Does Anyone Use the Website “Try That Soap”?

Ahh, its predicting what I might like based upon how I rank them.

Got it. Good to know.

Yep, exactly. Thanks BadDad for helping to clarify! The one area that your question does tie into though is how I add the scent breakdowns for the soap. A lot of the breakdowns are based on the descriptions and/or updated based on my experience with the soap if I've tried them. The scents I pick up very well may be different than what other's pick up, but I'm typically only updating if it's something really obvious like say the description says citrus, and I marked it as orange, but it's actually lemon, or if I had orange as a high percentage, but it's really not there at all. This is the part I was referring to that won't be perfect. In terms of your ratings, if your scent profile shows you like rose, it will recommend approrpiately, without concern for whether others like rose.

Maybe a separate rating for performance that would allow users to sort soaps based on performance as well as scent. As far as lumping them together for an overall rating I'd figure performance should be at least 75% of a soaps score and scent maybe 25% however I'm sure some would differ from my weighting. By allowing the site to be sorted by the performance rating as well as a scent rating you'd keep the original functionality while adding some additional important information.

If you added a weighted field combining both scores I'm sure you'd have to experiment to find the best solution for giving ratings that were valuable to the majority of the site users.

Another cool option that might take some work off of you would be to allow users (or maybe just soap vendors) to add additional soaps. There are just so many out there as well as new ones appearing all the time that this task could be quite a bit of work on your part to get it complete and then to keep it up to date. I'm sure vendors would want their soaps on the site and would do the grunt work to get pics uploaded and keep everything looking good.

I do like the site and appreciate what you're doing there. Thank you for listening to out suggestions as well.

Performance is a different site, I think.

What I mean is...Stirling is a great performer regardless of scent. B&M is a great performer regardless of scent. L&L is great regardless of scent.

You can find out brand performance very easily without having it calculated with scent recommendations. The site, thus far, is only recommending quality soaps that generally perform very well. It's not like the site is comparing Williams or Barbasol. It is only comparing quality soaps with great performance...


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Maybe a separate rating for performance that would allow users to sort soaps based on performance as well as scent. As far as lumping them together for an overall rating I'd figure performance should be at least 75% of a soaps score and scent maybe 25% however I'm sure some would differ from my weighting. By allowing the site to be sorted by the performance rating as well as a scent rating you'd keep the original functionality while adding some additional important information.

If I track performance rating, I could definitely allow sorting on it. It doesn't solve the problem of whether that rating is truly indicative of the performance, and whether it will be the same for you, but that's doable. 75% performance is probably a bit high, even if you care a lot about performance as that would only leave 1.25 out of 5 for scent. So say Barrister and Mann has a 5 performance rating across the board, all their soaps will be a minimum of 3.75 with very little variation based on scent. I imagine most B&M recs would be within .5 of each other, which I'm not sure would be super useful. If I find a sweet spot for splitting performance vs scent though, I could add a user setting where they say what they value more and weight it appropriately.

Another cool option that might take some work off of you would be to allow users (or maybe just soap vendors) to add additional soaps. There are just so many out there as well as new ones appearing all the time that this task could be quite a bit of work on your part to get it complete and then to keep it up to date. I'm sure vendors would want their soaps on the site and would do the grunt work to get pics uploaded and keep everything looking good.

I actually tried to get this implemented early on. The tool is built on django and I didn't see an easy way to lock down objects based on user permissions in the admin tool. I didn't want soap makers to be able to edit/add/delete or even view the admin objects for soaps they didn't own. Going that route kind of forces their hand into added the scent breakdown, which the few artisans I talked to about that weren't very keen on providing, which I completely understand. If things really take off, I may have to go this route anyways in order to stay afloat, but definitely not at that point yet.

I do like the site and appreciate what you're doing there. Thank you for listening to out suggestions as well.

Of course! Thanks for taking a look at the site and providing the feedback

OK, now that I "get it", thanks BadDad , I read on  your site

if there is a brand or soap that you really want added, you can send a message through the contact form with the brand, soap, ingredients, and what you think the scent makeup is and I'll get it added as soon as I can.

I will suggest that you just, by default, add all the stuff that few people will argue with and are pretty much standards. eg.

Both MdC
Both C&S
SMN
ADP
ABC
All PC Nuavia
All Proraso scents
Tabac
Klar Classic
Boellis Panama
All Three Castle Forbes

Then some standards of the Big T (TOBS, GFT, and T&H). These are pretty much standard things (.e.g., Rose, Almond, Coconut, etc.)

Alex (trythatsoap), I'd like to thank you for your detailed explanations of the purpose of the site and how it works.  I like the concept.  As for those who want a performance aspect, as well as one for scent, I can appreciate that but if Alex decided to do that then I would prefer to see it done completely separately from the scent profile (and no, Alex, I am not suggesting this is something you should do).  

I like the idea of something based strictly on scent without considering any other bias coming into play.  For example, I enjoy some floral scents such as rose.  When I want a rose scent, I don't mind if it's blended with other scents but I don't want the rose totally unrecognizable because of every other scent that went into making the final fragrance.  As recommendations came up, I might see a brand of soap that I already know I like as far as performance goes but might not know had a scent profile I appreciated.

Each of us has a different take away from Try That Soap but Alex has explained what he is trying to do and I find the concept both unique and useful.

I'm sold. I think it is going to be a very useful site for helping me, at least, discover scents that match my tastes. Part of growing as a shaver has been to develope my nose and mature my tastes. I think this is going to be a very useful tool in further developing my appreciation for fragrances and scent profiles.

Perhaps as the site develops, there could be a different section that allows users to rate soap brands by performance(regardless of scents), to allow specific recommendations for which brands might appeal to a user based on performance criteria. Users could then combine their performance recommendation values with their scent recommendation values, and find the soaps that are highly probable to perform well overall for that individual... Just a thought for future consumption...

Thanks for creating the site, and taking the time to join us here and answer our questions, trythatsoap . I think what you are doing is unique and will prove very useful to new shavers and old hats alike. Thanks for making it happen!

PS--Please fix the SSL issue. That is the only thing holding me back from signing up and getting started. Thanks!

I'm sold. I think it is going to be a very useful site for helping me, at least, discover scents that match my tastes. Part of growing as a shaver has been to develope my nose and mature my tastes. I think this is going to be a very useful tool in further developing my appreciation for fragrances and scent profiles.

Perhaps as the site develops, there could be a different section that allows users to rate soap brands by performance(regardless of scents), to allow specific recommendations for which brands might appeal to a user based on performance criteria. Users could then combine their performance recommendation values with their scent recommendation values, and find the soaps that are highly probable to perform well overall for that individual...  Just a thought for future consumption...

Thanks for creating the site, and taking the time to join us here and answer our questions, trythatsoap . I think what you are doing is unique and will prove very useful to new shavers and old hats alike. Thanks for making it happen!

PS--Please fix the SSL issue. That is the only thing holding me back from signing up and getting started. Thanks!

That goes for me, as well, Alex.  All the best to you with this venture.

kudos for SSL being in the pipeline.

SSL has been added BadDad , andrewjs18 , and Freddy.

SSL has been added BadDad , andrewjs18 , and Freddy.

Yes!