oldgrumpy
Member of DD Central
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Post by oldgrumpy on Jan 24, 2014 10:19:35 GMT
"Just make sure you don't get poached to sort out some competitors' problems!"
Yes, eggsactly....watch out for a scramble to headhunt you. 
(ahem!)
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j
Member of DD Central
Penguins are very misunderstood!
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Post by j on Jan 24, 2014 10:20:08 GMT
chris, congratulations on a seamless first pre-bid auction/test. 
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j
Member of DD Central
Penguins are very misunderstood!
Posts: 2,188
Likes: 540
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Post by j on Jan 24, 2014 10:21:26 GMT
"Just make sure you don't get poached to sort out some competitors' problems!"
Yes, eggsactly....watch out for a scramble to headhunt you.
(ahem!)
....and I thought you were into bananas?! 
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shimself
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Post by shimself on Jan 24, 2014 10:34:14 GMT
The hypothetical problem with pre bids seems to be becoming real from the outset. The Kidderminster loan Q&A isn't getting any answers, the Info Pack is very brief and is stamped Draft, and yet it's already over 50% subscribed. I suggest you need to introduce some sort of quality test before opening a loan to pre-bids. Andy will have an announcement on this later on today or tomorrow. I have already raised the prospect of delaying the auction start internally and should have a decision shortly. I'm assuming lessons have been learned and steps have been taken to ensure no re-occurence <g>. What are the steps please?
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bugs4me
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Post by bugs4me on Jan 24, 2014 10:42:30 GMT
It seemed to work fine Chris - congratulations in order I think. Certainly easier than sitting around with a smoking turbo charged finger. |
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shimself
Member of DD Central
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Post by shimself on Jan 24, 2014 10:47:26 GMT
This was the logical option: to process the bids pre-auction. However I suggest it needs to be made clear to people that pre-bids will be processed x amount of time prior to auction start, and therefore window to remove existing pre-bids closes at a particular point. Likewise you should probably remove the ability to place pre-bids after that point to avoid the potential of unpredictable behaviour (unless of course those placed after the initial run will still be checked immediately on auction start). But making clear deadline for removing pre bids is very important to cover yourselves. Pre-bids placed after that point will be processed each minute up to the auction start, so there shouldn't be any funny behaviour with prebids placed after the cut off point. I'll try and get some text up on the site in time for the auction to explain that pre-bids are processed 5 minutes before the start and that they cannot be deleted after that point. I hadn't pre-bid, and I was logged in a few minutes before the start. It was odd looking at a load of bids but without a Bid Now button of my own, a bit of text to explain that these were prebids might be nice. And while I'm on the subject can I suggest the Bid Now moves up the page (to just below the time remaining?), on my laptop I had to scroll down to find it. And can it also go on the bid listing page? Can I mention what a pleasure it is to have a (competent) tech guy who talks to the customers, thanks. (Says an embittered thincats customer - oh no sorry thincats have told me straight out, I'm not a customer, I'm a lender).
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Post by chris on Jan 24, 2014 11:21:44 GMT
shimself - the user interface is currently our weak point on the website. The underlying technology is actually very good and gives us a good competitive advantage. We're still a growing company with currently limited resources that are heavily focussed on our offline activity to drive the business, so I have limited capacity to work on projects. We have one major project underway that will take up 99% of our capacity from now until April, and we have very good reasons for prioritising in this order. After that we are currently planning to pour a good portion of our resource into incremental improvements to the user interface. I'd rather avoid a jarring replacement of everything in one go as others have attempted, instead focusing on improving each area of the site in turn making everything as logical, easy to use, and intuitive as possible before moving on to the next area. There will probably need to be a fairly jarring change to the main navigation but hopefully we can keep disruption to our existing lenders to an absolute minimum. That's the development plan as it currently stands, although it is subject to change if the businesses priorities shift. If we have any spare capacity before then I'll see if I can squeeze in a quick layout change or two to the bid screen as I agree there is plenty of scope for improvement. Edit: There is one other small update that should be released in the first half of next week barring issues during testing.
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Post by Come_on_Grandad on Jan 24, 2014 14:21:20 GMT
All appears to have worked fine. Please check your accounts and let me know if there are any issues. I was browsing through the bid history (67 pages) and at first it seemed to me that whilst all bids were restricted to £3,000 there were some lenders whose individual bids exceeded that when summed. When I had a closer look, however, I think that the actual problem is that some bids are repeated in the list. For example, 14964 is listed in there (at least) 3 times.
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Post by chris on Jan 24, 2014 14:42:35 GMT
All appears to have worked fine. Please check your accounts and let me know if there are any issues. I was browsing through the bid history (67 pages) and at first it seemed to me that whilst all bids were restricted to £3,000 there were some lenders whose individual bids exceeded that when summed. When I had a closer look, however, I think that the actual problem is that some bids are repeated in the list. For example, 14964 is listed in there (at least) 3 times. Hmm how very strange. I'll add that to the list for our front end developer. Probably an issue with the paging (such as not specifying a sort order) - I know the underlying data is good so should be just a display issue. Thanks for pointing it out and taking the time to work out the issue in full.
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Post by batchoy on Jan 24, 2014 14:49:24 GMT
Hmm how very strange. I'll add that to the list for our front end developer. Probably an issue with the paging (such as not specifying a sort order) - I know the underlying data is good so should be just a display issue. Thanks for pointing it out and taking the time to work out the issue in full. Or possibly a poorly constructed multi-table SQL query that is returning duplicates because the tables are linked incorrectly.
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Post by chris on Jan 24, 2014 14:50:46 GMT
Hmm how very strange. I'll add that to the list for our front end developer. Probably an issue with the paging (such as not specifying a sort order) - I know the underlying data is good so should be just a display issue. Thanks for pointing it out and taking the time to work out the issue in full. Or possibly a poorly constructed multi-table SQL query that is returning duplicates because the tables are linked incorrectly. Possible but off the top of my head i would have thought unlikely as all the relationships off the bid table are one to one. I'm sure he'll figure it out though.
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Post by oldnick on Jan 25, 2014 9:25:07 GMT
I like the prebidding facility. It reduced my prelaunch anxiety levels considerably by allowing the option of having second thoughts right up to the last minute (or is it now 5 minutes?).
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Post by chris on Jan 25, 2014 9:33:05 GMT
I like the prebidding facility. It reduced my prelaunch anxiety levels considerably by allowing the option of having second thoughts right up to the last minute (or is it now 5 minutes?). It's now 5 minutes before just to make sure everything goes through smoothly.
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Post by oldnick on Jan 25, 2014 9:54:09 GMT
I like the prebidding facility. It reduced my prelaunch anxiety levels considerably by allowing the option of having second thoughts right up to the last minute (or is it now 5 minutes?). It's now 5 minutes before just to make sure everything goes through smoothly. All good. I'm looking forward to the next one.
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