I'm launching Nomad List 2.0 soon, can you give me your feedback?

Question

Hi guys/girls,
It’s time for my regular request for feedback on Nomad List and all the related sites (including this forum, #nomads, Nomad Jobs etc.).
Here’s a little update on Nomad List itself: I’ve rewrote the entire site this month and will launch it soon as Nomad List 2.0, you can check it out at http://2.nomadlist.com.
Biggest changes:

When Nomad List launched, it had data on 25 cities, with 3 data points per city (cost, internet, temperature). In the last few months, I’ve worked together with a team of editors in the last few months to add the world’s 500 biggest cities, with about 70 data points (like safety, fun to the best hospitals). This means, it now has 35,000 data points.
It now includes over 10,000 places to work, like coworking spaces and coffee shops, and sleep, like hotels and hostels. I’ve made an algorithm to score these places based on user reviews, WiFi speeds, proximity to each other (like it’ll recommend Hubba in Bangkok, and a hotel near that so you can walk to your work).
It’s integrated with #nomads now, which means I can add user profiles soon for all nomads to share their trips.

Let me know your tips and what direction you think I should go

replay · Accepted Answer

Looks great so far!
One feature suggestion:
Besides only showing the avg speed of the internet connections, you could also give the cities some kind of rating regarding the general quality of Infrastructure related to providing internet. I don’t know if this data is available anywhere or if it would need to be crowd sourced from people who’ve been to places. Generally what I mean is just that an avg internet speed of 25mbps doesn’t help me if the power is out half of the time due to low quality infrastructure, or if this super fast internet connection can’t connect out of the country because some deep sea link has been torn by an earth quake or whatever.
The implementation might be complicated and I’m not sure how to properly display this data, like in an SLA you’d say 99.99% of the time the avg speed is >25mbps and 99.0% of the time it’s >5mbps or something like that.

levelsio · Answer

kovacevicivan:

it is really great to have filter for visa requirement, but iwas just wondering if it is set by location or by personal details of nomad? Since, I assume there are people for example from Turkey who are living currently in Estonia and they would need an info about visa requirements for Turkey citizens.  Hope you understand what I am telling you…

Yep absolutely! Just shipped it fast, but that’s super necessary as most people are NOT in the same place as their nationality. That’s the whole point of being a nomad haha 
I’ll add a nationality selector now.

kovacevicivan · Answer

Hey @levelsio
Great work man till now!
However, I am having trouble to click on any citiy…I cant get more details for particular city, only 4 facts when I make hover move. I am using Safari 8.0.3

yako · Answer

So far it looks good. You should fix the padding for the words on the scores. Right now the words appear on top (I am not even sure adding the word -bad, good, etc- together with the color of the bar and the length makes any sense)
I can see some strange results on the scores for some cities, but I guess that is open to interpretations.
The search box doesn’t seem to be working.
When you click on the center of the image for each city there is a CSS error. In order to get the information about each place you have to click either on top or on the bottom of the image. (using chrome)
I see there is a big push for affiliates recommendations. I sent you a msg a few days ago asking why a question regarding accommodations in Milan was unlisted.
Are we going to be able to discuss housing accommodations in v2?
I couldn’t check everything yet but these are my 2c so far.
Good job.

jonmyers · Answer

Looking nice Pieter. Good direction.
Very Airbnb with the cards.
My two cents on some things.
Big thing.
Search.
In this context, and for the sake of simplifying my point, there are two types of searchers.
Those who have zero idea where they are going and want to explore.
Let’s call them “Serendipitous Searchers”.
The site layout heavily caters to Serendipitous Searchers, however I’m not sure they are the majority.
The other type are Direct Searchers. They are there to look up a city or region and want to be connected with that functionality asap. I’m not sure the layout supports them equally well.
I would make a global search bar at the top. First thing I wanted to do is just search. Took me a few to figure out the search was over in the sidebar. In general, I would take a pass at putting filtering on the top like AirBnb.
On filtering criteria.
I feel like a majority of people start their city selection criteria based on region.
There’s no way to filter, start your search by region, ex., Southeast Asia, etc.
Cards themselves need more masking. Not enough contrast there to present the text.
Very hard to read the information on the cards and there is too much noise on the cards. Also, images are not retina friendly and look blurred on my screen.
Personally, I would title each card with the city only.
Perhaps, price, but that’s it. Too messy for me and my eyes glaze over with all that competing text and icons.
The format of all that text on one card, followed by the competing cards all using the same pattern, make it impossible for the eyes to scan in any cohesive pattern.
At the very least, if you insist on putting all that text and all those icons on the cards, you have to reduce the weight of the typefaces with supporting details (weather, wifi, etc.,) - right now they are all Proxima-Nova Bold and thus, there is no contrast and all the information is being broadcast at the same frequency.
Hope that helps man.
Cheers.

hannahvictorius · Answer

Have yet to test this again on Safari on my macbook at home. Works fine at my office on Chrome.

levelsio · Answer

avermat:

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150518_RZ_ZYW/

Yeah I checked but WebPageTest runs the site with JS disabled, so it loads all the images. But they’re actually lazy loaded if you have JS enabled. This is a more accurate test:
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/d4VBaF/2.nomadlist.com
Still can optimize a bit there though. It’ll load 35% faster once I enable HTTPS + SPDY.

alan1974s · Answer

Looks awesome! Out of curiosity, what did you use to build the data speeds?

basicallydan · Answer

Hey, it’s looking really good! I think the hotel, hostel and cafe recommendations will be really really useful on my trip.
EDIT: Did have a bug here but turns out it was user error 
I have some feedback about the price filter. I know that there are some strong arguments for reducing the number of options the user gets with number-based filters, and perhaps there’s some technical/performance reasons too (indexing for instance) but I personally am frustrated when I can’t pick more specific, less-round numbers like $3,440 or something. A $1,000 per month difference is rather large, I think.
Lots of websites go with a slider, and I understand it would screw with your design a little to change it now, but that’s my main bit of opinionated feedback.
Some more: I suspect this is probably on a to-do list somewhere. Having a “saveable” filter state would be nice too, preferably in the form of a URL with filter info in the path like you have on the current nomadlist.io.
Another one: Are you removing the list view and the map view? I quite like them, especially list view since it allows for easier comparison!
Keep it up

levelsio · Answer

Thanks Yanokwa, I’ve added this now for you:
Gives a rough estimate on what’s the best time to go, still very subjective and basic:

avermat · Answer

Improving the site speed would be nice.
http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150518_RZ_ZYW/

denispitcher · Answer

Great upgrade!  I wish it the hotel listings had been around sooner, could have used them in SE Asia.
Where does the “fun” rating come from?  It’d be great to see another category added “Do” for things to see and do in a location that perhaps contributes to that rating.

replay · Answer

@basicallydan I’m not sure if I just misunderstood your comment regarding the cost/month selection. But the “$2000” and “$4000” are lead by “>” (greater than), whereas the previous numbers have “<” (lower than).

levelsio · Answer

Yeah it feels pretty sluggish on Safari here, have to fix that.

hannahvictorius · Answer

Everything looks pretty awesome, except I can’t seem to click on the cities for further info. It worked for Gent, but nowhere else.

levelsio · Answer

Panama city rents are pretty high: http://panama.en.craigslist.org/search/apa?

levelsio · Answer

basicallydan:

Some more: I suspect this is probably on a to-do list somewhere. Having a “saveable” filter state would be nice too, preferably in the form of a URL with filter info in the path like you have on the current nomadlist.io.

Yes! Will re-add the query string and save it as a day/week cookie so that when you come back your filter is preset.

elena · Answer

Panamá city more expensive to live than Los Angeles, CA? Those Nomads are living THE LIFE! other than that, site looks great.

levelsio · Answer

Uh-oh, really?! Which browser do you use?
Can you try again now, I fixed some bugs:
http://2.nomadlist.com

levelsio · Answer

Yako:

When you click on the center of the image for each city there is a CSS error. In order to get the information about each place you have to click either on top or on the bottom of the image. (using chrome)

Thanks, yes that was a pesky bug that’s fixed now

levelsio · Answer

Think I fixed this now, can you check again?

basicallydan · Answer

Oh yeah I didn’t even notice that! Thanks for pointing it out  I haven’t had my morning coffee yet, that’s my excuse 
My other feedback is still valid though

hannahvictorius · Answer

Worked fine for me on Safari last night

levelsio · Answer

Yay finally! Amazing

yago1 · Answer

Wow amazing this version 2.0.  Great piece of work here!
Just one thing which could be cool would be a favorite function. So you can save your “favorite” cities, hotels etc.

kovacevicivan · Answer

Its difficult to say, both views have their pros and cons…
@levelsio I would just add one feedback here as well - it is really great to have filter for visa requirement, but iwas just wondering if it is set by location or by personal details of nomad? Since, I assume there are people for example from Turkey who are living currently in Estonia and they would need an info about visa requirements for Turkey citizens.  Hope you understand what I am telling you…
tnx

elena · Answer

Yes it is, Panama is expensive especially if you want to live in Calle 50, Punta Pacifica, San Francisco, Paitilla, etc. That’s in the middle of everything and most of the buildings are brand new and very modern.  Locals that live in those areas either have been there all their life (before prices went up so much) or are making some good money.
For example this apartment: http://panama.en.craigslist.org/apa/5030636620.html good location and if you get roommates the rent would only be $533 per person. If you really want to live like a local you can find houses for $800/m and $900/m but you will have to move away from what is considered the center of the city.
http://panama.en.craigslist.org/apa/4979039400.html (5 bedrooms for $2,500? sounds really good for the area)
Transportation: Taxi is usually $1.75 to $3.50. The Metro is $0.35. The Bus is $0.25 per ride.
Food: It varies. If you eat out everyday expect at least $5 to $10 per meal ($10 for a good meal). If you manage to cook for yourself food is not that expensive and there’s a few small markets you can go to.
Safety: Not that bad. Just have to be mindful of who’s around you.
Nightlife: Good! and there’s a lot to choose from.
Internet cafes: I don’t know many. Internet is not very good in Panama.
This list seems very accurate to me, it has some data on prices in Panama: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?country=Panama
I’ve been in Los Angeles for 5 years and rent for a not so nice room has never been less than $1,000 without internet, gas, insurance, cellphone, food and other miscellaneous. My expenses are easily $2,300 per month and that’s only because I have two roommates and don’t go out that much. I’ve lived in West Hollywood, Downtown La and Eagle Rock. Moving around the city without a car is really hard and expensive. So the comparison just sounded off to me.

levelsio · Answer

Yes def on my to-do list 
By the way, what do you like better? The grid view or the list view?

levelsio · Answer

jonmyers:

I would make a global search bar at the top.

Smart, will add

jonmyers:

There’s no way to filter, start your search by region, ex., Southeast Asia, etc.

Added region filter on top now.

jonmyers:

Cards themselves need more masking. Not enough contrast there to present the text.

Pushed dimmer from 15% to 35% now

munly_leong · Answer

replayMay 17
Looks great so far!

One feature suggestion:
Besides only showing the avg speed of the internet connections, you could also give the cities some kind of rating regarding the general quality of Infrastructure related to providing internet. I don’t know if this data is available anywhere or if it would need to be crowd sourced from people who’ve been to places. Generally what I mean is just that an avg internet speed of 25mbps doesn’t help me if the power is out half of the time due to low quality infrastructure, or if this super fast internet connection can’t connect out of the country because some deep sea link has been torn by an earth quake or whatever.

The implementation might be complicated and I’m not sure how to properly display this data, like in an SLA you’d say 99.99% of the time the avg speed is >25mbps and 99.0% of the time it’s >5mbps or something like that.

This is the EXACT sort of thing I founded www.worldbroadbandfoundation.org to try and do awhile ago but US immigration and funding became an issue to continue. Started from having a lot of trouble in Toronto
May be restarting it as part of Brad Feld’s Global EIR experiment. Still a lot of data on the intranet but I need to work out my own issues before I can go back to working on it.
Some basic funding would help but the other issue is being in the US for 501© status so it can grow further.

levelsio · Answer

Hi Munly, thanks! I have no idea what you’re talking about, can you explain?

yanokwa · Answer

@levelsio I’d love to see weather in certain quarters or best times to go. Thailand is a lot more comfortable in the fall than it is in the winter…

isabellabrookes · Answer

Has anyone mentioned the feature to change current location? I’m using a VPN and I can’t change my current location.

levelsio · Answer

Here you go http://2.nomadlist.com

hannahvictorius · Answer

I haven’t checked at home again, but it’s Safari where I’m having issues. Works fine on Chrome at work.

kovacevicivan · Answer

Works fine with me on safari also.

yanokwa · Answer

I’d also like to see more information in the tooltips.
For city size, maybe you can have examples and counts. So mega city tool tip would be “> 8 million people (e.g., New York City”
For temperature, you’d have types of clothing and actual temperatures (in F and C). For comfort level, you’d add percentage humidity.  You might even consider pulling this data in from (or just adding a link to) Weatherspark (e.g., https://weatherspark.com/averages/33584/Medellin-Rionegro-Antioquia-Colombia)

levelsio · Answer

Here’s some new addition:

I rewrote the whole filter part, let me know if it works or not:
http://2.nomadlist.com

munly_leong · Answer

oops, I guess it didnt go in under Replay’s post, I’ve added the quote now

levelsio · Answer

Yes @travelrawr, will add that. I think I’ll make it a Sign In kind of thing though. For now you can change the Visa selection in the filter: http://2.nomadlist.com

levelsio · Answer

It’s live now! Thanks everyone for their feedback:

Nomad List

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Nomad List

I'm launching Nomad List 2.0 soon, can you give me your feedback?

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