Skip to main content

General (long) feedback after a month

Context : I'm a dev, I mainly plays Magic. I usually use Manabox as a collector manager (inventory contains around 30k Magic cards), and CardMarket as a marketplace, with the addition of TCGpowertools to manage my account.

I'm using Cardnexus since the release of the market place. As of now I managed to got 6 orders, 2 are complete, 1 have to be prepared, 3 were canceled (the why is discussed further).

I imported part of my inventory via CSV (3 files of around 3400 cards each) and was pleased with the process. I previously (last summer) imported Lorcana cards via CSV, and the process wasn't as smooth. The specific difficult point only was with cards form the list as they are identified in Manabox with a different set trigram (so quite a minor thing, and the correction interface is great).

Once a big chuck of cards enter my inventory like this, it's quite frustrating to handle them. The first frustration comes from the 500 selection limit. I understand the frustration form a server performances perspectives, and I hope you'll be able to optimize it. And even if I could deal with this limit, I think the UI lacks several actions like "adding to an existing list" (instead of exporting then importing into a list), or split printing (when I made a mistake and have the same card in different languages or sets, or if I want to sell some and hold some other).

Overall, the whole UI is not really intuitive, and some limits are not explicit enough (I had to make several test to understand a list can't handle more than ~3500 unique cards). I guess you'll get a UX/UI designer to help you on this. I also think the import process should have more explanations/options, like clearly stating what I can/should do with the cards after the import (create a list to keep tracks and/or manipulate it more easily), or automatically creating a list with the cards imported.

Once I have organized my cards in lists, it's a bit easier to mark them as listed for sale and update the pricing with market value. I'm still missing the automatic updater TCGPrower tool propose with all the specific rules, but I know the complexity of such thing, and I hope you'll be able some cron job at some point, or a usable API. Also I think there is something missing with the market value updater, and it's related to the shipping values you have set. From my point of view, the shipping values are a bit low (I understand it covers the stamp value, but I think it's missing the packaging value), and I think you should add an way for us to adjust the shipping value (and if I missed it, it means it's probably not intuitive enough, or can be set in the wrong section of the website). One way I wanted to deal with it was by increasing my pricing on the market, but the updater only allow percentage modifier were I would like to use a flat modifier (and I think having both would be super great).

Regarding managing orders, I like the interface and information displayed, and would need several things to make it easier/better to use. First, I think it would help me to have a way to organize the display and have group by set, and order by collector number. IRL my inventory is organized by set, and ordered by number, so it would help me to gather the order faster. Secondly, as I said, I use Manabox as collection manager, so I would have liked to be able to export the order so I could managed it in my collection manager. My first order was 1 card, the second 19, and the current is 84 items so it'll be a long hassle for me to prepare it.

Also, I received 3 orders from the same person for cards from my Lorcana listing. While preparing them I discovered I made lots or mistakes with my listing (I have imported it several months ago, and I haven't checked it before putting everything to sale) and the order interface doesn't allow us to update the order (or I haven't found it, and once again, this means we need more guidance/intuitivity with the interface), like removing things we have lost, or change set/languages (and obviously having a way for the client to accept the update) and it was easier/faster for me to cancel them. Also, I wrote a feature request for a way to merge orders (I'll make another one later, or up-vote an existing one for order updating), and the response from Julie pointed that as seller we have to ask the client to start a help task for the orders to be updated. This process isn't obvious from a seller perspective (once again it should be more explicit in the order interface), and I hope you'll be able to add more features to the order interface for everybody to avoid going through a help task process. Also having an option to easily offer full or partial reimbursement (for example when we have listing error), or ask for more money (if the client have a special request, like using hard case of fast delivery) would make the whole process smoother and quicker.

And once an order is complet, I think it might be helpful to have cards from the order removed from a (or several) lists.

With the release of the mobile app, I was also able to use the cards scanner. Overall it's a great tool that work smooth and is quite intuitive when we are used to this kind of tools. The most frustrating setback I encountered while scanning cards (it was a pack of Lorcana cards) was the popup for card selection when scanner can't decide between the version of a card (from different set, and there is probably the same think with set and frames in Magic): I think it would be easier for the user to click on the variant it want instead of the confirm button at the bottom of the interface). Often, I was taken aback because the interface didn't validated my choice when I clicked on the card, and It took me some seconds to understand I also add to validate the choice (it's even more frustrating when the choice was the already highlight variant). Also, I think you should do something any scanner application should do : add an OCR. For most TCG (of for most modern cards for old TCG like Magic), useful information like set, collector number, language is printed in a predictable position, and if found it would be valuable information to use for the listing. This being said, having one tool for several different games is already great.

Overall the project is in great shape regarding this stage of development, and I know how it is to deal with priorities while developing such project, and I would recommend you to maybe focus a bit more on UI/UX. You do great, good luck for the continuation of the project.

4 comments

Log in to comment and vote

Comments4

  • princekesarwani

    •

    Jul 12

    Credit card

  • Julie Le Soymier

    Team•

    Apr 7

    Hey @cedor
    Thanks for your feedback, you’ve made some valid points. Know that we’re continuously improving our tool, like you’ve notice yourself the CSV importer is a lot is smoother than it was 8–10 months ago. We couldn’t ship feature this fast if we didn’t agree on some compromise that will be addressed in the weeks/months to come. Be sure that a lot of your points will be fixed along the way. Our Marketplace is only 27 days old so it’s not perfect but we are pretty confident in the team it will be significantly improved in the future

    Thanks again for taking the time to details all the pain points you encounter, our UX/UI designer will make good use of it to improve the platform

    • cedor

      •

      Apr 8

      Yes, I tried to balance my feedback as I understand all the work (and choices) done over such a short period, and I’m sorry if my feedback felt more negative than hopeful. Once again, I think the project is in great shape for its age, and I wanted more to show you what we see/feels at first as users than asking for feature that I’m sure will come at some point.

      And if what I noted as missing matched what you decided to address later, it means that all you have prioritized and shipped first is working as intended and that it was the right choice.

      • Julie Le Soymier

        Team•

        Apr 8

        Thank you for your respond! It means a lot that our users understand that it can take a bit of time to improve the product the right way, but be sure that your feedbacks has been well received by the team. We are always grateful for users that take that much time to send us detailed feedback like you did.


        It's not always easy to transcribe in writing the right feeling and emotion, we just wanted you to know that UX is very important to us because it’s something that other tools are sorely lacking, but we need to strike the right balance between delivering quickly and delivering perfectly.

        As a developer, I'm sure you understand that kind of trade-off we have to make.

        Please feel free to share any other feedback. We are always welcoming every insight we can have!