A Merrier Christmas Through the Magic of Service

The point of HomeStars is to come up with ways for homeowners to shorten their time finding good vendors, and to find better, more appropriate vendors. Did you know there is a neoclassical economics term for this? We're "lowering search costs." Because the cost of a good or service isn't just its price, it's the time and money spent researching and finding the appropriate good or service.

According to The Economist's website, that's why "inventions such as the Internet" have been so rapidly embraced by both buyers and sellers.

Fine, all well and good. We're on the same page about this useful Internet thing. :)

The current approach is working - there are thousands of reviews by thousands of consumers of home improvement services currently on the site.

As a user of the site myself, though, I know we can still do a lot better. For example, there are tons of niche queries and sub-categories that are still elusive to searchers. (To use current digital economy-speak, we still need to do an even better job of figuring out how to address the "long tail" of less-frequent, but huge-in-the-aggregate, home improvement conundrums, queries, and needs.)

One way to achieve this scale, amazingly, is to realize that technology doesn't answer all of our problems. Automation just facilitates the exchange of information; it doesn't create it. So we need to come up with even more ways to help people exchange that info. Sometimes that isn't hard, because there are plenty of sellers of services who would be more than eager to tout their availability, given an appropriate platform.

Let's face it: consumers, particularly affluent ones, are doing less and less for themselves these days. I'm not sure when the first artificial Christmas tree was sold, but that time-saving ethos is a slippery slope that affects us all, and I don't care how good the brakes are on your toboggan.

Let's say you want to hire someone to put up your Christmas lights. I know... that still sounds preposterous to some folks, but high standards and high ceilings may mean standing on high ladders in the ice and snow. In other words, it's a bit like window washing... but slightly more dangerous and done in the freezing cold. Not everyone's cup of tea. My buddy's dad, Doug, was notorious for shoveling snow off their roof in his housecoat (at best). There are, for better or for worse, fewer and fewer Dougs around.

Last week I noticed that my neighbors across the street had hired installers (neither named Doug, and neither in a bathrobe) to put up their tasteful Christmas light decoration, across both houses of a shiny new duplex. But if you couldn't ask a neighbor, or wanted to compare vendors, where would you go to find a handyman who'd be willing to string fancy lights in an incredibly busy season? What if you had a really tacky display that you just don't have the energy for anymore? Where to find a contractor who is "tacky-positive"? Right now, you can't find it easily online, even if you're a good sleuth.

To date, HomeStars is also not all that great at helping you find, say, a place that carries fancier Christmas decorations and lights than the usual fare. Do a search for "christmas lights" and you do get a whole whack of companies that sell them (that's because we have a subcategory for it, so it's easier to find). But depending on where you live, there are still very few, or no, reviews of those outlets. It's still early days yet.

OK, and the final example is the concept of the traditional Christmas tree that you want in your living room without spending the time lugging it home (or what if you have no car, live in a condo loft with 14-foot ceilings, and still want a big beautiful fir?), strapping it to the roof, or getting needles all over the back of the wagon. Obviously, like furniture, you can get Xmas trees delivered. Heck, you can probably pay the guy extra to include, and wrestle with, the confounded tree stand. But there's no really quick way to search for this info, and consumers have no great place to ask one another for recommendations. Whoever delivers trees in your area may have built a decent word-of-mouth reputation, but better online reputation takes that up a notch.

There are lots of ways to get info like this together, but it takes time, and a flexible approach (Q&A areas, forums, etc.) to allow the community to build the resource, bit by bit. So that's what's on our plate for 2008!

Whatever festival you celebrate, have a good one. And best wishes for a warm and prosperous New Year... and hey, do it in style!

[The photo above compares what outdoor lights look like when "the guy who does it" is me... with the "pro" job across the street (the full splendor is a bit higher up, on the neighbor gables.)]

Labels: christmas decorations, christmas lights, homestars

Posted by Andrew Goodman
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