of entering a URL that leads to a page on the internet that sells the product, and/or the name of a store that sells the product in the real world.
- There must be an easy way to search for the people for whom you wish to buy. You should be able to search for one of your friends/family and then import part or all of their list of friends/family into your own.
- You should be able to mark items in other people's lists as reserved for purchase. When those people log in, the site should not reveal to them which items in their list have been reserved.
Those were the basic requirements. Most of the registry sites online do that to some degree, and that's all they do. Most of the sites have concentrated on trying to make this process easier, but have done so using cryptic technology like browser scriptlets. I mean, do you even know what a browser scriptlet is? How would you be able to effectively use one?
Plus, many of the sites had very strange layouts to implement these features. As I mentioned about Wish Box, all of this information had to fit in a small, unresizable pop-up window, and couldn't be more than a certain length. Madness.
Assuming you could put up with all of that (and the ugliness in color of some of the sites - yuck), there are a bunch of more "advanced" features we thought of that these registries simply didn't provide:
- The ability to add suggestions to other people's lists. This is great for the people that only put two things on their list and have 20 people shopping for them. Their siblings/roommates/parents can suggest items that they might also like. They won't see these suggestions when they log in, so they'll be surprised when they get something they like.
- The ability to add comments to items on other people's lists. Suppose an item has an accessory. You could reserve the item and then note that the accessories are still available. You could also ask questions about an item of other people viewing the list who might know better exactly what that person wants.
- The ability to start a collection for an item so that several people can "go in" on a higher-priced item.
- The ability to reverse the listing process. Instead of listing all of the gifts someone wants, list all of the gifts that you have reserved on everyone else's lists. I don't know why other registries don't do this because it's a fantastic feature for creating a shopping list.
- The ability to export your own list as RSS. Not useful to everyone, but for blog writers, RSS is a handy format that will let you manage your list with the registry, yet post the updates automatically on your own site.
- The ability to omit the link URL and still have a prayer at finding the item online for purchase. This is good for folks who aren't as web savvy as the rest of us and aren't sure how to capture URLs.
- The ability to add a phantom user. This takes a bit of explanation. Say you're having trouble finding the perfect gift for your grandmother. You mom knows her pretty well, and could probably provide a few suggestions. But your grandmother doesn't know how to use the internet (yet). You could create a "phantom user" for your grandmother, to which your mom could add suggestions. You can mark the suggestions as reserved, and then your mom wouldn't have to manage who she gave what idea to. And best of all, when your grandmother finally learns the benefit of the internet, she can log in and attach her real login to the phantom user, so that her own suggestions appear right along side the originals.
Anyway, those are a few of the ideas.
So I spent evenings and weekends of the past two weeks writing the web site that would handle all of this. As I mentioned in a previous entry, I got the site template from Template Monster, and then completely rewrote the design using CSS rather than tables. I added all of the basic registry functionality, and then started on some of the extra features that I mentioned.
I haven't got all the way through my feature list, and I wonder if I should stop now to let the holiday pass while I know everything is working fairly smoothly. I would really like to add some more of the extra features above. In fact, I'm sure I will do so soon, since I already have some of the code written for some of them. My main concern at this point is cleaning up the features that I have so that the site is polished enough to get repeat business.
Oh yeah... When I say "business", I don't mean I'm making any money from it. The entire functionality of the registry is free.
So if you're in the need of a way to register for gifts, you should be happy with my new software. I suggest you give it a try. If you're a family member, I suggest you get over to the site pronto and start entering items, or you're getting nothing for Christmas this year.
