Life isn’t easy for a computer or gadget geek, nor is it particularly inexpensive. In order to keep up to date with the latest and greatest, you may find yourself spending a lot more money than you’d like. Thankfully, there are people out there who feel your pain and they want to make life a little easier on your wallet.
Although, LogicBUY is not the first shopping-based website out there, it does come with a few nifty features that you may not find elsewhere. Perhaps the single greatest strength that LogicBUY has is that the site relies not only on its in-house staff to find you the best deals on the web, but the user community can also contribute to this search. In effect, you have the entire LogicBUY user base at your disposal. Need a new digital camera? Maybe an external hard drive? Before you plunk down that credit card, it might be a good idea to check out a site like LogicBUY. After all, no one wants to pay full retail, right?
LogicBUY Scours the Web for Tech Deals
Whether you are shopping for a new notebook computer or a portable GPS navigation device, there’s a good chance that you’re not going to just splurge on the first product that you see. Being a savvy consumer, you may read up on product reviews (preferably reviews posted on Futurelooks) to help you with your purchasing decision. After narrowing down your options to a few select products, you’ll probably do some shopping around to make sure that you get the best price.
Instead of relying on a single individual (i.e., you), it’s much more powerful to rely on a community of like-minded users to see where you can score the best deal. This is where LogicBUY comes into play. The hottest deals are posted on the front page and you can search through the postings to see if there is a particularly good deal on it some place online; that’s pretty much the gist of it. The deal could simply be a clearance sale or it might be a coupon code. Whatever the case, the details are clearly laid out for you. There is also the Latest Deals section, which “promises to deliver fresh deals every 15-30 minutes throughout the day, 7 days a week.”
No Anonymous Contributions
In addition to the LogicBUY team (a small team with a passion for technology and saving money), the entire community of users can also submit deals. However, this is not done anonymously. You need to register with an account on the site before being able to participate in any way.
The registration form is remarkably straightforward, but it puts up at least the first defense against spam. You need to provide an email address, which requires validation, and there is a CAPTCHA style verification field as well. Aside from a birthday, no other personal information is really required. In this way, you could say that signing up for LogicBUY is no different than a social bookmarking or social news site like Digg.
Although there doesn’t appear to be too much in terms of user interaction, each registered user is provided with a brief profile page. You get to upload an avatar and submit some basic personal information. If LogicBUY wants to make the site a little more social, it may be worthwhile to add some more “community” elements to the site. As it stands, the profile and interaction elements are very much like a Digg or StumbleUpon community.
Real-Time Price and Stock Check – Search LogicBUY for More Deals
Submitting a Deal You Found
The LogicBUY team may be out there looking for some great deals, but they’re bound to miss a few. That’s why they also turn to the LogicBUY community for help. Submitting a new deal for posting on the site is very easy and very straightforward. There are two main steps involved and then the deal is made immediately live on the LogicBUY site, up for scrutiny from the rest of the community. I’ll get more into that community aspect in a moment, but let’s have a look at how you can go about submitting a deal.
Much like Digg, the first step involved in submitting a deal to LogicBUY involves entering the URL of the deal. It is best if you can provide a direct link to the product in question, because this makes it a lot easier for users to buy the highlighted item if they think the deal is a good one. By submitting the most specific URL possible, you can also get the LogicBUY system to (presumably) see if there are any duplicates on the site already. I’m not sure if this latter function is actually available, so you may need to double-check against the LogicBUY inventory on your own. Remember that LogicBUY is a technology-minded website, so they don’t want you to submit a deal on a Black & Decker blender or an IKEA futon. Stick to digital cameras, computer components, and other related items. You can also submit deals for domain registration and web hosting as well.
On the second screen, you’ll be asked to provide all sorts of information on the hot deal that you found. This starts with the title and then goes on to an accurate description, deal tags, list price, sale price, shipping cost, category, subcategory, image (either uploaded or from URL), expiration date, coupon code, rebate form URL, and rebate #2 form URL.
There is no apparent verification process at this point, so after clicking on submit on the second screen, the submitted deal immediately goes live. At this point, the LogicBUY community can have at it. How? I’m glad you asked.
Voting, Comments, and User Reviews
There are three primary ways for the LogicBUY community to interact with the various deals posted on the site. This applies equally to deals submitted by the LogicBUY team and deals submitted by the users in the community.
The fastest and most effective way to interact with a deal is to vote on it. This works in the same way as Digg, N4G, and other social news websites. You can either vote a deal “up” by saying that it is “hot”, or you can vote it “down” by saying that it is “not”. As the deal receives more “hot” votes, it moves up the rankings and can make it onto the front page of LogicBUY. There is some kind of algorithm that accounts for both the number of positive votes and how quickly they are accumulated. The voting system is quick to attack spam and crappy deals, however, because it takes just three “not” votes to have the deal buried. This, according to the LogicBUY team, is to ensure that only the best deals remain on the site.
For more specific feedback on a submitted deal, users can make comments on the particular deal page. This works exactly the same way as a blog post and the individual comments can also be voted on as being either positive or negative. If you tend to think faster than you type, you’ll be glad to hear that you have quite some time to edit your comment after you submit it. In my experience, I was given over 3700 seconds (over an hour). That’s a lot of time to reneg on your stated opinion!
Going even more in-depth, it is also possible to submit a user review on a submitted hot deal. It’s not particular clear whether this should be a review of the deal or of the product. I suspect that the focus should be on the latter, because you are able to provide pros, cons, the bottom line, and a “full” review.
Tying Up Some Loose Ends
It’s clear that LogicBUY really wants to emphasize the social or community aspect of its shopping site. Beyond submitting deals, voting on them, and providing comments, users can also spread the word on great deals through a number of social bookmarking and networking sites like Reddit, MySpace, Slashdot, Technorati, and Facebook.
I also find it admirable that the people from LogicBUY are open to constructive criticism. That’s why they have a periodic giveaway where they ask for feedback on what you like (and don’t like) about LogicBUY. In the past, they’ve given away everything from a Nintendo Wii to a Garmin Nuvi 200 GPS system. Currently, they are giving away a Flip Mino. Free is definitely the best price, don’t you think?
If you don’t like the default “grid” view for how the deals are displayed on LogicBUY, you can also switch to what they call “thumb” view. This minimizes the details, but you can see more deals at a glance than with the standard grid view. Under thumb view, however, you can’t see any of the specifics nor can participate in the voting process.
On a side note, you’ll also notice that all outbound links from LogicBUY are redirects. This leads me to believe that all the deals submitted by the LogicBUY team make use of affiliate links and there’s nothing stopping them from doing the same for user-submitted deals. Interestingly, the list of featured stores in the sidebar do not link directly to Amazon.com, Buy.com, or HP Home. Instead, they lead you to a page on LogicBUY listing all the deals from that particular store.
Conclusion
LogicBUY isn’t particularly groundbreaking in its approach to finding the best technology deals on the Internet, but like I said in the beginning, there are a few features that set it apart from other similar sites. The ability for the user community to submit hot deals adds a lot of value, because as the community grows, it also means that you have more eyes and ears at your disposal for finding the best price. The voting, commenting, and user review aspects are quite good as well. Navigating through the site is easy too.
I’m pretty sure that you don’t want to spend full retail on any of your purchases and, at the same time, it’s impossible for you to keep track of all those rebates, coupons, and sales. By referring to LogicBUY before buying a Western Digital Velociraptor, MSI Wind, or the latest Radeon HD 4850 Video Card, you can make sure that you really are getting the best deal.
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Real-Time Price and Stock Check – Search LogicBUY for More Deals