Show HN: Rotten Tomatoes for Amazon products | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Rotten Tomatoes for Amazon products

bestbestlist.com

10 pointspierc312 comments

One comment I've got is you might want to give users the option to receive notifications and updates for when you add new product categories. Or write frequent blog posts about it. I can see it being marginally entertaining to read about various things I may / may not be in the market for. It's a clean UI and much more pleasurable than browsing Amazon!

Thanks for the kind words. When you say "when you add new product categories", are you referring to the collections (https://bestbestlist.com/collections)?

Or do you just mean new list pages in general? I'm trying to add new lists pretty frequently so I would hate to flood someone with updates on a bunch of things they may not care about (e.g. laundry detergent when maybe you don't do your own laundry, kitchen tools if you don't cook).

Maybe notifications on collections, or give users the option to subscribe to email updates / push notifications. I think what you've got here reminds me of those SkyMall magazines they used to have on the planes that are sort of interesting to read through in a way that browsing Amazon isn't. So, I really think you can get a better visitor return rate if you keep people coming back with updates.

Hey HN,

I wanted to share a tool I built to scratch my own itch.

I call it Best Best List and the aim is to answer "what product should I buy?" in a similar way that Rotten Tomatoes answers "what should I watch?" i.e. by summarizing the opinions of lots of other critics/websites.

https://bestbestlist.com

It has been working really well for everyday, kind of "mundane" products that you would get on Amazon. Say for instance you're looking for a small blender. The way I would always go about it:

1. search google for "best small blender"

2. end up with 7 tabs open of various review sites

3. spot the 5 or so models they recommend

4. cross-check those products with their Amazon ratings/reviews/prices. I was never really interested in spending hours reading long-form reviews.

I realized I could write code to do this for me... so I did! It's very much a work in progress.

Based 100% on what the tool is spitting out, I've recently bought an EZ-curl bar (https://bestbestlist.com/best-ez-curl-bar) for my home gym, new tweezers (https://bestbestlist.com/best-tweezers), a small blender (https://bestbestlist.com/best-small-blender), and a cigar cutter (https://bestbestlist.com/best-cigar-cutters). I gotta say I've been extremely pleased with the recommendations.

Caveats: It might not be the best tool for very complicated items with tons of specs (e.g. a TV) or emotional purchases with brand loyalty (e.g. a guitar) - for those maybe you DO want to spend hours reading reviews. Also it's just Amazon for now.

If you wanna put it to the test I can run the tool on something you're thinking of buying, submit it here: https://bestbestlist.com/ask

What do you think? Does this help make buying decisions a little easier?

So are your aggregating all these reviews manually? Or using some scripts to aggregate them all?

And how are you updating the price? I have seen some affiliate program guidelines that you can not show old the prices of the product. So are you live updating them or how?

Except we can't trust any of the ratings on Amazon, so what are you going to metafilter on?

Interesting. What reviews do you personally find to be the most trustworthy?

ConsumerReports.com is reliable.

TheWireCutter.com is reasonably reliable and are up-front about their use of affiliate links.

At least some of the mainstream consumer periodicals are reasonably reliable, like PC World and MacWorld.

You could do a MetaFilter-like combination of those review sites.

But Amazon.com is notoriously unreliable for reviews. As is most any other e-commerce platform or shopping site with integrated reviews.

Can’t seem to submit/search when using mobile safari on my iPhone X.

Hmm thanks for the feedback. Can you tell me what happens when you try to search? Are you able to tap on the search input to get the cursor in there?

My apologies, it does actually work now that I tried again, it’s just that the ‘no results’ text (if there are no results) is faint and I didn’t notice it before.

Cool. That makes sense, I think I need to tweak the whole UX for when there are no results.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com