One cold and nasty day last month I was sat here at a loss. Ciao was down, and I had nothing to do (apart from my job I suppose!). Curiosity got the better of me and I decided to wander across to ‘the other side’ or Dooyoo as it is more commonly know.
I should have felt a little bit guilty, even a little like I’d betrayed a good friend, but no, the monetary gain flashed before my eyes. ‘Three whole pence per read? I’ll be a millionaire in no time!’
Anyway, I thought I might as well throw my tuppence worth into the fray, and have my own personal praise and moan at Dooyoo….
I’ll try my best not to compare the two sites too much, but it’s so hard not to!
What is Dooyoo?:
Well, as most of you will undoubtedly know, Dooyoo is Ciao’s main rival consumer reviews website here in the UK. The big difference being the fact that Dooyoo offer an in-built price comparison service as well as independent reviews from the likes of us! (oh, and there is the small detail of surveys not being offered….EVER!)
I remember browsing Dooyoo a couple of years back when searching for information on a used car I was thinking of buying. Very handy it was too! The thought of joining up and writing reviews myself never even crossed my mind though.
Here’s a bit that I think most of you might as well skip!
Dooyoo offer independent reviews and rankings for thousands of products available in the UK. As well as the reviews, they offer price comparisons for online shops for each product. Each and every review is written by members of Dooyoo like you and me (most of them probably are you and me!)
Layout:
At first glimpse it all seems a bit too busy. There’s far too much information crammed into the main page for one thing, and a lot of it really isn’t necessary. I mean, how many people really need to compare prices on a diamond studded cheesewire pair knickers?! Surely it could be organised a little better (maybe it used to be better?).
Along the top right corner of the screen you have the obligatory ‘Log In’, ‘Join’, and ‘Help’ links which do exactly as you would think! (and change to ‘xxxxx’s Account’, ‘Log Out’ when you have logged in). Down the left hand side is the only bit that I ever find myself using apart from the ‘My Account’ bit.
These are;
SEARCH – Enter anything you fancy searching for here, and choose whether it is a product, user, or prices you are after. Personally I think this is a very good search feature as it gives you a list of things that are near matches as well as exact matches. Only thing is it seems to be a little too broad in its range of results. Sometimes they just don’t seem to relate to what you typed in in the first place!
NEW REVIEWS – Self-explanatory really. These are links to the five most recent reviews submitted by Dooyoo members.
INFO LISTS – Here you can check back on which products have been added to the database, the 1000 most recent reviews, newest writers, ,and which reviews have earned crowns (see further down).
Along the top of the screen you find tabs which lead to the different categories of products ranging from Electronics to Finance, as well as a link to the Community page. A lot of the categories are expanded a little in the main body of the page, with links to the different sub-sections in which you can find (or hunt for hours for) the product you wish to read about or write about.
The bottom of the screen is the messy bit I was telling you about. Lists upon lists of useless information. Top this, top that, highlighted whatever. I really don’t see the use in it at all, ,it’s just space filling I feel.
Registration:
Now this is nice and easy. As there are no surveys associated with membership, ,you don’t have to go through all the lifestyle and personal questions! A simple name, email address, home address etc will suffice. Big thumbs up to the people at Dooyoo there!
Once registered you will receive an email to confirm. Simply click the link and you’re away!
Member Page:
This is really quite easy to navigate. You have your ‘about me’ section on the left, and a summary of your Dooyoo Miles (see below), reviews submitted, and ratings received etc. Nice and simple. Below this is your three most recent reviews, and three most recent people that have trusted you or have been trusted by you.
You can also click to view your personal details (and change if necessary), comments written, cash in your Miles, and view comments written. There is also a handy tab to view all your reviews (instead of the three that are displayed in the overview), and to view you entire Circle of Friends (trust).
Overall a nicely laid out member page, but still not a patch on Ciao (oops, comparing them!)
Community Page:
Here you can find links to discussion topics that you can write about, competitions, and advice pages. Quite well laid out, although it truly is a mammoth task to trawl through all the discussion categories as they aren’t anywhere near compressed enough (there’s only six categories to contain hundreds of topics!)
The competition rules and previous winners is a nice touch though (especially as I’m on there hehe)
Reading Reviews:
As a member you can give ratings to reviews that you read (Very Useful, Useful, Somewhat Useful, Not Useful) according to whether you feel the review would be useful for a consumer wishing to find out about the product. Also, if you feel the review deserves extra credit, you can nominate it for a Crown (see further down) by simply clicking the nominate button at the foot of the review beside the ratings buttons. Also, leaving a comment on the review is nice and simple as there is also a link to ‘comments’ above the review as well as below it. Makes it easy for us lazy forlk who can’t be bothered scrolling down.
Submitting a Review:
Now this can be a little tricky. First you have to search for the product (or discussion) you wish to write a review about. The simplest way (if you can call it that) is to use the search function. Type in what you are looking for and trawl through the many results that usually appear. This can take a considerable amount of time, and is hugely frustrating when you find, after 25 pages, that something as simple as Dr Pepper is not listed!
Let’s say you’ve found the product you are looking for…Now you can click on ‘Write a Review’ and choose between ‘Full Review’ or ‘Short Review’ (which is a little pointless).
Writing a review is nice and easy, although I’d recommend writing it in Word then cutting & pasting as Dooyoo tends to log you out halfway through writing!
Once you submit your review you can sit back and wait for other members to read, although there don’t seem to be that many reading any more!
Payment:
Well here’s the bit you’ve all been waiting for, raking in the money! Payment seems to be a little higher than here on Ciao, but as the amount of people reading is generally lower I suppose it evens out pretty much.
For each read your review gets (each and every review, unlike here!) you are awarded 30 Dooyoo Miles. These Miles can be stocked up and cashed in for cold hard cash, vouchers, ,or even charitable donations. Trouble is you cannot cash in until you reach 55000 Miles for cash, 22500 for vouchers (Amazon or Blackstar), and 5000 for charity. As 30 Miles = 3p, this means that you have to rack up £55 before you can take it out and spend it! The shocking thing is, Dooyoo take £5 commission when you claim your 55000 Miles, so you only get £50! Thieving scrotes!
You can, however, boost your Miles total by earning extra rewards such as Crowns and competition wins, as detailed directly below.
Extra Rewards:
CROWNS – These are awarded weekly, as opposed to Ciao’s monthly Diamonds, and carry a reward of 1500 Dooyoo Miles each (as well as a nifty crown icon). Roughly 30 Crowns are given each week, which means that a fair amount of people get the recognition they deserve, rather than randomly getting payments without knowing what for, as happens here on Ciao!
COMPETITIONS – Currently there is a big push for people to write the first reviews for certain products (namely those in the electronics or gaming category). Winning these monthly competitions earns you 3500 Miles a time, which is really quite satisfying! Twenty winners are rewarded each month for the current competition.
Irritations:
SUGGESTING A PRODUCT – Apart from being damn difficult to find a link to in the first place, the Product Suggest feature seems to me largely ignored by Dooyoo. I, personally, have requested shedloads of products over the past month, and not a single one has been added yet!
CAPITAL LETTERS – Each and every review submitted has all lowercase letter for the first 1991 characters for some reason. This can be solved, however, by using a nice little program written by a disillusioned Dooyoo member that adds the HTML codes for the capital letters into your review ready to be submitted! They really should sort out this simple but irritating problem.
UNTRACEABLE PRODUCTS – I have found, on more than one occasion, that some products aren’t listed in any categories even though they DO exist on Dooyoo’s database. Takeshi’s Castle is one example that I managed to find only by clicking on someone’s review, which turned up in the new review list! ARGH!
Overall Opinion:
I know, I know… I’ve rambled on far too long, what do I really think of Dooyoo?
Well, I think it has a lot of potential for one thing. There are many features that I think are quite clever, such as the search function (even though it is a little too broad!) and the ease of access to the most recent reviews in any category. But mostly I think it really needs to be worked on. For one thing it seems really difficult to keep track of individual members. Barring adding them to your Circle of Friends you have nearly no chance of finding them! The ‘search for members’ function just does not work at all. I couldn’t even find myself using it!
It really is frustrating trying to find products on Dooyoo. They seem to have some of the simplest, most common products missing from their database, and it takes forever to get things added!
There seems to be a lack of community spirit too as there are no official guestbooks as there are on Ciao. I know that there is Tooyoo (run by a member) to provide a similar service, but it just isn’t the same. Come on Dooyoo, sort it out!
There isn’t a community points system or coloured dots, which many people may applaud. Personally I think this makes distinguishing the newer folk from the old timers a little more challenging, but doesn’t detract from the place at all. I, for one, don’t see the harm in the Ciao points system, it adds a little bit of motivation to the whole idea of writing reviews…it spurs you on to try new things, and read other peoples work. Perhaps this is why more people read and rate here than do on Dooyoo. Hmmm.
Overall I’d say Dooyoo is OK, but could do a lot better if it sorted out the irritations and added a guestbook system! I will stick with Ciao for now, but still ply my wares on Dooyoo for purely monetary gain ;)
Ciao is just a far more polished, better site, and a much friendlier place to skive away from work in!
Thanks for reading
Marc.
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