Searching with The Find

August 30th, 2007 | Joel | Web Services, Review

Online bargain hunting can be a daunting and a tiring task without the aid of a shopping search engine. Today we are going to take a look at a new start-up called The Find that makes online shopping a bit more manageable with its use of Ajax.

The Find is like many other shopping search engines but with a splash of Ajax into the mix. The Ajax is creatively used in various ways to enhance the user’s interface.

The landing page is almost minimalistic with a lack of advertisement and large graphics. The site also uses a nice blue/green pastel color scheme that is common with Web 2.0 sites. The front page also has about twenty popular searches that can be clicked upon.

The search interface is doubtlessly what sets The Find apart from other shopping search engines. When a search has been conducted, a price bar with two sliders in opposite sides is shown. These two sliders represents price ranges. What I specially like from this price bar is that you can see how many items fall into a specific price range. For example, if you have ever used P2P clients such as Kazaa then you are familiar with the bar that shows how popular a chunk of a file is. Same thing applies to the price bar in this case. The bar is darker in areas where there are more items. Also, if the mouse is moved over the whole length of the bar, the price and number of items is displayed.

If an item catches your eye, then move your mouse over the item in order to read its description with in a small, non intrusive, Ajax made pop up (not a new window).

The Find is also capable of finding items of a particular color. The Find doesn’t just find, a blue shoe for example, items by what the descriptions says, The Find will analyze the screen shot of the item in order to determine its color. Other options include narrowing a search to only items on sale or sold on eBay.

Suppose you find an item that you like and would like to save it for later viewing. Once a user creates an account, he or she can save items onto myfind. Items in myfind can be seen later and also shared with friends.

As always, I welcome your feed back. What do you think about The Find?