Introducing HomebrewNinja.com

[HomebrewNinja]

HomebrewNinja.com is a website where you can compare prices from the major online homebrew suppliers. You can come tell us everything you need for the next time you brew and we'll tell you the best prices from 9 online retailers. Yup. For free. No surfing around or wondering. And you can save your shopping lists with us. As many as you want. Then next time you want to make that recipe again, you'll know where to shop in 3 clicks. 3 clicks.

As always, we welcome suggestions of stores to add and improvements to make to our site to better serve homebrewers!

Let's brew cheaply, so we can brew more.

 

[grathan]

Pretty cool. I bet this is a lot of work. You should open up pricing so registered users can edit prices for you.

 

[HomebrewNinja]

grathan, thanks for your willingness to help!  We've automated the process by which we update prices, but there are 2 BIG things that you can help with:

1) email us at website@homebrewninja.com if you find prices that are better or if you have any suggestions on how we can improve (and yes, we read EVERY SINGLE email we get)
2) contact your favorite online homebrew supply retailers and request that they partner with us

Thanks for checking us out!

Happy Homebrewing,
HomebrewNinja.com

 

[jomebrew]

The color scheme is pretty hard for me to see.  You should consider folks who can't see colors so well.  The light font on a high contrast page is tough to see.

I added three fermentables, entered my zip code and clicked Price My Shopping List.  It just takes me to the top of the page.  No ide what I am supposed to do.  It is not intuitive.... Wait, I see, I had an exits blank entry in fermentables.  You should ignore that or make it way more obvious I have to remove it.  I don't even know how it got there.

Adding items (in fermentables), the + and X are all weird.  You should have a + next to the new item not and X.  That is unintuitive.

The layout with the + and reset is inconsistent.  It is also too easy to click reset by accident. 

I can't use my keyboard to quickly navigate the form and dropdowns.  That is a pain.

The search results format is really messy.  I can't see a lot of important amt information.   

You need to better highlight a result that is missing items.

I asked for 15 lbs of grain and the result was a 55 lb sack.  That is not particularly helpful. 

I have more but that is it for now.  I'll keep an eye on this thread to see when enhancements come along.

Cheers

 

[Beer_Tigger]

+1 on color scheme issues.  I know it's probably not artsy-fartsy to use good ol' bold black font, but it is more practical.

 

[HomebrewNinja]

Jomebrew, thanks for your feedback!  We really appreciate it!  We've already started working on making changes, but it would be helpful if you could answer a couple of quick questions.  For the sake of expediency, I've just asked them in your quoted message below in bold.

Thanks,
Jen
HomebrewNinja.com

The color scheme is pretty hard for me to see.  You should consider folks who can't see colors so well.  The light font on a high contrast page is tough to see.  Do you mean the text in the dropdowns? Or is it something else?

I added three fermentables, entered my zip code and clicked Price My Shopping List.  It just takes me to the top of the page.  No ide what I am supposed to do.  It is not intuitive.... Wait, I see, I had an exits blank entry in fermentables.  You should ignore that or make it way more obvious I have to remove it.  I don't even know how it got there.

Adding items (in fermentables), the + and X are all weird.  You should have a + next to the new item not and X.  That is unintuitive.

The layout with the + and reset is inconsistent.  It is also too easy to click reset by accident. 

I can't use my keyboard to quickly navigate the form and dropdowns.  That is a pain.

The search results format is really messy.  I can't see a lot of important amt information.    What important amount info are we missing?  We definitely want to provide everything that our users want!

You need to better highlight a result that is missing items. 

I asked for 15 lbs of grain and the result was a 55 lb sack.  That is not particularly helpful.  That is odd.  If you can reply with the exact category of what you searched for, I'd like to personally check it out to make sure we're getting you the right results

I have more but that is it for now.  I'll keep an eye on this thread to see when enhancements come along.

Cheers

 

[jomebrew]

1.  The font in the input boxes is way too faint. 
2. The button color is a violation of my inability to see the colors very well in the first place.  Red and greens are most common hard to see colors.  Orange is just red without all the sexiness.

Search was better this time. Attached results. 

The names of the products are really light font color and hard to read.  Especially with the large, unsightly, icons and colored boxes all over the place.

Also, how is the most expensive the best deal?  Because it had all the ingredients is not the best deal.  I can look at the data and see the missing item was only 4 bucks which would make the other three still a better deal.  The totals at the top should note missing items . 

You already hyper-linked the items in the results, you don't need an oversized, homely Go To Store button. 

While I am at it, I would move the new search button to tohe top to make it more accessible and where you would expect it to be.

I realize some of this is purely subjective.  I have been involved with software quality and testing for a couple decades  I am always critical of a design that was implemented in a way making it easier for the developer to write rather than the user to use. When it comes to colors, I have been instrumental getting some of the largest software products changed. Mostly because I complain a lot then throw ADA 508 around. 

I did find the tool much better to use this time though I will never like navigation that can only be done by mouse clicks.  I can slam through a recipe via keyboard navigation better than mouse clicks.    What is sorely missing is the ability to add the shopping list results to the store cart.

Why is there an extra gree box to the right of Profile (no in the attached capture)? 

Also, kudos for allowing me to register on the search results page and not having to refresh/reload and lose the results or wait for it to get them again.

Cheers! 
Joe

 

[HomebrewNinja]

Jomebrew,

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions!  We're working on an option for people who want colorless styling and keyboard-friendly dropdowns.  We hope to make that live by the end of the week.  I'll for sure give you a heads-up on that. 

Thanks for attaching the screenshot, it was really helpful.  I'm glad the Search Results were better for you the second time.  Since products are updated every day, sometimes smaller quantities of grains are out of stock for a day or two, so our system has to substitute bulk items in order to fulfill the request.  That might have been the cause of the wonkiness.  It's hard to look back a few days to determine search result problems because all of the product data is updated daily.

We'll work on noting at the top when the store is missing an item.  I agree, the most expensive deal is NOT the best deal, but we operate under the idea that most of our users would rather know where they can get their entire shopping list at the current moment.  Please let me know if you have ideas on how we can do that better.

We didn't put a New Search at the top because users can simply click Shopping List in the top nav bar to get there, but we'll consider if that would be a useful option in the future.

To satisfy your curiosity, the small, empty green box to the right of Profile in the top nav bar is a styling issue with the software we use.  It's pretty obnoxious, but in all honesty, though we know aesthetics are important, we usually focus our time on providing more functionality with stores and features than messing with something that just kind of looks funny. 

Thanks for all of your time in giving us this excellent feedback!  We appreciate it and want to make HomebrewNinja.com a uniquely helpful site for homebrewers so keep it coming!

Jen
HomebrewNinja.com

 

[jomebrew]

I think it will be a useful tool and as it gets easier for me to use, I will be sharing it with my brewing friends and clubs. 

Thanks for sharing this new way to shop around and, better yet, an easier what to see who has the most in stock

Cheers!

Joe

 

[HomebrewNinja]

Jomebrew,

I'm pleased to announce to you that we just made Simple Styling live!  Down in the footer on the right, you can click Simple Styling to morph all of HomebrewNinja.com into Simple Styling mode which includes muted coloring and keyboard-navigable dropdowns on our Shopping List page.  It will last for the duration of your session.  You'll also notice that we moved the Reset buttons to the left of the rows for a better user experience.  We've taken your other suggestions to heart and have them on our list for consideration and implementation.  We are DEFINITELY working on a good solution for our users to add all of the items on their shopping lists to their cart at the retailer.

We appreciate all of your time and input and welcome any additional suggestions you might have!  Feel free to email website@homebrewninja.com anytime!

Thanks,
Jen
HomebrewNinja.com

 

[HomebrewNinja]

Jomebrew,

I wanted to let you know that we've made another change!  Now when you're looking at your Results page, you'll see a link at the bottom of each store that says Open All Items.  When you click that, it'll open each item in a new tab or window (depending on your browser) so you don't have to manually open each product.  I know that it isn't magically adding the items to your cart at the retailer, but we wanted to get a workaround into your hands right away and this doesn't require any work from any of our partners.

Happy Brewing,
Jen
HomebrewNinja.com