What IS the Advice List?

You know, feedback

So, a few people have said to me “what exactly is this ‘advice list’, then? What will I get?”. Well, I’ve explained it a couple of times, and said “you know, feedback. The perfect gift”, but that’s all still a little bit abstract so I think the easiest and best way is to just show you all. A mock advice list is a bit dull and I’m not really at liberty to just show you one of our users’ advice list – but what better than to show you my own advice list, for my long-suffering (and strong supporter of setting up the site, as I’m sure you can understand!) girlfriend?!

So, what do we have? First up is the summary, in the opening picture above. That gives the more laid back people amongst us a snapshot of ‘what won’. You could just say ”right, this one’s got 4.3, that’s going to be the one for me” and we’d totally agree with that approach. No need to scroll further.

But you should scroll further

Because that’s where you have the specific comments from the advisers. This is where you get some really useful nuggets, things you’d not considered or just general fine tuning. This time round I was lucky, I’d done my research (or just not been ambitious enough?) and so comments were just encouragement – though that’s always nice to get!

Next up are all the items in your list, with the ratings against each. So you can double check what you actually put in your list in case you’ve forgotten, or see why you put it there. This has got all the links as well, so you can actually go to the store and put into practice what you’ve learnt…

Lastly, and really interestingly, you get the individual ratings by each adviser, against each individual product, with specific comments as well if they’d made any. A very good one for me was on a beautiful beret – I’d liked the look of it and thought it might be a winner. One adviser pointed out, though, that whilst it was nice, she was sure my girlfriend could sew a ribbon onto a beret, and therefore the money might be better spent elsewhere! Point taken, beret disregarded…

The results are in…

So, there you have it. And what did I get in the end? Well, my mum and dad got her the fabulous flapper cap, for starters – my parents loved knowing exactly what she wanted. As for me – I thought about the shoes but wobbled (she has SO MANY shoes, and we’ve just moved into a flat we can’t fit them all in!), and we’ve got a bit of an agreement not to spend too much at the moment. So it was the Happy Birthday book and the strawberry planter (complete with plants from my mum and dad’s garden). She assures me that she was delighted with them all…