That Danny!

I’ve been asked by Bid Boogie’s PR to review their new UK site. I got some free credits and a promise that I won’t have to be nice (”We would love to hear your feedback and we appreciate that you need to be impartial.”).

Now here’s my problem: I think that Bid Boogie are a legitimate company, but I couldn’t really verify it, and some of the activity around its promotion does it no favours at all.

As you will see from the rest of this post, my main issue is one of trust. When a service breaks into a new market, it needs to give you confidence that it is legit. With BidBoogie, a trawl on their site and the web brought up the following question marks:

1. I found several spam messages promoting the new service on Internet forums, blogs and sites, including this one (screenshot) on MoneySavingExpert.com (now removed as spam), which is clearly planted (a PS3 doesn’t actually feature on the list of already sold items on BidBoogie). A user similarly spammed PriceRunner here (screenshot here). I’m not suggesting necessarily that BidBoogie themselves are behind it, but it doesn’t help their brand, and they need to be aware that Imitating a costomer to promote your business is now illegal in the UK, and since May 08 is a criminal offence. If BidBoogie are hoping to instil confidence in their legitimacy, they need to ensure that whoever is doing this, stops. Immediately. And they need to distance themselves from spam.

2. The address provided for Bid Boogie in the UK is that of a virtual office and the phone number a virtual number (0750). It’s probably just a temporary thing, but it isn’t good for consumer confidence.

3. I know you can’t help it, but I found it a little eerie that the first four names of the company’s contacts are, in order of appearance: Miko, Miikka, Mikko and another Mikko, respectively. To an Anglo-trained ear this may seem a bit odd.

4. The domain Bidboogie.co.uk is registered to a company called “Effective Investments S.L”, in Hotel del golf, Malaga. Again, this does not inspire confidence. I would not pay any money to a company where the holding structure is not clear, and the address for redress is somewhat suspect.

So, BidBoogie, if you are indeed legit, the above is the first thing you need to sort out. In fact, there’s a trust issue built into the bid process as well, but I’ll cover that a little further down the page.

Further observations about BidBoogie.co.uk:

1. Your registration process needs a good usability review. It’s not clear which fields are compulsory and which aren’t, the activation email doesn’t send an activation address (worse still, the activation code is glued to the previous word in a way that will lose you quite a few users). When I consult to companies on usability, I often notice that the registration process is overlooked, as are privacy and data protection elements (there are some legal risks here too). You need to ensure you get this one right, especially as you are a transactional site.

2. A new website usually loses me if I don’t understand what it’s there to do within 10 seconds. The homepage of BidBoogie UK was confusing. ‘How does it work?’ I asked myself. A one liner that tells you in a nutshell has to be integrated into this page.

3. Determined to understand BidBoogie, I was looking for a caption explaining the bid system, but couldn’t find one. Eventually I noticed a button called ‘Auction Concept’ at the top. This doesn’t immediately tell an English speaker what’s behind it, but I clicked it to see if it holds the answer. On that page I did finally find a paragraph that is supposed to explain the concept, written in the most awkward language:

“Next to the products available for bidding there is a clock, which shows how much time has passed since the last bid. When the set time after the last bid has passed, the auction closes and the person who holds the highest bid wins. So, when the time on the clock is up, the auction closes. There is no other bidding time for the product, and the auction closes when no one has raised your bid within the given time, e.g. five minutes. Now it’s time to be smart and bid on fantastic quality products. Placing a bid by sending a text message costs £1.50.”

So let’s recap:
- When the clock shows the bid time is over, the auction closes.
- When the time is up the auction closes.
- There is no other bidding time for the product (when the time is up)
- There is no more bidding time when the auction closes.

So what exactly happens when the time is up? Oh yes, the auction closes. Doh!

It was lucky that there’s an explanatory graphic there – which does a much better job, although it too needs some work.

TRYING IT OUT
I went to bid on an Apple Macbook Air to try out my free credits. There are only a few products on the site at the moment, I assume because it is in pre-launch. The Macbook was selling for £71.19, and the idea was that if the clock reaches zero before anyone else bids, the Macbook Air is mine for this ridiculous price, unless someone else bids, in which case the clock is reset:

Of course I didn’t win. In fact, the auction has been live for just under six days now, and, if the system, is to be believed, then someone has been placing a bid at least once a minute during the site’s opening hours of 7am to 10pm. This is possible because BidBoogie allows you to place automatic bids, and if you buy a package of 100 bids, it would continue to bid for you during bidding hours.

Once again, the one element that really needs improving on your site is the trust and transparency factor. When I bid on the MacBook air, and then realised that I can’t see who else is bidding and whether or not they are a legit user, it naturally made me ask: is it a real user, or is it just BidBoogie inflating bid prices? I can’t see the history of bids on a product, I can’t see who’s bidding, and every bid costs me money so, as a user, I am not likely to pay cash for something I’m not really sure works as advertised.

My gut instinct as a consumer says that if something is too good to be true, it usually is. Is it likely that I’ll be able to buy a MacBook Air from BidBoogie for £71? Probably not. How high does it need to go for BidBoogie to make a profit? Should I trust these guys? I need some more assurances, which I don’t get from the current site.

The UK audience is by nature sceptical, so the BidBoogie team needs to think hard about how to build trust with us. At the moment, there isn’t anything to tell me I can trust you.

I’ll be happy to review my opinion in future if things change.

Technorati Tags: ecommerce, reviews, site review, usability

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