Trading Websites - What do you look for?

[trunicated]

So, aside from Deus Ex and a horrific work schedule, I've been spending a lot of my spare time working on a project to help familiarize myself with Ruby on Rails, as well as attempt to make something people would actually use.

This naturally led me to want to create a trading website, similar to TF2TP, but hopefully a little cleaner UI wise, easier to search, and something that not only I can maintain, but anyone would be able to help with (as it currently is and will continue to be hosted on GitHub).

To get myself into the project, and more familiar with a sweet little framework known as Steam Condenser, I've gone ahead and gotten an inventory screen up and running. It's pretty rudimentary right now, but as I start to run into the actual stylizing of the page, I've found myself beginning to think what I need to put into the trading portion of the site.

Here's what I have so far:

• Log in only using "Powered By Steam", so no need to modify your profile to be verified. Valve will verify you for me.
• The ability to search through every trade available to find not just what you want, but to limit it to people looking for what you have.
• When adding a trade, will search to see if a similar trade exists out there, and ask you if you want to set that up instead of listing.
• Support the new Trading Beta (Hopefully Valve will allow us access to what games you have stockpiled to make it easy).
• Be able to search for an item and ascertain what the X most recent trades for that item contained, and hopefully allow some sort of weight/price system using Refined/Bill's Hats.
• On the back of the previous, the ability to see real-ish time prices for any item.

I'm sure there are a few more that have popped into my head, but I've neglected to write down.

The point of this post is, to ask you people (Especially Alizee) what it is you like about any kind of site you may use, and what it is you wish you could do. I haven't planned out any of the advanced data structures or anything yet, so now would be the best time for the weird things that would be cool, but may be hard to do.

Anyways, as I've said, I'm not terribly far into this, and it's definitely a side project, but it's something I'd like to get up at some point, and something I plan on having fun working on. Let me know what you think (or if you're a graphic designer and love being creative, I'm always open to suggestions )

[THE Flying chihuahua]

I like.

I can't really think of anything to add but that could just be me being uncreative.

[Boss Llama]

Haha, thanks for the shout-out I'm not a super expert or anything, but I do try to pay some attention. The most important thing, for me, is specificity. I want to be able to find EXACTLY what I want. Not something similar, not something comparable, EXACTLY. Being able to do that, and quickly connect with a seller to arrange a trade, is the most important thing. A couple items you didn't mention that I would love to have are:

Exclusivity - Look for trades that are ONLY for the item in question, not just those which happen to include it.
Blocking/Skipping - People spam trade sites, badly. I want to be able to either block seeing listings from a given person, or better yet, to only have a person's most recent relevant listing show up.
Specificity - I mentioned it above, but it's worth noting here. This goes beyond simply looking for Vintage/Genuine/Standard/Unusual, but to the specific unusual effect. Unusuals are really the only thing with notable value these days, beyond whatever happens to be new, and if I'm searching for a sunbeams merryweather, I couldn't care less about that logo merryweather over there. It'd be great if people could specify item level, or craft number range, as well. A lot of people collect based on those numbers, or on effects.

As far as the listing of weighting/pricing, I would say to avoid that. Prices fluctuate far to much, and are far too contentious to successfully list like that. The "recent prices" thing is good though - "The last 10 accepted trades of this items have been..." or something like that. Keep it literal (exactly what was traded, not a subjective translation to refined/bills/buds).

If you want to play host to cash transactions, a built in rep system. Ebay works because of feedback. SourceOP manages to instill confidence with "rep threads." The beta trade system is obviating the need for this for game trades or large quantity trades, but cash transactions require it. I would be wary of officially including cash transactions.

[THE Flying chihuahua]

Haha, thanks for the shout-out I'm not a super expert or anything, but I do try to pay some attention. The most important thing, for me, is specificity. I want to be able to find EXACTLY what I want. Not something similar, not something comparable, EXACTLY. Being able to do that, and quickly connect with a seller to arrange a trade, is the most important thing. A couple items you didn't mention that I would love to have are:

Exclusivity - Look for trades that are ONLY for the item in question, not just those which happen to include it.
Blocking/Skipping - People spam trade sites, badly. I want to be able to either block seeing listings from a given person, or better yet, to only have a person's most recent relevant listing show up.
Specificity - I mentioned it above, but it's worth noting here. This goes beyond simply looking for Vintage/Genuine/Standard/Unusual, but to the specific unusual effect. Unusuals are really the only thing with notable value these days, beyond whatever happens to be new, and if I'm searching for a sunbeams merryweather, I couldn't care less about that logo merryweather over there. It'd be great if people could specify item level, or craft number range, as well. A lot of people collect based on those numbers, or on effects.

As far as the listing of weighting/pricing, I would say to avoid that. Prices fluctuate far to much, and are far too contentious to successfully list like that. The "recent prices" thing is good though - "The last 10 accepted trades of this items have been..." or something like that. Keep it literal (exactly what was traded, not a subjective translation to refined/bills/buds).

If you want to play host to cash transactions, a built in rep system. Ebay works because of feedback. SourceOP manages to instill confidence with "rep threads." The beta trade system is obviating the need for this for game trades or large quantity trades, but cash transactions require it. I would be wary of officially including cash transactions.

Listen to this man.

[Jesus_Faction]

the main problems with tf2 tp are the crappy server, trade spam, and the search could be a little better (like searching for a specific hat with a specific paint).

tf2outpost is another new trade site as well to look at.