Changes to UK deals - introducing the "Deal Stream"

John

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[preview]Posting deals has always been a bit clunky around here. Doing things via the old deal system took forever - you had to fill in a form that took 5 minutes, only to have it turn into a boring link with a rating system no-one ever used. Posting in the forums wasn't much better - with entire threads devoted to a single game, most of the time it wouldn't be worth commenting on. So, we've made some changes to the deal system. It's early days and more changes are coming, but what we have to start off with should make using the deal system a lot more enjoyable for everyone.[/preview]

The first big change is to the way you can submit a deal into the system. Instead of filling out a massive form, everything has been replaced with a single text field.

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Just type your deal in the field and submit!​

The new submission system is pretty smart, it doesn't matter how you input your deal - it'll figure out how to format it and recognize all the key information. Just make sure you include the name of the game, the platform, the price, and the link - along with any info other CAGs will need to get the price. (e.g. coupon codes, specific instructions, etc.) Because deals are now a lot easier to submit, we're moderating all the submissions to cut down on duplicates. As soon as your deal is approved, it'll appear in the deal stream.

The second big change is how the deals are viewed. In the old system, each deal was a bloated table that took up a quarter of the page - it made browsing deals slow, since so much of the page was wasted on blank space and over-sized box art. The new layout has been on a diet, box art will zoom on-click, and unnecessary page elements only appear when you're likely to need them. Click the info button next to a deal's price to launch a price checking window, where you can see all the latest new and used prices for that game - all without leaving the page.

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Extra links only appear when hovering over a deal, and box art can be enlarged with a single click.​

Besides helping out your fellow CAGs, there's a new reason to post deals - a weekly raffle to win the game of your choice up to the value of £50 (subject to availability - we have to be able to buy/pre-order it!). Every time you submit a deal that gets approved and added to the deal stream, you'll earn a raffle ticket. Every Sunday we'll randomly draw a ticket out of all the entries to pick our winner. (Registered users only.)

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There are no limits to the number of tickets you can earn for deal posting.​

So, that's a brief look at the new deal stream system. Stay tuned for more features soon, including a revamp of our front page integration. :)
 
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Good stuff, although I think the rating system held relevance. Now I don't see where you can mark a deal down for being bad or cheaper elsewhere.
 
Looks Purdyyy :)

also does this mean that this forum would be used for deals that required some coupon codes or something along those lines?
 
Hope this works out.

I see some problems that might occur.

Before a deal is moderated and published in the stream the item may be sold out.
I posted a deal about an hour ago and it hasn't showed up yet in the stream. (edit: seems that the deal I posted disappeared last time, resubmitted it again just now)

How do I know that nobody else posted that deal at roughly the same time and how do you choose which one who will be credited with the deal?

The raffle ticket draw is a good idea, but might also give an overflow of "deals", as people try to get as many tickets as possible.

Otherwise it looks interesting.
 
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[quote name='Exu']Good stuff, although I think the rating system held relevance. Now I don't see where you can mark a deal down for being bad or cheaper elsewhere.[/QUOTE]

We have an alternative to ratings, it'll be up tonight.
 
Ok, my pending deal dissappeared AGAIN for no reason I can think of...

Is this an error or have somebody judged my deal to be no good?
I have received no messages regarding the deal to my user profile if I posted it wrongly or what.

FYI the deal was Wii Sports Resort with Motion Plus for £24.89 at simplygames.com, Lowest price on CAG is £29.97.

Would love to get a reply on why my deal has dissappeared.
 
[quote name='Benedict']Ok, my pending deal dissappeared AGAIN for no reason I can think of...

Is this an error or have somebody judged my deal to be no good?
I have received no messages regarding the deal to my user profile if I posted it wrongly or what.

FYI the deal was Wii Sports Resort with Motion Plus for £24.89 at simplygames.com, Lowest price on CAG is £29.97.

Would love to get a reply on why my deal has dissappeared.[/QUOTE]

A glitch that has now been fixed, sorry about that - try again.

Edit: it's in now, I approved one that you resubmitted.
 
[quote name='John']A glitch that has now been fixed, sorry about that - try again.[/QUOTE]


Worked perfectly!

Thank you for fixing it.
 
[quote name='Benedict']Before a deal is moderated and published in the stream the item may be sold out.
I posted a deal about an hour ago and it hasn't showed up yet in the stream.

How do I know that nobody else posted that deal at roughly the same time and how do you choose which one who will be credited with the deal?

The raffle ticket draw is a good idea, but might also give an overflow of "deals", as people try to get as many tickets as possible.

Otherwise it looks interesting.[/QUOTE]

The moderation is there to make sure that we don't get a flood of non-deals just for the sake of earning tickets... and to make sure that the automatic deal processing code is working well. (About 90% of the deals that get submitted are automatically processed perfectly, but the other 10% sometimes need a little bit of tweaking - that'll improve as the weeks go on.) Once the kinks are ironed out we might remove moderation for members who have been around for a while, but for now we need to make sure the system is working reliably. As for duplicate deal posts from multiple users, the credit always goes to whoever posts the deal first.
 
[quote name='widow123']Looks Purdyyy :)

also does this mean that this forum would be used for deals that required some coupon codes or something along those lines?[/QUOTE]

The deal stream supports coupon codes - e.g. http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/stream.php?streamid=65

This forum will still get used, I'm not sure how I'll integrate it with the new system though. We might be doing something where the stream will automatically figure out if you've posted a deal in a thread.... so, if you post something like...

:360: Forza Motorsport 3 £15.91

... it'll automatically submit it to the deal stream. That might be a little way off though.
 
Just a quick question : I live in France but I buy nearly all my games from UK retailers (and I'm sure I'm not the only foreigner). Will I be able to win the weekly raffle or is it UK resident only ?
 
[quote name='cocole']Just a quick question : I live in France but I buy nearly all my games from UK retailers (and I'm sure I'm not the only foreigner). Will I be able to win the weekly raffle or is it UK resident only ?[/QUOTE]

Yep, you can win. We'll send prizes pretty much anywhere it's legal for us to do so.
 
Top daily deals and top weekly deals have been added to the "deal stream" menu in the navbar, letting you see the most popular deals based on activity.
 
If you're noticing that some deals you've submitted haven't been approved, it might be because:
- I've found it cheaper elsewhere
- It's been cheaper at some point over the past few weeks
- The price is pretty much the same across all retailers

There are always going to be exceptions of course, but those are the main reasons for a deal not being approved.
 
[quote name='John']If you're noticing that some deals you've submitted haven't been approved, it might be because:
- I've found it cheaper elsewhere
- It's been cheaper at some point over the past few weeks
- The price is pretty much the same across all retailers

There are always going to be exceptions of course, but those are the main reasons for a deal not being approved.[/QUOTE]

Its definatly better deals go through this approval process, at least it wont get clustered with deals.

Also, the forums i assume will still be used for the zavvi monday deal posts for example?
 
[quote name='widow123']Its definatly better deals go through this approval process, at least it wont get clustered with deals.

Also, the forums i assume will still be used for the zavvi monday deal posts for example?[/QUOTE]

Yep, I'll probably pick out the best deals and put them in the stream, but I'll still list everything in the forums.
 
Also, any way we can see our pending deals so we can delete them if they're a mistake or if we notice they have been posted already?
 
[quote name='TheToiletDuck']Cool can we ban the Very.co.uk deals while we're at it?[/QUOTE]

Good idea. We won't be allowing them in the deal stream, I'm locking the other Very.co.uk thread too.

[quote name='TheToiletDuck']Also, any way we can see our pending deals so we can delete them if they're a mistake or if we notice they have been posted already?[/QUOTE]

Good idea, I'll add it. :)
 
So far I think this new stream has been very successful.
Very easy to add deals.
I've seen many good games for great prices.

I've would have preordered GOW Collection myself, but the shipping cost of £4.00 to deliveries outside of UK makes me wait a bit more.

I will continue to search for deals when I have the time.
I'm unemployed at the moment, so I have time.
I will probably get a new job in the following weeks which will make me post less deals when I'm out in the forest and working.
 
First time i've come to this site, just registered and the deal stream has been very helpful, i've added a couple of deals of my own as i can't add links in my forum posts yet :cry:.

Hopefully i've submitted the deals correctly and they help others just as the current deals have helped me.

Thanks and keep up the good work :lol:
 
Added a new feature, you can now search the deal stream with the same field that you use to submit deals. If you don't include a price or a link it presumes that you're wanting to search, and it'll give you matching results from the deal stream.
 
Is it possible to have a feature where you can see your deals that have been accepted/rejected/pending/etc just to make sure that you can keep track of what you have done and preventing any accidental multiple submissions.

I'm sure i've submitted one deal at least twice today by accident.
 
Why are some deals marked as expired even though they are still available to order?

I've noticed a few of mine (Bioshock 2, Bioshock/Oblivion) for example were expired even though they still were in stock and available to order.

edit: saw that the Bioshock 2 was linked to the PC version and price for 360 was up. So I understand that one.
 
[quote name='Benedict']Why are some deals marked as expired even though they are still available to order?

I've noticed a few of mine (Bioshock 2, Bioshock/Oblivion) for example were expired even though they still were in stock and available to order.[/QUOTE]

That BioShock/Oblivion bundle is a third party Amazon seller with shipping costs not factored in - I expired it to stop people seeing it when viewing the main stream, but because I had already tweeted the link I didn't want people to get a blank page if they clicked through by removing it completely.
 
I really like the new stream (so very easy to submit content) but one thing I've noticed (at least it appears this way to me) is that the 'really great deals' don't stand out and it's easy to loose sight of them amongst the large swathes of 'deals' (emphasis intentional) being uploaded. For it's flaws the older system at least had a means of voting up (and down) deals so that especially good deals stood out. Or perhaps it was that fewer deals where uploaded, due to there being less incentive, therefore generally 'higher quality' deals bubbled up, or some combination of this and the voting system.

It's also not clear to me what constitutes a 'deal' as multiple entries of the same title and platform +/- a few pounds sometimes pence within average retail price often appear sometimes submitted just hours apart (I guess my question is are these really 'deals'? imho 20% or more off is a deal, a pound or few pence here or there doesn't really qualify, but that's just my opinion - perhaps it would be possible to setup a user filter which used price tracker data and compared the deal against that in some way to determine how good a deal is? ). Just food for thought.
 
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[quote name='runtime']I really like the new stream (so very easy to submit content) but one thing I've noticed (at least it appears this way to me) is that the 'really great deals' don't stand out and it's easy to loose sight of them amongst the large swathes of 'deals' (emphasis intentional) being uploaded. For it's flaws the older system at least had a means of voting up (and down) deals so that especially good deals stood out.

It's also not clear to me what constitutes a 'deal' as multiple entries of the same title and platform +/- a few pounds sometimes pence within average retail price often appear sometimes submitted just hours apart (I guess my question is are these really 'deals'? imho 25% or more off is a deal, a pound or few pence here or there doesn't really qualify, but that's just my opinion). Just food for thought.[/QUOTE]

Have you tried sorting by popularity? I find it's been doing a pretty good job of highlighting the best deals. (Top daily deals in the nav menu, or here)
 
[quote name='John']Have you tried sorting by popularity? I find it's been doing a pretty good job of highlighting the best deals. (Top daily deals in the nav menu, or here)[/QUOTE]

Embarresingly no! I just had a look - that is much better thanks :D If you don't mind me asking what criteria do you use to select the top daily deals? Is it clicks-thru to the store?
 
[quote name='runtime']Embarresingly no! I just had a look - that is much better thanks :D If you don't mind me asking what criteria do you use to select the top daily deals? Is it clicks-thru to the store?[/QUOTE]

Yep, click-through traffic.
 
[quote name='John']That BioShock/Oblivion bundle is a third party Amazon seller with shipping costs not factored in - I expired it to stop people seeing it when viewing the main stream, but because I had already tweeted the link I didn't want people to get a blank page if they clicked through by removing it completely.[/QUOTE]


So third party Amazon sellers are a no go for posting on the stream?
Coming from Sweden I always have to pay shipping and taxes from Amazon, so sometimes I have difficulty seeing if shipping is free or not for UK-CAGS. Sorry.

On a side-note. People might think that the Disney Buzz thing I posted was a bit strange for a deal. Being an old PS2 game and "kiddie".
But as I understand it, the Buzzers that is included are the original Buzz Buzzers.
When searching on Google I found out that it seems that they are compatible to the PS3 Buzz games. Although wired, and not wireless as the PS3-ones.
 
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[quote name='Benedict']So third party Amazon sellers are a no go for posting on the stream?
Coming from Sweden I always have to pay shipping and taxes from Amazon, so sometimes I have difficulty seeing if shipping is free or not for UK-CAGS. Sorry.[/QUOTE]

No worries, Amazon marketplace deals are fine - but in that particular case the total cost worked out at £16.99, which is more than some other retailers.
 
[quote name='petergallagher']Any chance of getting an RSS feed of the Deal Stream?[/QUOTE]

It'll be up within a week.
 
Well, I tried the new system a couple of times and it works, although I'm slightly disappointed that my other deal didn't appear (probably cheaper elsewhere or something).

[Edit] While I'm here, bug report: selecting only the PC format still leaves the 360 console, Wii console and Wii MotionPlus deals available.
 
[quote name='Delusibeta']Well, I tried the new system a couple of times and it works, although I'm slightly disappointed that my other deal didn't appear (probably cheaper elsewhere or something).[/QUOTE]

90% of the deals that don't get approved are already in the system. The other 10% are either because it's not a noteworthy deal (i.e. it's the same price everywhere), it's cheaper somewhere else, or someone else has submitted it ahead of you and it hasn't been approved yet.
 
Are you only supposed to submit one game/accessory to the deal stream if it is available on multiple platforms?

I have submitted a few that have been available on both PS3 and 360 and seen that most of the time only one of them are added to the stream (360 seems to be favored).

For example: Street Fighter IV FightStick Arcade Controller - Tournament Edition.
Only the 360 version showed up on the stream and the PS3 version was rejected.

If that is the case I will probably focus more on PS3 and less on 360 when searching for deals if I find a item that is on multiple platforms.
 
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[quote name='Benedict']Are you only supposed to submit one game/accessory to the deal stream if it is available on multiple platforms?

I have submitted a few that have been available on both PS3 and 360 and seen that most of the time only one of them are added to the stream (360 seems to be favored).

For example: Street Fighter IV FightStick Arcade Controller - Tournament Edition.
Only the 360 version showed up on the stream and the PS3 version was rejected.

If that is the case I will probably focus more on PS3 and less on 360 when searching for deals if I find a item that is on multiple platforms.[/QUOTE]

It was approved - http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/stream.php?streamid=1113

You can add both 360 and PS3 versions as separate submissions, and you'll get twice as many tickets for it - often people will submit a game for both platforms and while the 360 version is the cheapest around, I'll have found a better price for the PS3 version. (Which is why one goes through and the other one doesn't.)
 
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