Starting from Friday, July 14th, we have changed how we list deal titles on our Community deals and vouchers. The Community team will update thread titles to the new format as they are submitted from Friday 14th onwards. More information is provided below.
The merchant name and price are already displayed directly below the deal title, so we can eliminate the need for duplication in the deal title and allow the focus to be on the listed offer. Deal titles can have a maximum length of 140 characters. Additionally, we will begin using the 'Shipping costs' field, which is something you have asked for.
An example below of the new title layout:
And how we did share deals on hotukdeals - with the information listed in the title, and then some of those details are duplicated on the next line in orange text:
The price, shipping cost and merchant name is listed directly below the deal title, eliminating the need for duplication of that information in the title.
Here are some key points:
And we hope that using the shipping costs field will help make the deal price breakdown clearer.
Some acceptable acronyms for titles where relevant (and please share any other suggestions in comments for review if they would be frequently used):
Also wanted to mention deals where there may be currency price fluctuations on a still live offer, if parts of the deal are fulfilled by non-UK countries, particularly for holiday sales or travel tickets outside of the UK, there may be slight price variations for the featured offer on the deal. We wouldn't automatically expire a deal because of this - but the Community team will review the thread if reported.
We aim to be flexible in terms of what is allowed and fully supportive of member feedback. Our goal is to share the best deal title format with our community while avoiding duplicating information. This approach will enhance the layout of deal titles when using the web, a mobile browser, or our app, and it will also enable the inclusion of additional deal information within the title.
TL;DR - The community team is responsible for making necessary edits, and members can hopefully have a better experience when sharing deals.
The merchant name and price are already displayed directly below the deal title, so we can eliminate the need for duplication in the deal title and allow the focus to be on the listed offer. Deal titles can have a maximum length of 140 characters. Additionally, we will begin using the 'Shipping costs' field, which is something you have asked for.
An example below of the new title layout:
And how we did share deals on hotukdeals - with the information listed in the title, and then some of those details are duplicated on the next line in orange text:
The price, shipping cost and merchant name is listed directly below the deal title, eliminating the need for duplication of that information in the title.
Here are some key points:
- There is no longer a need to include an existing merchant name and the total deal price in the title.
- New merchants that don't have a merchant name assigned can be added to the title.
- Sales threads or titles with multiple items can still list multiple prices in the title.
- For contract deals, the total cost should match the deal price, so it doesn't need to be duplicated in the title.
- The main deal price should not include the shipping cost, if applicable.
- Shipping costs should be listed in the relevant field. This field can be used for any collection or delivery cost applicable to the deal.
- Marketplace listings can include the seller's name in the title, but not the platform name (e.g. not 'eBay').
- Fulfilled by Amazon listings will list the marketplace seller's name followed by 'FBA' in the title (e.g., 'Anker FBA').
- Subscribe and Save prices can be added to the title and listed as £price + S&S.
- Amazon Prime exclusive deals - Free delivery can be ticked under £25 (as it applies to Prime members only)
- Minimum spends can still be added to the voucher title if relevant.
- UK mainland only items will be included in a merchant banner assigned to all deals for that merchant. For eBay listings, we can include it in the title as it depends on the specific seller.
- Instore deals already list 'instore' below the title. For store specific instore deals, that aren't national, we can include the specific store location in the title. The general geographic region will display under the title.
- Digital movies and TV series can be listed as 'Download & Keep' or "Download & Rent' in title to show they aren't tangible items (as some sellers, such as Amazon, may offer both options).
And we hope that using the shipping costs field will help make the deal price breakdown clearer.
Some acceptable acronyms for titles where relevant (and please share any other suggestions in comments for review if they would be frequently used):
- S&S - for subscribe and save prices on Amazon
- FBA - for items fulfilled by Amazon but sold by a marketplace seller
- C&C - if there are delivery options but you want to highlight that the prices / charges quoted related to buy online and collect in store
- BOGOF - Buy one get one free
- BOGOHP - Buy one get one half price
- w/code - With code
- w/voucher - With voucher
- yr - Year (e.g. 3yr guarantee / 2yr Warranty - when it’s a non-standard additional benefit)
- T&Cs - Terms and Conditions
- FVF - Final Value Fee
- Prime Excl - Amazon Prime Exclusive
Also wanted to mention deals where there may be currency price fluctuations on a still live offer, if parts of the deal are fulfilled by non-UK countries, particularly for holiday sales or travel tickets outside of the UK, there may be slight price variations for the featured offer on the deal. We wouldn't automatically expire a deal because of this - but the Community team will review the thread if reported.
We aim to be flexible in terms of what is allowed and fully supportive of member feedback. Our goal is to share the best deal title format with our community while avoiding duplicating information. This approach will enhance the layout of deal titles when using the web, a mobile browser, or our app, and it will also enable the inclusion of additional deal information within the title.
TL;DR - The community team is responsible for making necessary edits, and members can hopefully have a better experience when sharing deals.
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181 Comments
sorted byThe highlighted price should be the total everyone pays, otherwise it just appears misleading and only of benefit to retailers
I am surprised to learn that the UK will handle it differently. If the price shown is not the total price anymore, the percentage saved over the price comparison will be way off in some cases.
The one thing I liked about HUKD was the full price disclosure
Since the change on Friday we've had far more comments and PMs saying we like this, rather than those asking to go back to the pre-change total price and ignore certain fields on the deal form.
Retailers list their goods for sale with an item/product price without standard shipping included in that featured price, then the customer selects shipping or collection options (often 5/6 options available) during checkout
You go to George and there would be no expectation to see that airfryer listed as £28.50 in the main featured deal price - so following the same expected layout on hotukdeals makes it easy for any member, including new community members, to immediately understand what the total cost is - as its the standard retailer price split too (edited)
hotukdeals.com/com…676
As mentioned with the old format sometimes only 1 or 2 deals displayed the merchant name as there isn't a defined merchant field. But it's only being raised now by a few members, not before the title change. but as I've said I have raised a request with the product team.
Also as I previously recommended - the 4 hottest deals of that day are very limited and don't reflect fast moving deals (and not something members reported before as needing the merchant even when only some of the deals showed it in title). Honestly if you are genuinely interested in, and want to view the stand-out deals, we would recommend setting your landing page to For You
hotukdeals.com/com…540
post above gives more information and advice on settings for both, but if you would like any further help please review comments in the main For You thread
hotukdeals.com/dis…108
Lots in information on settings and what deals you will see. It's very popular with the community with many of our members subscribing and the team work hard to make the results relevant to you personally rather than 4 random hot deals based on the previous 24 hours
Nice the delivery charge is shown but it is not particularly user friendly and only relevant to separate if there is a pickup option.
Funny how I've seen a single person on any thread agree with them...
But it should also save time when submitting a deal - example below:
Today
From Friday 14th:
And using the delivery field now and showing price of item + price of delivery is much clearer
If something can be had for cheaper by way of *insert reason here* then that's great - an added bonus. But what actually matters MOST to a deal is the "how much to buy it then and there by itself price" that ANYONE can click through knowing that is the final price they will pay (or even better due to *insert reason here*).
Call it a "worst case scenario price" if you like, what matters is the average Joe knows they won't be asked to pay any more than the highlighted deal price when they click through and go through the purchase process only to find out it will actually cost more than they thought = LOST CUSTOM . LOST TRUST . BYE-BYE 👋
What the change has done is introduce unnecessary doubt, and risks losing trust.
That is my opinion. Rant over.
Amazon EU does not offer free Click & Collect neither do they offer free delivery over a certain threshold.
I've posted twice from Amazon Germany since the changes and both times I have added the delivered price but they were edited.
P&P should be included at least for the Amazon EU deals, as they are misleading when comparing with UK retailers (edited)
Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove (8-bit inspired platformer, last time digital version was on sale it was for £21.59)
Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove (Xbox One) £8.85 delivered @ Hit
We first started talking about making changes about 9 months ago as we knew we did want to change it because we have all of these fields on the submission form and it would cut down the work the member has to do to submit their thread but also the time it takes for the team to moderate. The biggest factor was to simplify the title to make it easy for users to see the product plus the key specs or information without having a big duplication of content.
The biggest stumbling block was the format of the price. Last year we surveyed many users and presented to them the three options:
1. Total price includes the product price + shipping and we stop using the shipping option.
2. Total price is product + shipping and we add the shipping price in too; and
3. Total price is product price without shipping and shipping option displays the cost to pay on top.
Option 1 feedback was that it looked like the product was more expensive because of the shipping and sometimes the shipping could be avoided (minimum order thresholds, subs, free delivery codes missed etc) and option 2 was overwhelmingly the least favourite because members told us it looked like the shipping price was on top of the main price which also included shipping.
The overwhelming preference from surveyed users was option 3. They told us they could easily work out the cost and they wanted to know what the product cost + the shipping.
So that is what we went for and it tied in with our desire to simplify the title because we could present the costs in the available fields at submission.
The fact that this is actually a pretty big change visually to the most visited section of our site, we've been so happy with the feedback so far and for those not quite on board, lets give it a bit more time and if there are things you think we can do better in terms of the presentation or format do let us know.
£10 doughnut box on 1st May (in-store or £1 c&c/pre-order or £4 delivery) (edited)
On bulky titles, it could be made best practice for titles to use shorter synonyms. Fewer characters used mean more space for actual info.
[1] via 'code' instead of via 'voucher' / 'voucher code' [EDIT: / 'discount code'] where applicable
[2] 'select users' instead of 'selected' 'specific' 'accounts' 'customers'
[3] '20 locations' instead of 'select locations' if locations are easy to count (edited)
Please revert to the more sensible previous policy as users should not be duped when using HDUK. Thanks
Additionally, titles are restricted to a specific character length, and the new format enables us to share more relevant information without the need for duplicating information. Previously, a significant percentage of thread titles needed to be cropped to accommodate the duplicate information, as many submitted deals didn't include the duplicated information in the title. As a result of these changes, we now find ourselves making fewer edits to members preferred deal titles compared to before the change.
The delivery information is now clearly displayed both in thread view and list view across web, mobile, and app platforms. This format allows for the inclusion of other shipping options and pertinent deal details within the deal titles. Previously, such information had to be omitted.
hotukdeals.com/dea…72/
Does this mean we can get compact view back? I think one of the reasons given for getting rid of it was no one used it because they couldn't read all the details of if the title
It's obviously fine if you are, but I'd be surprised if a majority of users prefer it this way. (edited)
When you see a deal you see the price, and then in small tiny writing you'll see the delivery charge. What's the point in that? Everyone here is looking for good prices and then the delivery charge stated below just kills it. Always unnecessary changes and overthinking from your end. Just put the complete price including delivery charge in the title of the post.
Personally it annoys me when I see a great deal on here or elsewhere for example that costs £5. I then sign up to the site put in all my delivery details and get to the checkout and find out it’s £8 postage and I can get it elsewhere with free postage for £7. I won’t use that retailer again. I don’t think I’m alone. I’m not seeing postage clearly on here now so it’s very similar.
Hopefully some sort of remedy will be found as now a lot of things that seem a deal on first glance are actually not.
Also is there a way to hide certain retailers? I asked this before but so far I have not found an answer.
Thanks.
You can see in nearly all deals being posted having comments littered about them voting hot but then noticed the shipping when they got to checkout (as the shipping being shown separately in small grey text is very easily missed).
IMPORTANT: Remember the main deal pages are feeds, people scroll through them quickly briefly looking at the title and the big price shown and then quickly vote based on that (not small text, like postage). (edited)
Just wanted to make a suggestion - would it be possible to incorporate the retailers logo by their name in the second line?
Pepper carried out a survey at the end of last year and asked the community members which was the preferred method for listing the price. And members first choice was price (in price field) + shipping (in shipping field). And if you buy from any retailer you see the price before delivery options are applied so its the standard layout if anyone has purchased something online - to show a breakdown until final checkout / charge and after you have already added to basket.
So I can see why HDUK would do this, but is an anti-hduk'er move. (edited)
For example, I was wondering if there was a Mario Wonder deal for closer to £35 and I thought the was one posted from Amazon France for until I found out there was an additional delivery fee that wasn't included in the total deal price. Not particularly happy with this change.
After all, it is not a rule on Mydealz either, but rather best practice so I hope HUKD adopts a similar approach (I see you mentioned flexibility, so will try and provide feedback where I can).
Thanks. (edited)
If you have any specific titles you wish to check before posting or to see what would be fine then feel free to share and we can confirm
1. Today, I viewed a deal where the postage was not shown in the title or the deal price. Having to click on the deal just to check the description for this kind of extra cost, is an easy way to waste a users' time when skimming deals on the site.
This info change has created an extra step here when checking a deal on the main page.
And 2. The "Hottest" section on my front page no longer indicates which store/webpage a deal is from. This means that you can't quickly skim deals in that section. Again, the problem created here is that a user has to click on each and every deal in this section to see where an item is being sold. Combine that with the other issue I've listed above and it really slows things down.
So, while I can see the point to the change, and how it can clean up the formatting of a deal, it appears to have introduced some issues which are problematic.
Hottest widget has been raised internally for what info is shown - both lack of merchant and postage field
It's leaving many people confused, even more so when mods go removing important information from deal titles that leave deals looking very vague and people then need to go through comments to find out simple details that should be seen from the title.
Take this deal for example -
hotukdeals.com/dea…847
OP put in the title that the deal is for iOS, but a mod decided to remove 'iOS', leaving the deal showing it's sold by 'App Store'... What app store? Windows? Google? iOS? Any other app stores?
Deleting 'iOS' helped exactly 0 people.
I haven't seen a single positive comment about these changes since they happened.
This old phrase comes to mind - "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". (edited)
The other day, a mod apparently removed OLED from the title of a tablet deal hotukdeals.com/com…503 - but it's one of the standout / main selling points, so that was a strange decision! Perhaps they did it by accident?
Small light grey fonts on the delivery price compared to the large bright Orange fonts on the item price doesn't make it that clear.
It's like something an unscrupulous retailer would do hoping people didn't notice the delivery cost...
But the grey platform colours are standard on all Pepper sites, so any changes would need to be reviewed at a global, rather than country, level. But the review request is with the team
Just a few examples above from some of our other Pepper communities. The price and merchant name are in the same colour matching the site branding, while NBP and delivery fields are grey currently.
That's not the price of the item (the Xbox controller); there's a £4.99 delivery charge on top which is a significant increase and makes it far less of a 'hot deal'. Misleading website design.
In the web browser (desktop AND mobile) view, it's hard to read. I would recommend changing the colour of the price and retailer to match the item title (black/dark grey), and lining them up vertically - so it would be title above retailer above price (just like in the app view, although the price there in a different colour doesn't bother me as much.
(I'm also an RSS user and would love the retailer and price to be added to the rss item.title field so it works like it used to, but I appreciate RSS users are few and far between).
Am I the only one who just doesn't bother looking into each and every hot deal listed on the front page at the top as it doesn't now show the merchant or shipping ?
Some don't even have any price
Eg.
Don't get me started on the headline price of every deal now not including the p&p....
Rant over (edited)
Anyway, it will possibly take a little getting used to but I can't see anything majorly wrong with this change. (edited)
As it currently stands members are often adding costs into the field on submission, we then delete it to include with the main price - as many members already use it or many members already take the time to add it up (an extra step) then it hopefully it shouldn't feel like more work for it to be included. As you say it's something that just takes a little time to get used to in terms of viewing deals - please feedback at anytime once we make the change if it is taking longer than you'd hope or have any suggestions
how is
decided in relation to sellers / webstore operators who are not the actual merchant?
Will it be similar to Amazon marketplace where the "platform" is not mentioned?
Examples:
1) Motorola UK webstore items are not sold by Motorola; the merchant appearing on sales invoices indicates products from that site are
indicating the consumer is contracting with a foreign company.
Similarly, the Lenovo UK Outlet webstore states:
(although that version of Digital River UK Ltd is confusingly not based in Netherlands. Go figure),
yet on the checkout page the merchant changes to
so another foreign merchant not otherwise obvious to HUKD members if the brand is stated as the merchant under deal title.
2) EE UK webstore items are not sold by EE; the merchant appearing on sales invoices indicates products are sold by British Telecommunications plc and buyers
Similarly the Eufy UK webstore states the merchant as
3) What will happen for unidentified merchants such as Lenovo UK webstore where no merchant is stated within the sales t&c that the customer accepts at checkout,
but as
the merchant is assumed to be based in US, so yet another "hidden" foreign merchant if the brand is stated as the merchant under deal title.
If you posted a new merchant right now we'd check for contact options, addresses, company account history, reviews, returns policy to name a few. We understand members trust content shared on-site so we are quite stringent in terms reviewing merchants before they are allowed on hotukdeals. Should a store operate as Motorola does, with the sale going through Digital River UK Ltd, we'd still list it in the same way but Digital River UK Ltd would also be reviewed as part of the procedure for allowing that merchant. Essentially merchant names show up as what the store is called and what members would search for. Nothing is changing here other than it not being included in the title.
If there is an issue with an existing merchant please flag and we can pass it onto the team. I have recently flagged Motorola following member reports and with that it was noted that Digital River UK Ltd actually had accounts overdue so that's currently under review.
If an item is shipped from outside the UK we will always look for the shipping field to include the location where it is from:
Sellers are what would be found on marketplaces such as eBay, Amazon, Back Market ect and we'd include their name in the title as we always have, but after the change drop the merchant name.
Take this deal for example. The current title is Sony Playstation 5 (PS5) - 825GB - Disc Edition Console - White - Refurbished Excellent - £390.99 with code @ eBay / musicmagpie - seller for this item is musicmagpie with the merchant being eBay. Following the change we wouldn't need eBay in the title as it is duplicating info but would include musicmagpie so members are aware who the item is sold by as it is crucial for marketplaces due varying support and for members search for deal or report duplicates. (edited)
Amazon shows the price split before payment on checkout, so it shouldn't be an issue to list two amounts and utilise all the fields instead of combining them into one total. This also means that the same guidelines apply to all Community deals whenever possible (edited)
Now, all deals are shown without pricing, so it's impossible to know if a deal is a good one without visiting every single one, which isn't practical.
I hope this change is reconsidered and reverted.
And no, to answer that question, we won't be reverting to the old format as it was causing issues with title length and many threads needed heavy editing simply to duplicate already displayed information. Plus on the app and mobile browsers the longer titles looked bulking and the duplication of information was even more obvious.
If you do spot an existing banner that needs an update - standard T&Cs can change or new link suggestions - please click on the report link on a deal for that retailer and provide more information in the report message. You will see these banners on many deal descriptions, and they can display above the main deal text and also below.