Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Request for Your Feedback on New Features

Heaps of great feedback in earlier posts on new features ideas. This morning we compiled a list of new features that we've been bouncing around for a while. Part of the list we came up with is below, much of it is from ideas given to us by you. We've left out some administrative features ideas and ideas only for our internal prediction market customers.

Please do two things in the comments.

One, list your priorities starting with most preferred e.g. F,D,E,B,Q. Prioritise as many as you like, I'll compile your opinions on ideas for however many as you are willing to give.

Two, add new suggestions. I apologise in advance for all the features already submitted in the last few months not on the list - the list was prepared in a rush, please submit them again, I'll add them.

I will update the list with your new ideas. I may reverse the list's order so that newest ideas are put at the top.

For option D, what minimum, if any, is appropriate? $20?

Some of these may require clarification - if so please ask.

Here is what we have so far, in no particular order.

A. Forum

B. Continued API development

C. Confirm trade button disabled after one click

D. Option to display trader earnings by percentage (minimum deposit $20?) + make named appearance on list optional

E. Funds frozen following a withdrawal request + option to cancel request if not processed

F. User's cash, portfolio value and net worth plotted over time

G. User-added events/news on stock details, editable/removable/flaggable by other users via wiki, added items plotted on stock price chart

H. User stock board – lists all stocks in one place, current price/volume/day's high,low/lifetime high,low/high buy,low sell. Ajaxed and sortable.

I. Daily stock high/low prices added to stock details

J. Multiple stock trading system - allows buying and selling of multiple stocks at one time from single page – facilitates arbitraging

K. Stock details page widget which converts price to prediction for that stock taking into account any special rules (e.g. price floors) for that stock + remove probability from browse stock page and replace with "Avg. Cost" or "Rev/Stock Received At Sale" values if position taken, otherwise blank

L. Home page public notification – alerts to users arriving on the home page, warning of approaching downtime for maintenance, for example, or new stocks launch time

M. User alerts system - user can get emails/text messages sent if prices move outside defined bands

N. Basic look/feel site adjustments (colours, some page design changes)

O. Re-work trading interfaces - reduce steps, make clearer, ajax-enable

P. Re-work short selling to make clearer to user what funds have been transferred and why

Q. Post-trade suggested stocks "Users who bought this stock also traded …" displayed on the trade confirmed screen

R. Browse closed stocks page

S. Stocks vary between $0 and $max, where $max can be <> $1.

T. Connect forum and stock details pages - allow forum browsing (for posts relating to that stock only) and posting from stock details

U. Download (anonymous) raw trading data interface (currently available via API only)

V. Add Google news items to stock details pages using stock-specific search terms. Plot news item flags on stock price line.

W. One-click trading interface: buy and sell price can be clicked for a standard parcel size (eg 25 contracts) subject to there being at least the std number available at that price (if not the lesser number)

X. Either streamline browse stocks to load only selected categories or set up a browse stocks for mobile/PDA only

Y. Remove the division into 'page 1, page 2' of stocks in the lists on My Portfolio, e.g. the Watch list

Z. Show current bid and offer prices in the portfolio lists

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

The 1's at appeal to me the most are as follows:

D, A, F, and M.

Anonymous said...

My priorities would be, in order:

A, D, J, C, T, L, K and H.

With respect to D, I think a minimum deposit of $20-$50 is a good idea. I also think that it should include only active traders - eg, those who have made trades in the past week. I also don't think that it is necessary to make name appearance optional: the current list includes all traders' names. And if privacy is really considered an issue, a warning could be added to the sign-up process (ie your name will appear, so choose a pseudonym if concerned about privacy).

For L, I think adding alerts to the home page is a good idea, but I wonder whether banners at the top of the My Portfolio screen may be better. I, for one, spend most of my time on this page, rarely accessing the site through the home page.

Anonymous said...

I like A, H, B, F and D in that order. I would also like to see a one-click trading interface , where the buy and sell price can be clicked for a standard parcel size (eg 25 contracts) subject to there being at least the std number available at that price (if not the lesser number). Users need to be able to select which stocks appear on their personal page, which would for each stock simply contain a buy and sell button, the buy and sell price and the number available at the best buy and sell price.

Anonymous said...

I think you have to give people the option of not being on the trader list in D - presumably just a checkbox in your profile. And for those that are interested in league tables, you obviously have to calculate lifetime net worth, not current net worth (which is impacted by withdrawals).

Matt Burgess said...

Its worth mentioning that when the forums launch we do not intend to allow traders to use forum-specific names (to encourage good behaviour, and to prevent the possibility of misuse of others traders' names). That is, your trading name will be name you post under. This may make the option of anonymity in the league tables more important for some traders.

What do you think of this naming policy for forums?

Unknown said...

Hi Matt, I have to agree with the naming policy for the forums.

All the new features look great to me - it would be too hard to prioritise them :-)

The main thing I would like to see is integration - being able to do trades, comments etc all from the stock page. I think trademe bids and the save to watchlist features are a good example...

Anonymous said...

J B D A L O

Anonymous said...

E, D, C, F, I, S; then the rest

Anonymous said...

Agree with forum name suggestion.

M A F G J V

Would definitely like to see M, but the others I can take in any order.

Excellent work guys!

Anonymous said...

N - I use my PDA as I know others here do as well to check up on ipredict. The connection isn't the fastest and the browse stocks page does take a while. I'd like to be able to go into browse stocks then get a submenu of categories "Political, Economic etc" so I can see the stock I'm interested in and the page loads faster.

Sam said...

D J H F L

I think that the main stock board (J) could easily be modified so that it could incorporate H and be the same as the multiple trading interface. Like one big power user page.

Nick Clarke said...

C O F D H J

D: $50, show all even inactive

Re. H and O: I would much rather trading and stock lists be integrated into My Portfolio rather than have yet more pages to navigate through. Page loads are already slow since everything (all those images etc) has to go over SSL, hence we can't benefit from browser caching. Anything you can redesign to use ajax and avoid full page loads is a big improvement. This will reduce load on your servers too.

Other requests:

- Remove the division into 'page 1, page 2' of stocks in the lists on My Portfolio, e.g. the Watch list: it's just irritating. The page is already much too long to fit in a single screen so the extra height from showing them all in one page doesn't matter much.

- PLEASE show current bid AND offer prices in the portfolio list. The values it shows at the moment are misleading - for a long position, for example, it shows my original buy price and the current lowest sell price, which is not the price I could immediately sell for - what I really want is the current highest buy price. I have to keep going to the trade page to see it. This ties in with H.

Matt Burgess said...

All, thanks very much for the feedback so far, keep it coming. The list of ideas has been updated. Couple of questions:

Anon 21/1 7:57pm: when you say "Users need to be able to select which stocks appear on their personal page" do you mean the home page should be customisable for each user? Or are you talking about their portfolio page?

Carl - I'll count that as a vote for T - correct?

Matt Burgess said...

I make the current order of preferences:

D,A,J,F,C,H,M,B,E,N,O,L,G,T,I,S,V,K

Anonymous said...

Matt: re 7.57

I'm saying that there should be a single power user page, where stocks that appear on the page are selected by the user (yes, like the portfolio page), from which one can trade directly. Small fonts to prevent endless scrolling. For each stock the columns should be in order: short name, current user position, current average price of position, current highest bid, number available at that price, a box where one types the amount one wants to trade, a button to press to execute the trade, current best offer, number on the offer at that price, a box where one types the amount where one wants to trade, a button to execute the trade. The page should refresh on execution of the trade or every minute.

Anonymous said...

My two cents worth, in order:

Z, D, H, F, S (for indexed stocks I presume), M, Y, L, R.

Regarding D, I wonder if an alternative would be to rank users on their absolute $value net gain. It eliminates the need for any qualification criteria (which I think should be $50 or $100 if using percentage gains).

I think that suggestions G and V are actually negative - isn't some of the game about being quick on the uptake of information? If iPredict is also an information provider, it removes one of the ways of making money. I don't have the same problem with the forum as it gives traders a chance to freely communicate and talk the market up or down as they see fit, and it will also be useful for those that want to use it as one of their information sources.

And as for suggestion Q - I don't see the point. It's not an online shopping mall!

Anonymous said...

Z, M, A, F & D in that order.

Matt Burgess said...

Thanks Plutoman, added to rankings.

Latest order:

D,A,J,F,C,H,M,B,E,N,O,L,G,T,I,S,V,R,K,Y,Z

Anonymous said...

My thoughts, divided into 3 categories with priority as follows:-

Technical fixes
C,E,

Ease of use changes
O,L,N,P,Z,S,W,Y,I,P,X

New features
J,F,A,D,H,K,M,G,R,T,U,V,B,Q

Additional suggestions:- options on stocks, sell bundles at $1 for underpriced blocks of stock.