Improvement Suggesion for comparision of features

I have a suggestion to improve the comparision of cars in "Compare Cars" section.

1) The 'All features' option should list same feature against all the cars being compared.

Ex:

Car1                             Car2                    Car3                      Car4

Rear Arm Rest            Rear Arm Rest  [C]       Blank                       Blank

        [C] above can contain comments, where some detail needs to be provided.

In technical terms, each database field should be against the same field for each car, else a blank can be printed if the feature is not in that car. The database of all the cars should be updated on similar lines. If a car  has not got that feature it will be left blank. I mean all detail can be written in the same line/row (for each feature) for all cars.

Currently, say for example, In Interior section, say car1 has 5 features and car 2 has 10. The similar features are not in the same row. They are jumbled.

2) Upto Six cars should be available for comparision as we now have a lot of cars bein launched in India.

Abhishek

Yes, it's not very convenient to compare 'All Features'.  Those should be listed - item wise / along side - like listed in case of 'Features'.

I also second the idea of making 6 cars available for comparison (up from the present 4).

Count one more supporter for both of these ideas.

Another support guaranteed

When we introduced detailed features on the site, the idea was not to provide them for comparison. The idea was to provide them for deep research/more detailed information. Later it got introduced in comparison, simply because it helped comparing between the versions of a model.

Comparing detailed features across models is very difficult. It's primarily because the way the data has been stored. What Abhishek has mentioned can be worked out only if we rearrange the entire CarWale data in objective way. It's not very easy as the data is not consistent, has different terminologies or is just not comparable.

I sincerely don't think this is an implementable suggestion. Probably we could remove detailed features from comparisons. And we can work on a much more exhaustive list of standard features to provide a better idea of features.

On comparing six cars, we need to introduce horizontal scrollbar. I personally hate horizontal scrollbars (they're not comofortable to use at all) and hence this has not been introduced ever. Let me think about a way that we can compare more cars with least bothering.

Hello Banwariji, please don't remove all features from comparison. I recall a Marathi saying that loses everything in translation, but still, here it is - "I don't want any alms, but please keep the dog at bay!"

Jokes apart, we often dig into the "all features" to get the minor details of the car. We assume it to be authentic (mostly taken down from Mfr literature as-is, hence the difficulty in matching up the features, I understand).

I can suggsest one more improvement that can make the scrolling less tedious - Allow a car column to be dragged from the table and inserted next to the nearest matching car. That will allow the use of scroll bar to be minimal, yet allowing easy ready reference to all six cars.

Hi Banwari,

Six cars can be adjusted with small fonts OR may be appropriate resolution(suggest for user who is going for that option ) for it. Take the max space available at the left and right side of the webpage. I agree that horizontal scroll bar is irritating. But this is just 'option' for people who want comparision of more than 4 cars. HTML/Java Script/CSS offers features of 'layers' or 'Tool Tip' ( the complete text appears when you take your mouse over it).

Another thing that can be done is 'export to excel' option. Just let the people compare any number of cars OR upto 6 (with horizontal bar ). Give an option where they can generate an excel of the data displayed on screen. It is not difficult to achieve.

Regarding the display of features, I understand its really difficult if you have random data stored for each car with different terminology. But may be we can sort the data for each header. Say for Interiors: sort all the features alphabetically.   This can be done for the in-demand cars, new launches and the upcoming cars. Not for all the old ones. In future we can have this consistency for all the latest cars.

Abhishek

Banwari, like Krishna, I too advocate against removing 'all features'.  See whatever best you can do.  Having detailed comparison in 'features' will be an added advantage - over & above retaining 'all features'.

Comparison of 6 cars should not be much of a problem I feel, as, many a times, a 5th car is inlucded by way of sponsored link.  Or you can increase it from 4 to 5 atleast, and remove the sponsored link

Banwariji, another idea:- We can take up the task to detail out the "All features" data in terms of YES/NO to each feature. If the corresponding feature is not there, or if it is too complicated, the feature can be moved from boolean to free text, but the anchor of a feature will always remain, so that an apple to apple comparison can be made.

You can farm out this activity by creating appropriate forms, so that people can take it up line by line and build up another database, adding features wherever needed, and translating the current clumsy data to refined, aligned one.

The data then can be reviewed by one of CW developer, and approve added features or tweak them a bit, so that these features are then available for somebody translating data next.

Even if this is not farmed out to the community, it is not a very difficult task to carry out. Maybe it will take a week for a guy or two to do it, but the end result will be a very well organized feature list, that allows you to see how the cars differ between different trims, or across different models.

Please let us know your comments.