It's alive

No posts for almost a month? Here's why.

My group has been hard at work building a new version of MSN Shopping that finally went into public beta last Friday. While it still has a few rough edges, it's a huge improvement on our current site and, in fact, is suddenly one of the better shopping sites on the Web. It has five times as many products as our old site and a bunch of cool new features: improved product and price comparisons, .

How do we compare to a few other large sites? (July 18 data)

Site

Results found

Results visible

Refine by...

Sort by...

Old MSN

1,733

1,733

Price range
Brand

Price
Relevance

New MSN

10,047

5,000
(all 10K
if you
refine)

Price range
Brand
Seller
Screen size
TV type
Display type
On sale
Free shipping (soon)

Low price
High price
Popularity
Highest rated
Lowest rated
Name A-Z
Name Z-A

Froogle

"About
730,000"

1,000

Price range
Seller

Price

Amazon

3,160

3,160

Brand
Type
Screen size

Low price
High price
Bestselling
Rating
Name A-Z
Name Z-A

Yahoo

1,573

1,573

Price range
Brand
TV type
Screen size
HDTV compatible
On sale
Brand

Price
"Top results"

(The most interesting comparison, I think, is between how many results Froogle claims to have and how many it actually shows. Froogle may claim millions of results, but it never displays more than 1,000 results for any search.)

My role? I designed the new user interface and a number of front-end features, including the Recently Viewed section (it remembers what you've looked at, and doesn't share that info with Microsoft) and the nifty little +/- controls that let you see more data without having to reload a page.

Try it at beta.shopping.msn.com.

Anyway, that's what's kept me too busy to post.