We pay consumers and businesses for used cell phones, iPhones, smart phones, iPads, Tablets and iPods.
Target Audience: We target consumers, small to medium size businesses
Website URL: https://www.tradeupmobile.com/
No. of Feedback Providers Requested: 2
Feedback sought:
1) Look around the home page – what is your initial impression of what you see?
2) Think of your used cell phone. Now try to find it. Did you find what you were looking for? Was anything confusing?
3) Are you encouraged to sell us your gadgets? Can you tell us why (or why not)?
4) Go to search engine of your choice and find one other company that offers a similar service. Compare the two companies. Which on do you prefer? Why?
5) Please share any additional feedback/comments you may have.
1)     Look around the home page – what is your initial impression of what you see?
Initial impression: I like the sleek design of the homepage. The stylish phones look great on the blue background. The testimonials at the bottom give your brand instant credibility. Nice.
I don’t particularly care for the four blue sections with paragraphs of text beneath them. My eyes don’t want to read all of the text. At this point, I just want a simple phrase-form of what you do. I don’t want to read lots of text about stuff that doesn’t mean much to me. You need like this: “Trade in cell. Get Money. It’s that easy.†I don’t recommend having lots of text on your homepage. Basically, your section headers are fine. We don’t need the supporting detail underneath. A basic visitor is not that committed to you to bother reading it.
2)Â Â Â Â Â Think of your used cell phone. Now try to find it. Did you find what you were looking for? Was anything confusing?
I found the brand (Samsung), but my carrier is not listed, since I am not in the big four. I think you need to add more carriers or have a drop down with the models and forget the carrier business because you are alienating people without the four big carriers.
3)Â Â Â Â Â Are you encouraged to sell us your gadgets? Can you tell us why (or why not)?
Well. The carrier complaint above is a hurdle that would keep me from being able to use your service. If that were not an issue, I would strongly consider it.
4)Â Â Â Â Â Go to search engine of your choice and find one other company that offers a similar service. Compare the two companies. Which one do you prefer? Why?
I found “Sell and Recycle.com†The homepage looks similar with phones. Your homepage looks better with the blue background. Honestly, they have the same issue with the main carrier and then unlocked icons, which seriously makes me wonder which one of you are copying the other. Knowing this makes me leery of using either of you. I choose “unlocked†and my model is not displayed. So looks like I couldn’t use either service even if I wanted to.
5) Please share any additional feedback/comments you may have.
Limited phone models listed means that some people would not be able to use your service.
I am curious to why your website (as far as the select carrier and phone model) looks exactly the same. It makes me think something shady is going on.
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1) Look around the home page – what is your initial impression of what you see?
Everything on the page looked like a “real†or reputable website. Above the fold of the site looked helpful so I didn’t wonder what the site was for or what was being offered. I also thought, the tabs at the top were useful and not ambiguous.
The pictures of the phones and devices looked good and kept the page with very straightforward look. When I moved down on the page, I saw the different topics or reasons to use this service.
I thought they were well placed and were great reasons to use this service. At the bottom of the page, I saw topics that most users would want to see as far as the types of phones or devices they could to sell in the popular searches section and the help center questions were appropriate.
The Better Business Bureau accreditation and the other certificate were reassuring to see. Overall the look of the homepage was nice looking, well organized, and streamlined.
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2) Think of your used cell phone. Now try to find it. Did you find what you were looking for? Was anything confusing?
I have a damaged BlackBerry Curve and was able to find the product easily. There was nothing confusing about trying to find the product. It was very straightforward to use.
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3) Are you encouraged to sell us your gadgets? Can you tell us why (or why not)?
I was encouraged to sell my products with this website. It seemed reputable, informative, and easy to use. Â In fact, it made me want to stop writing and go look for my phone to send in to the site. When I choose that the phone was damaged and saw, just by the way, that I would get $5, I felt confident and called to action.
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4) Go to search engine of your choice and find one other company that offers a similar service. Compare the two companies. Which one do you prefer? Why?
I went to Google and chose the first site I saw; it was Gazelle.com. When I first saw the second site, I thought it wasn’t as nice looking. I liked the blue screen on the first site. The second site has a similar look above the fold, but the second site’s tabs were not as useful as the first site. For example, the second site’s tabs were a listing of the products customers can sell. They were not as useful as the first sites, that offered, “track my orderâ€, “â€how it worksâ€, and “help center†above the fold.
The middle part of Gazelle’s homepage was useful and would give a user confidence in the site because it had a lot of condensed (in size) information to choose from including,†in the news†information, reviews, offered email updates, and a referral program. Gazelle had the same certification and BBB approval.
The bottom of the page looked different but basically gave the same type of information. When I tried to find my BlackBerry on the Gazelle site, I notice they only accept AT&T phones, and then they didn’t take the BlackBerry Curve at all. That was disappointing. It said I would get no money for a phone that wasn’t listed.
I prefer the first site because I liked the color, and I thought the information was organized in a more visually appealing way to me. The tabs were more useful and the most important reason: it would pay me for my phone.
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5) Please share any additional feedback/comments you may have.
I have heard of the second site, Gazelle, on television before but have not heard of TradeUpMobile. Maybe getting a national television commercial would be a good idea.
Gazelle looks like it has a lot of social media followers, and maybe this site should advertise more with and on social media to get the name out there more. I think the website looks great, has good backing by the BBB, and has a useful and usable setup overall.
I think this site could be more successful than Gazelle with more advertising. With more advertising this site would get more customers and then, I believe, word of mouth would bring even more users. This is a great site that I will probably use to sell my old cell phone.
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1) Look around the home page – what is your initial impression of what you see?
I was able to easily identify the service this website offers. From the images, I already had the idea that TradeUpMobile buys used gadgets — like smart phones and not the older models (non smart phone).
The color scheme gives a serious feel like “We mean business”. The layout is also nice. I like the section under the gadget images. The information provided quickly gave me an idea to answers of the questions I thought of while browsing the homepage — like whether you buy broken phones or what do you do with the phones. The testimonials are also a nice touch. It gave me assurance that you already have satisfied users.
On the footer section, I find the copyright text a bit distracting, like it was additional information or a continuation of the footer links. Maybe it would look better if the font was smaller of lighter in color, just to separate it.
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2) Think of your used cell phone. Now try to find it. Did you find what you were looking for? Was anything confusing?
I searched for a Nokia N9 and I was able to find it. What was confusing though was that while I was checking the other brands I tried hitting the back button on my browser and it would not work. I scrolled up the page to go back to the homepage so that I can reset my search. Then I saw the + signs under each option and tried clicking on them to change my selected brand. So this means I don’t have to start at the beginning after all. I think first time users might find this process not user friendly. Maybe it would be better if the back button on the browser works or perhaps there could be something similar to a “back” link.
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3) Are you encouraged to sell us your gadgets? Can you tell us why (or why not)?
Yes, It looks like the process you provide is really simple and easy to follow. I especially like that you also pay via Paypal. The information provided on the site about your services make me think you are a reliable company.
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4) Go to search engine of your choice and find one other company that offers a similar service. Compare the two companies. Which on do you prefer? Why?
A similar company I found was Orange Offer (orangeoffer.com). The services they offer are quite the same – like the free shipping, tracking and Paypal as a payment option.
I tried searching for the same model, Nokia N9. They have Nokia listed on their menu but the results are empty when I clicked on it. This is a big plus for TradeUpMobile.
In choosing which company I prefer, I guess it would boil down to whether the phone I have is accepted in the site or not and which pays higher. But I would definitely check TradeUpMobile first before the other site. I like the reliability and process TradeUpMobile offers.
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5) Please share any additional feedback/comments you may have.
The layout and colors aren’t distracting and it’s simplicity is a big plus. The process of looking for a phone is easy too but I think it would be nice if there is also a search bar for quicker searching and option to use the back button (or something similar) as mentioned earlier.All in all, I think TradeUpMobile is a great site which provides reliable service.