Give Us Your Feedback On Our Amazon Prime Day Coverage

Prime Day has now come and gone and we would like to try and get some constructive feedback from readers. You can either comment below or contact us directly. Sort of things we would like to know:

  • What did we do well? What did we do poorly/could be improved?
  • Did you like the sticky post with updated deals & individual posts for the more popular deals? If not, what would you have preferred?
  • Did you think there was too many tweets announcing new deals added to the sticky post?
  • Did we highlight other opportunities to save money via stacking enough (e.g JetBlue & this post)
  • Next year/Black Friday/Cyber Monday what would you change and why?

This isn’t supposed to be a circle jerk where everybody pats us on the back for doing a good job, we are actually interested in getting some real feedback in what readers did and didn’t like. We know some readers absolutely hate the fact we post any deals whatsoever and want us to focus only on bank accounts/credit cards but we enjoy covering some deals and think it’s a good fit for the most part. We always try to take reader feedback and suggestions seriously and I personally think it’s one of the reasons this site continues to grow.

In terms of my own thoughts here is what I think:

  • We need to do a better job of getting readers to find & share deals. Not sure if that involves providing some sort of incentive or just making the process easier.
  • Excessive tweets can be super annoying. I hate when other sites do tweetchats because it’s a stream of tweets I have zero interest in, I think the readers that found the tweets of deals annoying had no interest in prime day at all. We either need to do a better job of warning readers about this (and telling them to refollow us after an event) or pointing out why a particular sale/deal is a good deal.
  • I think we did a good job of explaining stacking, especially in the lead up to prime day. It may have made sense to repost our savings guide on the day itself. May have even made sense to repost individual tactics in the lead up (e.g moving coupon).

As I said we/I would love to hear your feedback in the comments. Feel free to also agree/disagree with other commentators but let’s keep it civil as always. Also feel free to express any other issues/things you’d like changed below as well.

Update

Thanks to everybody that has given us feedback (and please continue to do so). Chuck & I have talked about it and here are some of our thoughts after reading the comments:

  • The tweets are super annoying, especially for people signed up for mobile notifications. Won’t be doing this in the future.
  • A lot of people thought the deals themselves weren’t that great. I think this is a misconception as some people are looking at the price before taking discounts & stacking into account (this leads onto our next point).
  • We need to do a better job of highlighting additional savings. We should have linked to our guide to saving money on Amazon at the top of the stickied post and also included information regarding the JetBlue portal at the top of that post as well. I think also reposting the stacking guide in the lead up (maybe at the start of when the deals went live) would have been a smart choice.
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justdoit
justdoit (@guest_440558)
July 16, 2017 08:03

They’ve had some good account credits so do we have or need a running list of Amazon credits like the bank and credit card bonuses?

Didn’t see many great Prime day deals for things I need. Not many computers, no fitness equipment (was hoping for another Amazon vs. Walmart battle). Next time they should discount way more stuff. Ordered more before and after Prime day. Finally joined Prime though and the free same and 2 day shipping alone is worth the cost but usually opt for slow shipping account credits I might not use most of. Getting many $5 pantry credits. Haven’t used pantry and don’t like that any credits expire so soon, especially if they don’t combine on same order. Give us a year at least.

Jonathan
Jonathan (@guest_440141)
July 15, 2017 11:24

You guys cover a lot. Please consider doing multiple rss feeds so people can select if they want bank deals vs credit cards vs shopping deals etc. Or at the very least consider following a naming convention where the title itself identifies the type of post (for example for bank deals I can quickly tell whcih are bank bonuses by the [STATE, STATE] tags)

MarcoPolo
MarcoPolo (@guest_439219)
July 13, 2017 19:55

If posting a deal makes money for DoC then go ahead and post them.
Maybe create a separate page just for deals as a sideshow?
Otherwise do what you do best 🙂

MarcoPolo
MarcoPolo (@guest_439390)
July 14, 2017 01:10

You have to be careful though since currently DoC occupies a very unique place among all i.e. a well compiled site which is easy to read/understand the financial deals/info.
I understand that DoC need to make some money to run/maintain the site etc but if you put too many shopping deals on the home page then you’ll be at risk of losing your edge and in the danger of becoming “yet another deal site”.

justdoit
justdoit (@guest_440564)
July 16, 2017 08:28

Like many people I’m all about stacking sales, discounts, coupons, credits with cash back so you should add a cash back site or partner with them. Favorites are befrugal, ebates and topcashback, whichever is paying the most at time of order.

justdoit
justdoit (@guest_440567)
July 16, 2017 08:33

Oh and I hate that Amazon doesn’t pay cash back on some categories, not even 1% on electronics.

NinjaX
NinjaX (@guest_439121)
July 13, 2017 16:22

doc. it should be clear to you that you wont really get anything too meaningful from the various comments altho i respect your attempt to get feedback.

preferences are all over the place just like the kind of people on this planet. you have all kinds of feedback and opinions. this is not a paid subscription service. meaning you are not going to have a focus group of people using their real money to read your content. since its an open blog, youre going to get the opinions of the world. no different than a presidential race.

theres nothing wrong with making this blog into Dans Deals and Slick Deals during one critical day.

just do what you feel is right and focus your service based on your vision.

NinjaX
NinjaX (@guest_439414)
July 14, 2017 02:06

cool. if you feel like you got valuable feedback then thats great.

but heres a zinger. i actually loved the live tweets. no different than all the various alerts i get on my phone. it was useful. would be sad to see you discontinue that. i cant always refresh the browser like some people who sit in their cubicle all day. i dont have time for that when I am mobile.

again, nothing wrong with real time deal posts just for one day. matter of fact, you only had one sticky. what are people complaining about. look fwd to see your new deal site with a twist.

artgriego
artgriego (@guest_439120)
July 13, 2017 16:21

Love your site DoC! I’m only interested in the crazy good deals from loopholes, e.g. pay with 1 MR to half-off 3rd-party gift cards. And big news like Amazon selling VGCs is great too. Other than that I think you should stick to the world of bank bonuses, points/mile programs, credit card deals and directly related topics, which is where you truly excel.

Other than that, I don’t care about Prime Day, Alexa, Echo, Dash Buttons, Dash Wands, and the general x% off random category deals.

I’ll echo the sentiments of another poster and say that I too have 180’d on Amazon due to a lot of factors. I don’t like having to jump through hoops (Prime/subscribe/add-ons) to feel like I’m getting the best price I can. Prime is worthless to me because I have no problem waiting a couple extra days to get my order, and I just don’t care about music/shows/whatever else Prime offers. And then you have to watch out for the low quality/fake stuff from 3rd-party merchants; I really wish Amazon would cut down on who they let sell through them. I just stick to what I know well and order maybe once every month in batches to get above the threshold for ‘free’ shipping.

Jim
Jim (@guest_439111)
July 13, 2017 16:07

I think it’s awesome just that you’re ASKING for feedback. That’s huge. It means you’re committed to providing excellent value, and are open to criticism. Thank you for asking and listening!

Daniel
Daniel (@guest_439078)
July 13, 2017 15:20

The tweets were too much. I unsubscribed from mobile alerts temporarily because of this — and I have Prime!

Bo
Bo (@guest_439073)
July 13, 2017 15:12

Amazon is irrelevant to me. I just scrolled down the page to see other posts.

LC
LC (@guest_439066)
July 13, 2017 15:03

Didn’t find it all too useful but thats just me because I dont like “shopping” for deals. I come here for bank account / credit cards information and the occasional gift card / fico score information.

Matt
Matt (@guest_439055)
July 13, 2017 14:46

Excellent coverage! Thanks guys.