New UK player in the social shopping market - Tribesmart

Social shopping engines have been gaining popularity and to add to the list is another UK social shopping site called Tribesmart. Though the site is in its infant stage, the homepage is well designed with the tango look. Tribesmart primarily focuses on six categories of products, ranging from home products to fashion and technology products. Among these six categories, the ones like “active” and “Family” could have been named better to avoid ambiguity. For example,
the category “active” which relates to sports and outdoor products could have been christened as “sports and outdoor” for better user understanding. Baby products and toys are kept under the “family” category, it would have been better if these products formed a separate category altogether.

Being a social site, one can never miss the “sign up” banner. Compared to other sites, sign up process at Tribesmart is hassle free. This would definitely encourage users to sign up, as compared to other sites where a user has to wade through two to three pages to signup. Once a member, you can create your own tribe (group). You can also interact with other users with the chat option available at the bottom of the page. But every time you send or receive a message, you need to scroll down to view it. This could get annoying at times. Also, I wish there was a way to let a user know if there were new messages. If I am browsing through the website, I need to continually monitor the chat window to check if somebody has responded.

Moreover, instead of having the “recent users” at the bottom of the page where it’s hardly visible to other users, Tribesmart can show some of the recent users on the homepage itself. I guess it might work better.

What’s more, when you find new products, you can show it to the rest of the world by simply using the “add product” tab which is prominently placed in the top right corner of the page. Users can tag the products they find, and they can add up to 20 products a day. Retailers are also allowed to add products but limited to 20 per day. According to Wayne of Tribesmart, they do not want retailers to duplicate their whole catalogue on their site. They want niche and innovative products to be listed on their site. This could be a right platform for retailers to sell their unique products which may not get much attention in other shopping engines. But as of now, I haven’t come across any such unique product. Well, hope to see them soon.

Tribesmart also provides a widget to add products. There are also a couple of other good widgets. Do you know where to find them? Click on “terms of use” to find them! I don’t see any use placing them there. I think users would hardly notice “terms of use”, forget about clicking on it. I see no point in having good widgets hiding under “terms of use”.

As you navigate to other categories, you might feel that the website changes colors as frequently as a chameleon. The website is designed with different colors for different categories. But again the page layout is pretty decent with a list of interesting products. And if at any point of time, you want to know more about the products, you have “category gurus “to help you out. If you wish to go back to the home page, users are most likely to click on the “at home” tab. Unfortunately, this “at home” tab will not take you to the home page but will direct you to a whole new category page.

Now, coming to the product information part. Tribesmart just lists the products, but does not provide enough details about them. It provides a brief description, which is either replicated from the merchant site or just a line or two put together by users. Unique descriptions with more comprehensive details is a sure way to fetch better results, but simply replicating product information is a definite no-no, if you want a better ranking in search results.

Well, as of now Tribesmart seems to be doing a good job. I think it’s a nice concept of giving more control to users, but Tribesmart will have to market itself aggressively to sign up more users and encourage them to actively participate and add their finds to be successful in the social shopping market.

A message to all the retailers from the Tribal Guru Wayne of Tribesmart:

“It is a great opportunity for independent retailers to share their knowledge with potential customers, build a profile, add links to their site and also pull in the product feeds to add interest and reviews to their own sites”

P.S. This article is not to promote Tribesmart. This is to keep our readers updated about the new happenings in the online Shopping space. If you are a comparison engine or an online retailer, catch up with us to explore the ecommerce opportunities. You can mail us at info@mobius-ecommerce.com or talk to us at +1.213.316.6188