

Relaunch of HearWhere - Rate/Review my startup - pedalpete
http://www.hearwhere.com

======
maxklein
My comments (as neutral as possible):

1\. Adsense is way too big and too prominent. Take it away from the fontpage
and only put it on the search results page

2\. Static frontpage is empty. Boring.

3\. The page is aligned leftwards on my macbook widescreen.

4\. This is not important, but you are not being careful to properly center
align stuff. Like the "Next 30" button

5\. The difference in your font sizes on the sidebar is too large. Make it
smaller

6\. The names of the cities, like 'Paris' have some wierd dots before them

7\. "Feature Artists"? Do you mean featured artists?

8\. I don't like music auto-playing on a website. Inform me first.

9\. Your favicon colors suck. No seriously, those are very dull colors

\- Now here are some things you should do

1\. Go to one of the online avatar creators and make yourself a vector avatar
with big ears. It will give your site a more friendly look

2\. Drop that big-ass adsense banner, it makes your site look cheao

3\. Change the color scheme slightly to a more appealing color. Mixing gray
and brown is not good

4\. Importat: When I search I want to see the artists I searched for in the
middle, not some features artists. Show more results in the middle, the
sideways display is a bit strange

5\. Explain what the map does, I could not figure it out.

6\. Clicking next did not work

\-- Things you did good

1\. Nice page after the front page

2\. I like the photoshop work

3\. It's focused on a problem. I just wish it would just show me what I want,
which is musicians in my town this weekend and next weekend.

~~~
pedalpete
Thanks Max,

First off, let me apologize for the stupid mistake with the 'next' page not
working. I think I've fixed it now. Testing this morning after google launched
a new version of the Map API which broke my site, so ...anyway, my bad...bad
me...

I laughed at the 'favicon colors suck' comment, I just haven't had a chance to
get a good new favicon going, so I left the old one.

I have two questions for you 1) what would I do with the avatar I would
create? you mean for a new logo? or as an avatar? or just stick it somewhere??

2) the site should have shown you musicians in your town, if google could't
find you by IP address, than it would show you everything. Or were you saying
that it wouldn't show you this or next weekend because of the 'next' buttons
not showing up?

Hopefully I'll be able to get 'date ranges' going in the next few weeks, but
if you select the 'day' from the filter, it should give you the shows in your
area.

Thanks again for the comments. I likely won't be doing a FULL redo of the site
again, but I'll be doing another review and will be making more changes of
course.

~~~
ranebo
Hey Pete good job, I didn't see the original launch but I'm fairly impressed
with what you have now. The myspace music playing is really good and I do
think it should auto start after you click on an artist. The map didnt really
do anything for me but I noticed most of the gigs in my area (Perth Western
Australia) didnt have any street address mentioned.

Anyway Congrats, I like.

------
shawndrost
Hey pedalpete,

Good show. Tons of smaller feedback: -"Feature Artists" -- should be
"featured" -you have 3 distinct styles on the rhs list, for date/pic/details.
I'd say go with one and make it work, it looks cluttered. Otherwise the design
got a lot slicker! nice! -"featured artists" -- two-line genres go on out of
bounds. -right column header should left-align to that column's boundary (it's
sticking out left, at least in chrome) -orange-colored div is duplicate
content w/featured artists (at least in my area) and pushes the map below the
fold. -okay, taking another look, I get it now: the orange-colored div is
associated with the map. you could make that clearer by grouping them visually
-- bunched in one div, for instance. but I actually don't like that choice for
what goes on the homepage map: I'd say put the featured artist events on the
map, and kill the orange div. -I second utnick's suggestion for a weekly
digest -I still don't like the adsense, but I like maxklein's suggestion to
only show it on secondary pages: you'll keep most of your money (I'd guess
that you'd get 5-7 pageviews per visitor on avg, which means you'd lose 15-20%
of your ad revenue) and make a much better first impression. -The player needs
to be higher on the page! that's a rad feature and it needs to be above the
fold. Kill one of the "artist" sections (featured, rhs, orange-top).

~~~
pedalpete
thanks for the comments shawn,

unfortunately ads can't go on 'secondary' pages (I'm pretty sure) as you
aren't allowed to load adsense in an ajax request (terms of use).

When you say 'kill one of the artist sections' you mean kill one of the
styles? or actually get rid of a section?

I might not be understanding what you mean by orange-top, which you mention
twice, but I'm guessing you mean the artist you just selected which shows with
an orange bar at the top? I think people might get lost if I don't show them
what the artist is that all the new data is pointing too.

~~~
shawndrost
actually get rid of one. I did mean the div you're talking about, but I didn't
understand its function in your site fully. now I see that this is really a
one-page app, and that that div is critical, and that you can't show ads on
secondary pages. that's a tough problem, dunno what to say; I still think the
problems I mentioned (music player should go up higher, ads shouldn't appear
on first impression) are still problems, and if you can figure out a solution,
it'd be grea. what about making the music player smaller to help fit it in
with another design element?

------
bluelu
Look really interesting. I don't like the design though. The banner at the top
is too big.

Where are you getting the data from? There is even data for Luxembourg in it,
which I think is only published on the websites where artists are going to
play?

------
pedalpete
A month and a half ago I posted a "rate my start-up" post here on YC, and the
response was amazing.

I went back to the drawing board and rebuilt the site. Unfortunately two
features haven't made it in yet (select a date range, and get a better way to
manage genres), but there have been MAJOR changes to what the site offers and
how it works.

Thanks to all who commented originally, hope you like the new version, and I'm
keen to get any feedback on what I can do to make it better. Pete

~~~
shawndrost
Way to go pedalpete!

------
ashish1
Man you should do something on the designing and UI of the site... its just
not rocking enuf! :) I'll suggest to get the site down for a week or two...
re-design (seriously.. take care of colors and alignment.. content too.. maybe
seek help from rock-events posters or sumthin lik tht) and then re-launch...
because as per me, first impression is the last!

------
utnick
any plans on rss support or some kind of weekly digest for my town?

~~~
pedalpete
there is always more to come.

by weekly digest, I'm guessing you mean - what's coming to my town that suits
me?

If so, I sure hope so. Very challenging thing to do (I think), but I love a
good challenge!

------
dfens
HearWhere placed me in Mt Victoria, Wellington, New Zealand which is slightly
off but very close.

Two minor things: 1) "DJ Carlito" came up as "Ã�J CARLITO" and when I clicked
on "Peaches" the "About Peaches" section was for a different group. Otherwise
I thought it was pretty good.

------
morbidkk
jQuery+jMpas cool

