Introducing the New Recommended Sort

posted by mark in Website Updates, Snooth

When Philip shared with me the figures about wine purchases I wasn’t surprised to find that most people don’t buy wines priced at $1000 and above. For a while now, we’ve been thinking critically about the search page. Take a look at the default page of results using the standard SnoothRank sort.

There’s nothing so wrong with that picture — Chateau d’Yquem is a fantastic wine. When I’m here to shop though, those wines are really quite expensive. There’s a price slider so I can help myself to my own price range, but Snooth wants to help us all search faster and smarter.

A few months ago, we added a Quality Price Ratio sorting feature. This is a direct ratio of rating to price. It’s simple, and it’s powerful, but you might notice that most of the wines shown are the cheapest wines around. Again, you’d have to make use of the price slider to get to a slightly higher sweet spot of price.

Until today, that is. We just added our new Snooth sauce, the Recommended Sort. Using a proprietary algorithm cooked up with value in the front of our minds, we’re bringing the sweet spot of price and rating directly to the top of searches. You’ll notice that all of the results by default are reasonably priced, and carry a high SnoothRank.

We’re very happy to finally bring these great value wines front and center!

If you miss the SnoothRank sort by the way, not to worry! You can still find it in the sort menu along with all of the other options Snooth provides. Happy New Year!

What’s Happening on Snooth?

posted by mark in Website Updates, Snooth

In the midst of all the holiday cheer floating around, we’re happy to bring you a new type of Snooth cheer. It’s the first page of its kind, but we think it brings out a whole new sense of what the site is about, and how powerful the data is. Without further ado, let’s visit the wine page. On this page, you’ll find an overview of all of the cool info on Snooth as it relates to wines and how the community interacts with them.

The first thing to notice is the Discover section. Here, you can play with the dropdown menus to discover which wineries are the highest rated on Snooth, which wines have the most reviews this week, which stores carry the most geographically diverse products and a slew of other combinations. It’s a wealth of information, and helps you to find those gems tucked away in the corners of Snooth, explore them and get to know them.

Below the Discover section you’ll get a chance to interact with some of the best content on the site. You’ll see great wineries you can get to know, featured reviews of great wines, a snippet of your recommendations, and a quick peek at some awesome wine bargains. It’s really a starting point for you to get into something new. At Snooth HQ we’re always talking about letting the community really dive into wine, and this is a great step toward that goal. We’d love to hear what you think!

But where can you find the page other than linked from this blog post? Front and center, on the top navigation bar. When you’re on the site, just click on wine to check it out!

Look What the Categories Dragged In

posted by mark in Website Updates, Snooth

You asked for it, and you were right. We’re feeling good about Snooth Talk right now, now that the categories are back.

Also you might notice we have a snazzy new header. It’s leaner and meaner, so look for the links you know and love right there in the nav. In a week or two we might even have a few new surprises to show you. We’re pretty excited about them too, but we can’t spill the beans just yet.

Talk About Search

posted by mark in Website Updates, Snooth

We’ve got a great set of updates for you this week, and I think one of them in particular has been a long time coming. I’m very pleased to announce that the Snooth Talk forum is now searchable. With 7000+ posts in there, it was beginning to become a huge pain to find information that might have dropped off the front page. We’re already beginning to integrate that content into the rest of the site, pushing it onto the group pages, linking discussions to wines is only the beginning. There’s a wealth of information there, and we’ll make sure your voices are heard far and wide, loud and clear!

While we were at it, we decided that the accordion forum style, with separated categories, while fun to play with, wasn’t the best way to present the information. You’ll now notice that Talk is served up in an easy to consume feed format. The most recent posts are right up top, so it’s easy to see what’s new.

Next up for Talk are category filters, and we promise those won’t be far behind.

Another nice improvement we’ve been meaning to make is the new, more informative home page. You can see that when you’re logged out here. This should help new Snoothers get more familiar with the site, as well as being more in line with the Snooth style across the board. As always, we welcome your comments!

Come, Follow

posted by mark in Website Updates, Snooth

Groups pages are really heating up! This week we have for you a new type of Snooth page — the My Groups page. Here you can see what you’re a fan of in the wine world. Here’s a link to mine. You can quickly see exactly what I like to drink, from which wine regions, and where I like to shop. As always, we’re happy to hear your thoughts on this, and what you’d like to see Snooth do for you!