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Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
We just added a new Pre-Workout Supplements category. We moved a bunch of older products into this new category, including NO-Xplode, naNO Vapor, Black Powder and more. We know that we weren’t able to get them all, so if you find any supplements on the site that should be in that category, hit “Report Listing Error” and let us know so we can change it.
Thursday, June 11th, 2009
Our newest feature enables TheSupplementRating.com users to be able to submit their very own bodybuilding, fitness, diet and exercise articles. There are already a few articles to get the ball rolling. Take a look at the Article Section to review and submit your own articles.
Monday, June 1st, 2009
To help visitors find the best deals on supplements, users are now encouraged to share prices they paid for specific supplements through the price sharing feature. Simply look up a supplement and click the “How much did you pay for XYZ” link. You can share the price you paid, quantity or size you bought and the store through which you bought.
In order to curb spam and bogus prices, visitors can still “flag” any posted prices which are incorrect, out of date or clearly some sort of spam.
Monday, May 25th, 2009
Here are a few improvements that are going to make their way to the site within the next few weeks:
- Full Price List - I have several databases of prices for various retailers. To keep things simple, if there are any matches for a specific product, I limit the page to only show 4 of the top retailer prices. A new feature will be added that will show all prices found for that product.
- Users to Post Prices - Since I don’t have all the information on the net, I am going to create an extra section for users to post where they bought the supplement, and for how much. This will help people find the best prices around the net. One thing I want to prevent is company reps spamming the site, or people posting incorrect/bogus info.
- View all Questions, Answers, Replies and Retailer Reviews Posted by a User - Currently, you can only get a list of all supplement reviews posted by a user. I will be adding a new feature that lets you see other stuff posted by someone.
- Article Database - As the site is establishing a larger presence on the web, I want to include more information about muscle building, exercise routines, diets, supplementation, etc. I am in the process of figuring out how to allow users to upload articles and somehow be compensated through some sort of article competition. This is still an idea in the works.
Again, if anyone has any ideas, feel free to let me know about them! The site has been created by the users, for the users since the beginning.
Friday, March 20th, 2009
As you can tell, the major update went live a few weeks ago and little problems and bugs have been sorted out in the last few weeks. The main new features in this update include a totally re-designed layout, additional review statistics, and most importantly, a user system.
I had been receiving tons of complaints about having anonymous reviewing and a lot of people suggested I move to a user registration system to help create some accountability for the reviews. I was very hesitant for a while, because I know many people don’t like to sign up to something, but after seeing enough questionable reviews, I decided to go for the user system.
The registration system is really simple and is really only in place to help visitors see all the reviews done by one person. Since you now leave a trail of reviews, we can get a better idea of who this person is and if their reviews are biased or not. For example, someone might sign up and leave a negative review for every single product from a certain manufacturer. Or, the might leave a great review for every product by a single manufacturer. This helps us better identify possible unbiased or skewed reviews.
Some people don’t like registering, and that is fine. I now have to manually approve any reviews submitted by guests, and I am very pickey with these reviews. It takes a while to get your review approved, so your best bet is to just sign up.
Monday, February 9th, 2009
We have just started work on totally re-designing the site. Some of the features that would be included would be a similar ratings system, except are also working to integrate a user system. This would help increase the accountability of the reviews. Guest reviews would still be allowed, but our plan is to eventually phase them out.
Users will be able to upload a picture and a bio. Visitors reading their reviews will be able to see their profile and a list of all their reviews. Hopefully this will help promote higher quality reviews.
Here is a screenshot of the new layout:
Sunday, February 1st, 2009
Thanks to everyone who submitted ideas. We received about 15-20 great ideas for the site!
The following were suggested, but are already parts of the site:
- Users can rate products - Duh…
- View top ten for each category - You can already sort by rating for each category.
- Be able to vote ratings down if they seem biased/fake - We already have the flagging system in place to remove unacceptable reviews. We could do some sort of “X out of Y members found this review useful”
- More discounts and Manual price match - This is pretty tough considering that we don’t sell anything. I’ll pass this info along to our sponsors.
Here are some of the suggestions and what I am considering doing:
#15: Have “Price Paid” instead of “Value” - Having members share where they bought the product and for how much does help people save on supplements. The only problem is that I would need to also specify what size they bought, shipping, discounts, etc. I am considering creating a separate page for each supplement for people to post the best prices they could find. For now, users can just mention how much they paid and from where in their review.
#14: Allow reviewers to say where they bought the supplement from - Similar to the previous suggestion; I think I will create some sort of separate page for each supplement on the best places to buy it.
#13: Taste option - Have another field (0 through 10 rating) for taste. Supplements in pill form could have an NA. I had considered this when I first built the site, but decided that reviewers could just mention it in their reviews instead of creating a whole extra field.
#12: Create more categories based on fitness goals - The supplements are already categorized like this somewhat. It is hard enough to figure out the correct category for each new supplement already, so it would be even more difficult finding the right goal too. Some supplements do multiple goals at once, such as burning fat and building muscle.
#11: Allow users to create supplement blogs/journals - This would require me to create some sort of username/password type system. It is very possible. Each product page could also have links to any blogs/journals on that supplement. This info could be very useful. The only problem is that it would be very difficult on my part to create such a script. This is a good idea, but I am going to wait a while before making the commitment to developing it.
#10: Allow people to post their names - In theory, this would help establish credibility amongst reviewers, however it would be useless unless you could log in and post using some sort of username. Otherwise, anyone could pretend to be you and add a rating. Again, this will be pretty tough to script, however I would like to implement it sometime down the road.
#9: People who liked this product also liked… - Right now, I don’t know how I would add this feature in because I have no way of knowing with my current data. If I were to do some sort of username system, I could implement this feature pretty easily.
#8: Get more traffic - The site already receives nearly one hundred thousand visitors each month. However, more traffic = more reviews = more useful.
#7: Include product info for each supplement - I have always wanted to include the manufacturer’s description and maybe nutrition info, but it would take so darn long to add it for each of the 1,700 supplements I have in the database right now. I will look into ways of importing this data rather than having to manually enter it for each product.
#6: Remodel the layout - I have had a number of people tell me this throughout the life of the site, and I had several people suggest this as part of the competition. I have tried multiple times to make the site more attractive, but without too much success. The problem is that I am colorblind and everyone has a different opinion on what looks good. Take a look at the progress I have made though: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.thesupplementrating.com
#5: Create a rating value that incorporates number of reviews - I have always wanted to do something like this, but never could decide on an appropriate formula. The idea would be to create a mathematical equation so that a product that has a rating of 9 and 100 reviews gets a better score than a product with a rating of 10 with 1 review. The issue is that it would need to work for all instances. For example, I don’t want a product that has 1000 reviews and an average score of 6 to be better than a product with 3 reviews and an average score of 9. I will eventually be able to figure something out; I assume the formula will just hit me one day.
#4: Show recommendations by age/gender - Right now, I don’t collect a gender value for the reviews, but I should start doing that. I want to create a “More detailed statistics” page for each product, where it shows ratings trends, breakdowns of ratings by gender or age, standard deviations, outliers, etc.
#3: Have featured professional reviews for each product - It would be great to have some featured reviews by reputable fitness experts to help supplement the average Joe user reviews. I could gather a team of a few experts, create a profile for each and have them all review a number of supplements. Obviously I couldn’t do this for all the 1,700+ supplements currently in the database, but it would be great for some of the most popular products.
#2: Show more recent reviews - Before this competition, you could only see the last 3 user reviews from the home page. Since a handful of people suggested allowing visitors to see more, I created a page that lets you see as many recent reviews as you want.
And here is the #1, the winner of the contest!
#1: Create a Question and Answer section - A major problem used to be that users would post questions are reviews. They would give the product arbitrary scores which would totally ruin the validity of the average product scores. I would delete them, but a lot of the time, they would be very good questions. Right after receiving this idea, I went ahead and implemented it. In the few weeks that this feature has been live, there are already 85 questions and 57 answers!
Congratulations Teja A. - you just won yourself a $50 Bodybuilding.com Gift Certificate!
Thanks again to everyone who participated. If anyone else can think of ways to improve, feel free to give us your ideas!
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
1/20 Update: There are only 10 days left to get me your ideas! We have 12 or so so far. I have approved some of the ideas that were posted via commenting so that you can get an idea of what ideas people are coming up with. Obviously I can see the date and time those were submitted, so don’t try stealing their ideas!
1/12 Update: We have received close to 10 great ideas so far. Several were the same idea, so send as many as you can!
1/10 Update: We have had a few more submissions come in. All great ideas. At this rate, we will probably see 16 or so submissions, so if you have a great idea, you still have a good shot at winning the gift card. Even if you don’t win, your idea might be used, and at the very least, you can tell your friends: “I was the one who thought of that!!”.
1/8 Update: After 48 hours, one submission was received. The site has received nearly six thousand visits since the announcement and still only received one submission. Come on people! There isn’t a whole lot of competition!
At TheSupplementRating.com, we are always striving to make our site more useful. For the month of January, we are going to run an idea competition. If your suggestion is chosen as the best idea, you will receive a $50 gift certificate to BodyBuilding.com!
Please submit your ideas through our Feedback Form. Make sure that you include your email address (so we can contact you if you win). Also, be as thorough as possible; include as many details about your idea as possible. For example, instead of just saying “change layout”, give us some examples of exactly how we should change the layout.
You can submit as many ideas as possible. If two people have the exact same winning idea, the person who sends it in first will be selected as the winner. Feel free to make multiple submissions.
If you have any questions about the competition, please post a comment or use the Feedback Form.
The winners will be announced in the first couple days of February, and updates will be posted throughout the month.
Good Luck!
Sunday, December 21st, 2008
Now accepting nominations for Supplement of the Month, December 2008:
We would like users to suggest supplements that they have used in December which have helped them achieve their fitness goals. We would like to rate the supplements on some various criteria:
- Effectiveness: This is really the bottom line for all supplements. Did the product help you achieve the results you were looking for?
- Value: Do you get a lot of bang for your buck? If you got great results, but you had to empty your wallet for the product, it might not be worth the price.
- Taste: Some supplements are hard to get down, whereas others might taste like a true milkshake. Supplements aren’t exactly supposed to taste great, but if they are too hard to get down, they might not be worth taking.
- Side effects: I have heard numerous complaints about some pre-workout formulas that give people really bad gas or digestion problems. This could be a deal-breaker for most people.
- Innovation: Most supplement manufacturers claim each of their products is “cutting edge technology” or a “scientific breakthrough”, but their products are usually pretty generic. Supplements that are truly first of their kind should be given more weight than other copy-cats.
If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment or send me an email (if you can find my email address). I would like to select a winner a few days into the new year.
Monday, December 15th, 2008
Many people have sent me emails asking that I create some sort of “Top Supplements” page. I usually tell them that I have created something like this already. You can easily see the top rated supplements in each category. Take a look at the Whey Protein section and you can clearly see the supplements are listed by rating. Just look at the top and you will see the “Top Supplements”.
I’m not sure if people either didn’t realize that feature existed, or if they wanted to see some sort of summarized page with the top supplements out of all the supplements on the site. I was thinking of doing something like this with a “Supplement of the Month” sort of thing. Each month, I would put together a top 10 supplements sort of list and declare the #1 winner as “Supplement of the Month”. I would keep a record of each monthly top 10 list, so you could look back and see the previous winners and runners up.
However, I don’t have the slightest idea on how to select the top supplements. I am looking for suggestions as to how to determine the winners. Send me an email or post a comment with your thoughts!