What Should We Build Next? App? Forum? Something Else?

Speaking of forums, which I really wish to have here btw lol, would box owners be allowed to post on them? They aren’t allowed to on the other site but sometimes I like to see what they have to say. Not the ultra defensive, super emotional rants, but just answering general questions.

Happy regardless, thank-you for all you do!

A forum would be great. And anything that pops up a sale alert for fast selling boxes. If this already exists for android, someone please let me know. Apologies if this is common knowledge – I don’t use many apps.

Liz, I wanted to chime in about the website and forum possibility. I love how clean and uncluttered your website is. I visit a forum from time to time, and it used to be pretty user friendly. I has now become covered with advertising, popup boxes, pop down boxes, fake posts that you think are real but end up to be advertising in the middle of a string, etc. Recent changes have made it more confusing to navigate. It is enough to make my head spin trying to find good information there. All of that to say… I think a forum here, in the style of your blog and swap site, would be a wonderful option for me! I could leave that other site altogether! And, my addiction to MSA would be complete. Ha! 🙂

I voted for the app. The forum idea kind of scares me because there can be a ton of drama on swap forums, and I still have nightmares about the LBB chat room (lolzzz kidding but it was bad).

This may have been mentioned, but I’d love to be able to counter a first request. For example, I receive a request for fout items. I find something on their list that I’d love to swap for two of my item, but not all four. If I could counter at first reply, it would remove a lot of messaging back and forth or canceling swaps to start smaller ones.

But seriously, this whole site is amazing and swapping is one of my biggest hobbies! Thank you!!

I would love a forum. Having comments on specific boxes is so scattered. It’s hard to follow conversations. Also not every comment is is specific to a sub box.

As an example, I’ve had a shirt for months that I would love to identify because I have no idea what sub box I got it from. Yes, a first world problem if ever there was one! lol Therefore I have no way to ask! So now I can’t post it as a swap.

As others have said, having forum would give me even more reasons to visit the site. A forum would probably create a HUGE jump in your numbers.

Finally, I would love, love, love if t-shirts were organized by size somehow. 90% of the swappers on my matchmaking list want shirts I have…only in the wrong size for what I’m offering. I’ve stopped using the matchmaker because of this. And yet I know it has such great potential.

By the way, Liz, ever since you got the never ending loading problem fixed in FireFox the pages load up SUPER fast. Greatly appreciated!!!

I strongly vote for a forum. No matter how good an app is it’s still being shown on a tiny screen which is my pet peeve about apps (but of course that can’t be helped) Many companies I deal with have mobile apps but I tend to only use those in emergency situations.

Also in a forum there could be a thread about freebies (Liz you remember that was one of my wishes LOL) There are many things I would be happy to send to people for nothing in return……I just mailed the last of my pom pom hats to someone back east and it cost me $2.

Oh and something to remind swappers to delete items such as gift cards that have expired

Thanks again for all you (and Eric ) do. Your website is amazing and very helpful

I agree– forum! It’s much more accessible to everyone, regardless of if they have a smartphone or not. An app would be ok too, but what little I know about app development I think it’s a *major* amount of work to develop ones for each platform (Android, Apple, etc.).

A forum would be excellent! It would be a great way to talk to people more than if they replied to you in a comment or not. 😀

An app would be so amazing and perfect for your site!

Thanks for the site, and for your hard work in continuing to improve it! A lot of good suggestions have already been mentioned, so I won’t repeat them.

Would it be impossible to implement some sort of identity verification on the swap site? Right now it’s unclear if someone who is banned could just sign up under a fake account easily, or not. Maybe if it were tied to a phone number or facebook or something it could be more secure. It sounds complicated but I’d definitely love it and it would help deter bad apples.

I agree with all the previous suggestions of an app which would push timely notifications (Target Beauty Box, etc.) to us. And if Liz would consider her own subscription box again, it would be heavenly. I am still kicking myself for not getting her boxes via Quarterly! Thanks Liz – I am addicted to your site.

I would really love some Canadian subscription reviews. I know you are based in the states so most of your readers are American, and it would be difficult for you to get Canadian sub boxes, but it would be so amazing if you could get a Canadian reviewer or something. I love your website more than other sub box review websites that are Canadian based.

It would be great if Gift and Promo cards are dropped from a person’s swap items once the expiration date has passed. Many swappers forget to remove items that are expired. Thanks.

0) FIX SEARCH! If I search on several words they items will show up in the drop-down list BUT if I hit return to have it bring up a page full of items it tells me it doesn’t find anything. I
1) Text alerts when hot boxes (modcloth stylish surprise, quarterly boxes that have been sold out, etc) are available
2) Forum
3) A few tweaks to the main swap boards:
a) ability to show more than 10 items per page (all of them)
b) ability a swap partners items by name, used/new and/or listing date
c) required field of SIZE for clothing and ability to search by size
d) ability to see listing date (important for food items, for example)
e) change in the format of the counteroffer screen, at least enough to see the entire name of items
f) ability to list items without pictures and all the white space
g) ability to search swaps for name of partner and name of item OR
h) ability to create a list of prior swaps with names and items
4) Deduping items. There are a lot of items that are out there more than once with different pictures or sometimes even the same pictures. I would certainly be willing to spend some time going through the data and identifying dupes (same item, same box) and then choosing the best picture/text to consolidate items into one items. Some of these are quite easy to find. (for example if you type “caviar cc cream” into the search box, you find 8 versions of the Alterna Caviar CC cream – you miss one where CC was spelled out, for a total of 9 instances of this product. If there were a way on search to select each one and send you guys a message that “these are all the same item”, we could clean a LOT of this up quickly.)
5) Improve Search – Allow for AND (Alterna AND Bamboo)
6) Improve search results drop down to allow you to scroll through the item (if it is too far down it doesn’t show up but if you did a multi-word search it won’t come up when you hit return either)
7) List navigation at both the top of the page and the bottom

I know – that’s a lot. You asked, though…. 🙂

(None of this should imply that I don’t LOVE the site. Just that these are items I’ve noticed that would make me able to be more efficient in my use of it!)

I voted for the forum. I also think Members Review for the boxes not reviewed here would be great. There are soooooo many boxes out there that the members here will be able to fill the gap.

Personally, I’dlovelove love a forum! And that’d probably get you even more daily readers, which would really up the need for an app after 😛

I am almost certain that I wouldn’t use the app (because I have a Windows phone and virtually no apps are made for WP) but I’d love to see a forum!

I know this is off topic, but a swap site wish: when I start a swap or when someone starts a swap with me, I’d love a visual sign of some kind to let me know if I’ve swapped with that person before, and I’d also like there to be an easy way to see what feedback I left them. I don’t like to leave neutral/negative feedback when a swap is fulfilled, but I’ll leave blank positives when someone is very slow or unpleasant to deal with. It would be awesome if I could see quickly that this is someone I’ve swapped with and don’t want to swap with again…sometimes I spend a lot of time trying to figure that out. Thanks for considering!

I think a members review session would be great. I’ve found most of the boxes i’ve subscribed to through MSA, but there are others out there as well. In particular, boxes that would appeal to tween/teen girls aren’t very well covered here. Yeah, there are lots of unboxing videos, but I like reading reviews.

App!! I can’t get the swap site to load properly on my Blackberry.

Android app please!!! And upgrade the search function in the swaps!!!

Defintiely an app!! I do EVERYTHING on my iPhone or iPad. My pot laptops are just gathering dust. An app would make it sooo much easier to do everything. Itd be great to have a lot of options within the app too. Like messaging, forums and notifications. Thanks Liz

I vote for forum too. And I don’t know that it would even be feasible, but it would be very neat if the comments on posts were somehow merged with the forum. I miss out on a lot of comments that I would like to read because they are made days or weeks after the original post appeared. If each set of comments were actually a forum thread, it would be easy to visit the forum and see the latest.

I have no clue if that’s even possible though!

id love the app for swaps. I read the blog through bloglovin, so I’m not sure I’d use the app for that.

The blog comments function a bit like a forum already, so that is lower on my list. Hope the app wins!!