New tractor classifieds site

[Muhammad]

A few years ago, we started a group on Facebook called Tractors & Equipment For Sale USA. It wasn't really meant to take on a life of its own, but without any real promotional effort on our part, today it has more than 50,000 members and gets about 3,000 new items listed every month. I believe it's the most popular group on FB for tractor classifieds.

Personally I am not a fan of the format of the groups on FB as it's nearly impossible to find what you're looking for. There are no categories, no easy way to find all listings of a certain type, and the only way to navigate at all is either search or scroll endlessly through 100+ new listings per day.

Inspired by this frustration, and in order to try to get a handle on the organization, we created a separate database site that includes the listings from our FB group, in an organized and searchable site.

We've spent the past few months manually importing listings and today, we have almost 10,000 items in the database. Most of these items link back to our FB group if you want to contact the seller, but users can also register on the site and post directly.

This is very much a "beta version" and by no means is it perfect. But now with a bunch of listings, we hope to get some feedback (from you) on the site and maybe in time we can build some momentum in terms of people using the site and from there, have it stand on its own as a valuable resource for equipment classifieds.

Using the site, including posting ads, is completely free for everybody. You can browse without registering but if you want to post an ad, you will need to register.

Questions, comments, and suggestions are all welcome.

Here's the link: Equipment Page - Tractors & Equipment For Sale

 

[K5lwq]

Cool! Would be nice if after viewing an add when you hit the back button it would take you to where you were before clicking on the add. It seems to go back to the first page.

 

[ericm979]

-gray font on a lighter gray background is hard to read, especially for the older folks who are the main market. On my large screen its barely readable. On a laptop it'd be worse. Yea I know its trendy and lots of sites do it. Buck the trend and make it readable.

-same problem for the stuff in colored boxes like price, contact seller etc. Pretty much illegible.

-can't select more than one type of tractor to search for

-year selection range is -125002019 to 2023

-hours range is -2022334 to 2.00178101753720e+15 (this tractor is older than the universe!)

-price range is $ 0 $ 202,257,434,432,500

-database seems small but presumeably that will change

 

[5030]

Don't do Farcebook here.

 

[crashz]

Anyway to search regionally? I see that you can search by state, but what about a radius around a zip code? This allows those of us in small states to cover a larger region?

I like the format. Easy on the eyes. Nice work!

 

[Muhammad]

-gray font on a lighter gray background is hard to read, especially for the older folks who are the main market. On my large screen its barely readable. On a laptop it'd be worse. Yea I know its trendy and lots of sites do it. Buck the trend and make it readable.

-same problem for the stuff in colored boxes like price, contact seller etc. Pretty much illegible.

-can't select more than one type of tractor to search for

-year selection range is -125002019 to 2023

-hours range is -2022334 to 2.00178101753720e+15 (this tractor is older than the universe!)

-price range is $ 0 $ 202,257,434,432,500

-database seems small but presumeably that will change

The data has some issues with those wide ranges. Pretty easy fix.

Thanks for the other suggestions.

What I want to do is have the most popular brands easily selectable. Multiple brands in one search makes sense too.

 

[2manyrocks]

FB seems to be more popular than Craigslist these days.

 

[Muhammad]

Anyway to search regionally? I see that you can search by state, but what about a radius around a zip code? This allows those of us in small states to cover a larger region?

I like the format. Easy on the eyes. Nice work!

Right now, it's just by state. I tried to integrate the maps locator and it was causing some issues so just went with states. I guess selecting multiple states might be a short term fix.

 

[Muhammad]

Cool! Would be nice if after viewing an add when you hit the back button it would take you to where you were before clicking on the add. It seems to go back to the first page.

Yeah the navigation needs work. Especially with multiple pages.

 

[Snobdds]

Facebook will be like Myspace in a few years. The young have left it and it's filled with olds. Once that happens, it's over.

I wouldn't invest too much into this with facebook being the main partner.

 

[Muhammad]

Facebook will be like Myspace in a few years. The young have left it and it's filled with olds. Once that happens, it's over.

I wouldn't invest too much into this with facebook being the main partner.

If anything the idea is to phase out the Facebook ads entirely and then people can post directly.

 

[Paystar]

I see you even included us Canooks. Hopefully it takes off and grows Muhammad.
Thanks for all you work and the great forum!

 

[Snobdds]

If anything the idea is to phase out the Facebook ads entirely and then people can post directly.

That would be wise.

Decouple from facebook at any cost.

 

[5030]

FB seems to be more popular than Craigslist these days.

because CL is loaded with scammers. The issue with the boss' site is it needs sub categories. Yes, I looked, couldn't resist and the prices are way high as well. Why I use TH to sell excess equipment. With TH, they will tell you up front what a piece of equipment is worth and arrange transportation for it as well.

Cartage is a big deal today, especially with large equipment.

My 2 cents for what it's worth.

 

[nova3930]

I tried to post my yanmar on that FB page not realizing it was connected to TBN. Got denied for some unknown reason....

 

[kenmbz]

Could use a number of returns per page since the default 15 is pretty small.
Looks pretty good, was fun finding the multi-million dollar tractors

 

[Muhammad]

I tried to post my yanmar on that FB page not realizing it was connected to TBN. Got denied for some unknown reason....

It was probably an automatic filter. There are thousands of spammers that try to get in every month...

Also, member approval is on based on age of your account. That might have been a part of it. The Facebook member approval screen is also buggy. Sometimes it just gives us an error.

These are more reason why we're frustrated with the Facebook group.

 

[flyerdan]

I'm kind of surprised that you don't have a pulldown with all the other sites up in the menu bar.

 

[WM75Guy]

Good luck with the new site. So far this is what I see as opportunities for improvements.

1. Do not use radio buttons for the filter categories. Cannot go back to all or have multiple selections.
2. Going back takes you to the home page and erases your filter settings.
3. Cannot use the mouse right button or the mouse third button to open a listing in a new tab, so you can keep your search results on the first tab.