

Ask HN: Review My Minimal Viable Product. - apsurd
http://pluspanda.com

======
mattmaroon
I like it. The web is full of people who aren't really programmers who are
using it to make money. That's how I got into programming a decade ago.

They'll learn to make a rating system if they really feel the need (making a
reasonable one is not rocket science) but offer them a slick one that's easy
to integrate on the webpage where they're selling their e-books or vinyls or
whatever and I imagine they'd pay for the usage.

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ryanwaggoner
There are a few problems that I see here, but two of the big ones:

1\. As a visitor to a random website, I'm skeptical of reviews I see on that
site. If your brand gets big enough that people see "Comments powered by
PlusPanda" and think "Oh, ok...I can trust this", then _maybe_ , but that
seems like a pretty lofty goal to have to reach before your business model
really clicks.

2\. The bigger problem is self-selection bias. If I run a great business, of
course I'd love more people talking me up on my site. If I run a crappy
business, I'll have no reviews or reviews that I can filter, shape, and
control. 3rd party review sites remove the power to have and control reviews
from the business owner, and that's kind of the whole point.

EDIT: I just read this and I realized that I sound really negative. Let me
point out that I only bothered to go through the site, think the issue out,
and write a comment because I think what you're doing is genuinely interesting
and has a lot of potential. I just wanted to point out some issues I'm sure
you've thought through, and I'd like to know what your view is.

~~~
apsurd
Hi Ryan, yes yes I do appreciate you taking the time to highlight some
concerns.

1) Yes, ideally our brand would be "trusted". But as of now I don't think it
necessarily requires our brand to be _well-known_. I'd like to think that a
"These reviews managed and verified by <link>PlusPanda</link>" would be
sufficient enough as a research tool for concerned customers to be able to
click on and read a short description of our program policy.

2) I agree in that a service like this entails that the customer actually
commit and put in effort, in order for it to actually do its job. It's not
something you necessarily set and forget. So if your business is poor, this
isn't any type of remedy in and of itself. I am taking your point to be that
_relative to feedback_ , pluspanda suffers from self-selection bias. But
actually the whole secret-sauce of customer reviews is actually mainly for
marketing purposes, which are two fold:

1\. Customers always believe 3rd party opinions _over_ 1st party opinions. So
even if they are less likely to believe in the full-validity of reviews on
your site, they'd still likely believe them _more_ than they would any first-
party marketing copy on the site. And as stated by others, at worst, your
reviews wouldn't be so much as "reviews" but "testimonials" (i.e. they are all
praise) which tons of sites successfully employ.

2\. Customer Relationship Management via email marketing. Simply put, everyone
that bothers enough to leave a review, has a stake in your business, and you
should be communicating with them, thanking them, giving them loyalty rewards,
rectifying poor experiences, and encouraging repeat-business, and word-of-
mouth etc. So customer reviews is really just a way to manage an effective
email marketing campaign. It's a "platform".

This is the angle from which I am basing my value proposition. Any thoughts
are appreciated. Thanks again for your time.

~~~
xinsight
I think the "self-selection" comment was referring to the businesses, not the
customers. An analogy is those "customer forums" that many companies setup,
thinking, "Customers can support themselves!" but then realize that it's more
about "Customers can learn how crap our company is!" and they take it down.
So, crappy businesses won't want your service.

But even a well-run business will be cautious about letting some random
internet stranger post comments to their homepage. You need to make sure that
comments aren't from competitors, people don't post multiple times and most
importantly: That the company can respond to criticisms.

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akronim
On the add review widget, maybe the default rating should be 5, or at least
not 1. Maybe use one of those star widgets instead of the combo box? I think
business using this would prefer a higher default rating, rather than have
their products get lots of 1s by mistake.

It's also not clear in the demo why users have to have to give a name and
email to submit a review - do you need that extra friction?

~~~
apsurd
Thanks for your feedback. Good suggestion. After reading some more, I think
the best thing would be to have the default be null, and then cause an error
if its unchanged. That way the user is forced to consciously select a rating.
Thanks for pointing that out!

As for the email, aside from anon reviews being implicitly less valuable, the
secret-sauce of gathering customer reviews is so you can engage with customers
loyal/concerned enough to leave reviews!

~~~
xinsight
I've used the rollover star system before (similar to how iTunes does it.)
It's easier, sexier and more intuitive.

But yes, definitely default to "no stars" and require that a rating of 1 to 5
is given.

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mellis
The summary "Now you can manage reviews on your website just like
<http://yelp.com> but completely branded by you, all with just two lines of
code." is confusing. It hints at why someone would want this, but it's not
clear how it works (e.g. whether its a service or a library). Also, "two lines
of code" may be easy, but it probably won't sound that way to many people. The
rest of the front page explains the benefits of your service, but never
clearly explains what it does and how it works.

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shawndrost
Your demo should look like a real site, using PlusPanda for a real purpose.

~~~
apsurd
Thanks Shawn, I'll definitely put that on my priority list. I wanted to get
the mvp out to my HN buddies as a pre-cursor to enlisting some feedback out in
the wild. As soon as possible, I'll be trying to get some real-life use cases
going on, and I'll be able to show "real" demos =). Thanks again.

~~~
Vindexus
You could always just create a very simple fake site. Set up a site at
pandaplus.com/pandabooks or pandabooks.pandaplus.com and make a fake site for
a used bookstore. Banner, navigation (that doesn't work), and your review
plugin.

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wisty
Very nice.

3 issues:

1) What are the 2 lines of code?

2) I took about 5 seconds to find the "Add review" form, as it was hidden
behind some button.

3) I your site design, but not the title font size (too big, or too many
points) and the pitch text. It's good for consumers, but I find it a bit
dumbed down.

Your target customers appear to be sophisticated website owners (after all,
your first paragraph reads "Now you can manage reviews on your website just
like <http://yelp.com> but completely branded by you, all with just two lines
of code", and you use words like "utilize").

Instead of "big headers and lots of text, for consumers", you might try
something like:

Customer Reviews Work.

Amazon.com, Apple, Borders books, Best Buy, Walmart and other big-box
retailers use customer reviews on their websites, because it works. With Plus
Panda, you can do the same, with just 2 lines of code, and for a very low
cost.

Don't take our word for it. Read our reviews and then Get Started Now!

With just 2 lines of code, you can:

* Build trust and credibility with new customers.

* Encourage customers to give you feedback.

* Respond quickly and openly to customer complaints.

* Promote new products (WTF, is that a COMING SOON feature??)

* Help customers spread the word through Twitter, Facebook and Myspace (coming soon??).

A world class customer review system (like Amazon's system, yelp or Panda
Plus) could take months to build if you started from scratch. But all this,
and more (including a 90 day guarantee, and a data export API) is available
from just (What does it cost??? Don't you know yet? OK cool.). How cool is
that?

Anyway, it's a nice site and a cool product idea.

~~~
apsurd
Thanks for taking the time to revise my marketing copy! It is definitely
something to consider. I feel that I will need to a/b test a more basic
explanatory version with are more content-rich to-the-point advanced version
that you've whipped up.

As for the "comming soon" features, haha, yes, I got ahead of myself there,
its not available in the mvp but at its core much of the "benefits" of the
review system would be through the ability to email and communicate with the
reviewers. So things like promoting new products, and enabling word-of-mouth
would be mostly through email marketing campaigns. Things like
twitter/facebook integration would start out as a simple fb connect feature or
submission via a dedicated twitter handle.

As for pricing, as much as possible of course, but I'd like to believe around
~$20/month =P

Thanks again, And I will seriously probably be a/b testing your concise
marketing copy!

p.s. The 2 lines of code is just a div wrapper with a unique id, and a script
tag that loads all the assets. It appends a link tag to the main css, fetches
the html as a js object, and then injects the raw review data via jsonp.

~~~
jeromec
You might include a link to a popup of the two lines as well. "...all with
just <link>two lines of code.</link>"

------
apsurd
Thanks in advance for the feedback my dear HN crew.

Customer reviews are in a sense the framework for online word-of-mouth, and
word-of-mouth marketing is ...Gold. Pluspanda.com is the MVP toward this end.

The marketing site and the product functionality is clearly still pretty raw,
so ideal feedback would be on concept implementation execution, possible
avenues, and feature must-haves etc.

Also any designers that can style the widget , please email me!!

Thanks!

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DanielStraight
I think your real goal is not immediately obvious. At first it looks like
you're just providing a way for businesses to get feedback, but I see that is
not it at all. It is, however, a great pitch.

I would put a little more on the home page about the trust aspect (which to me
seems to be the real goal).

I think you are almost certainly going to be dealing with the issue of owners
wanting to delete reviews for a very long time, but I think your position,
once properly understood, makes sense. When I first read it, however, I was
taken aback, so I think some warning (in the form of a few comments about the
trust aspect) on the front page would help prepare users for this.

Really, I think you have an awesome product and idea here. This is the kind of
the thing that once it was established, customers would start to expect and
even judge sites based on whether or not they had it (think Carfax).

~~~
apsurd
Daniel, thanks for taking the time to leave feedback. I am all for becoming as
necessary as a Carfax =]. Also I will take you up on that idea of dedicating
some copy to highlight what trust means and how its managed from and to owner
and customer. Thanks again.

------
chrischen
Will these have your branding on them? Because if they don't, then how will
people confirm the credibility of the reviews? Kind of defeats the purpose of
open honest reviews and not letting owners delete reviews if users don't know
that.

With yelp, people know that these are reviews on a third-party site.

Also, I'd like to add that since users are embedding these reviews on their
own sites', visitors will not know if owners tamper with the reviews with
additional javascript. Having reviews on a third party site has its
advantages.

~~~
apsurd
Thanks Chris for your feedback. Yes I plan to have a small logo for that exact
reason, which would be linkable not to my home page, but to a clear outline of
the program policy and assurance of at least "intended" credibility.

Matt addressed some of the concerns about why _relying_ on yelp is probably
getting to be a bad idea. I do not intend to outright accuse yelp of anything
since I don't have empirical evidence, but whether or not its true at least
brings up the potential drawbacks in letting another company manage your
reputation.

Matt also brought up that its a tougher sell to have users give you feedback
on a third-party site which IMO is especially true of yelp. Yelp is actually a
reviewing "community" so you have to set up and account and jump through the
usual hoops. Not all businesses cater to web-savvy "i-want-to-be-a-prolific-
reviewer-online-" types of people. There are plenty of traditional businesses
who's customers rarely go online, but if asked to submit a review through an
email, would probably be ok do doing it. Hard to see an older 50-80 year old
demographic signup for a "yelp" account, yes?

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naz
The digg link doesn't have a hover effect, also consider using sprites with a
background-position for those social media links on the homepage because then
you won't get the wait while the hover image loads.

The write a review form should probably always be visible as that is the core
feature of the product, also the solid colours are a little loud.

------
DanBlake
Hi, Didnt read previous comments so someone may have said this or addressed it
already.

Design looks a little bit to bland for me. Almost like a off the shelf
wordpress theme.

Focus on your strong points:

Easy Setup List major benefits ( Increase sales, search traffic, etc. ) Easy
Administration Analytics

Cool idea though.

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jeromec
I like this. I would use visual stars as well, which will bring reviews to
life better than numbers only. Also, I think the PlusPanda branding could work
well, and although the current logo is okay, I might shoot for something
cuter/happier. Pandas give the perfect opportunity for that.

------
Janteh
Take a look at your tab order, it goes from the review field to the name
field, skipping the email field. Also, it isn't very clear to me how it will
look at my own website. Do I embed the big box? what about customizing to fit
my layout? etc.

~~~
apsurd
Thanks for taking the time to reply. The tab order is semantically incorrect
because I floated the two fields in opposite directions! Thanks for the catch,
I'll update it.

The css is sent separately so it is fully configurable and can be
"professionally" skinned, but there will also be some basic themes to select
from and alter basic color schemes. As of now this is the MVP so theming is
not addressed!

 _Do I embed the big box?_

If I understand that correctly, no, the code you would embed is just a div
wrapper and then a script tag. The script tag loads everything via javascript,
and then builds it on the page within the wrapper. If javascript is disabled,
a link is displayed to your "standalone" version which actually works
completely without any javascript =)

Hope this answers your questions and actually if you have any requests
regarding being able to customize it to fit your website, I'd love to hear
them from a users perspective. Please email me! Thanks again.

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city41
Looks nice, and a good idea. I'd consider using this if I had a need for it
(and I may in the future).

I did notice that tabbing order goes review body->name->email->submit, which
doesn't match their visual layout.

~~~
apsurd
Thanks for your comment. Ah yes I checked and its because I floated the fields
in the opposite directions! I'll fix that. Thanks.

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vorador
There's a typo in the front page : "A Powerful, Easy Customer Communicaton
System."

