

Ask YC: Any Feedback on new web app ratings site appreciated - moorage
http://www.wappied.com

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benjamincanfly
I like this better than most web 2.0 directories I've seen
(<http://www.listio.com> etc.), but it has to feel pretty exhaustive before
I'll depend on it. If I don't expect it to give me better results than just
plain Googling, I won't bookmark it to give it a chance.

Link directly to each site from the browse/search results page. I want the
option to skip your site summary page and quickly open ten blogging sites in
new tabs for comparison.

On the summary pages, I almost didn't realize there were reviews. If there are
only one or two, it's not enough content for me to realize it just by looking
at my scrollbar. That adwords block is going to be a wall for most people. I'd
remove the screenshot altogether and put truncated reviews right next to the
vital details.

Edit: There's another reason for removing the screenshot - for me, it just
registers as a flash ad, and I almost don't even look at it. At
<http://www.wappied.com/apps/mint> my brain wants to think that's a Vista ad
on the right. Once you do look at it, it's still only about a quarter of its
original size, so you're absorbing purely visual data(does it look cool?),
which you already kind of get from the nice-sized logo.

~~~
moorage
I tend to agree - there's something wrong with the screenshots/slides right
now.

Of course, for some reason I can't explain, I also like having them around in
some fashion, so users can experience parts of the app without trying them.
Perhaps this is what "tour" pages are for.

Maybe I should just make pictures part of people's reviews, if they want to
show off a cool feature....

Hmm...

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bprater
Might consider star ratings without forcing a login. I think the site is
useful, but not useful enough to want to create a user account. A great
technique is marketing is to get people to make very small commitments (star
ratings) which will lead to bigger ones (getting an account).

~~~
tstegart
This man sounds like he's been reading "Influence: the Psychology of
Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini :)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini>

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arthurk
Good idea but I don't like the layout. It looks like a template that domain-
parking services use.

~~~
tstegart
The amount of space between the categories does give that impression a little.
Nothing a change to the grid won't easily fix.

~~~
moorage
Hah, interesting. It's definitely a balance between showing the categories, or
some of the categories so that users know they're there to navigate. Each
category will be getting grayscale icons - we'll see if that helps at all.

~~~
johns
If you need more text, grab the highest rated app in that category and display
it below the name.

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tstegart
It looks good. I do have one minor suggestion. Part of what you're about is
helping people find apps. From About Page: "What if, ... you could find the
best webapp for your needs, at any given time, and instantly compare it to all
of its competitors?" I really like that idea, and it would be useful to me.
Currently, no one has got them all in one place and compared them. In fact,
just a short time ago I did a post on YC asking about tools because I know I
had read about them but forgotten where. So you definitely have me there.

I thinking building on this would really up the usefulness of your site
immensely, because people want to know what's out there when they're looking
for tools. Rating is secondary to someone looking for tools. Instead, they
need to know what tools exist. Building out the categories more is a
suggestion, as would be providing your own content (editorial) on how well
apps in the same category work compared to each other. For example, if you're
looking for a commenting system for your blog, what are the pros and cons of
the major offerings. I understand this might run into a problem of what is a
web app and what isn't, but people love to have someone else do the work of
finding them a solution. That involves more than a one line description and a
rating.

Rating is good to eliminate the lowest bottom feeders, but it doesn't help you
choose between two five-star programs. Original editorial content helps people
by providing more information, as will user comments of course once you get a
mass of users.

~~~
moorage
Hey, Thanks tstegart. I whole-heartedly agree. The categories, aside from high
quality reviews are the most important part. When you want to find the best
app for a particular use, you don't really care about how good it is for some
other use.

To me, it's kind of like Yelp - sometimes I want to just know what has the
best food, and don't care about the service. Sometimes I want to know both.

What I'm still trying to figure out is how to implement this from a user
perspective - it's difficult enough to get a user to provide a review, let
alone multiple reviews for different purposes.

Perhaps the genii of YC have some good ideas...

~~~
tstegart
To be honest, having the call-to-action to write a review separated from the
main text doesn't help. Right now, you've put your ads in between where you
learn about the app and where you find the review button. It almost completely
ruins the work your interface (which is great by the way) is doing to get
people to click on the review button. I'm not sure having the ads there is
worth the ruination of your review button click-rate.

People like seeing information where its supposed to be, and ads where they
are supposed to be. Part of what makes Web 2.0 websites so great is that the
ads aren't in-your-face annoying. Here, your ads are messing up the user
experience in an attempt to get in front of the user.

~~~
moorage
I agree. I took the ads and pushed them to the bottom. To your point, creating
a review has to be incredibly easy. I think there are a couple other things
UI-wise that can be done to make sure of this, like letting users click on the
stars under the app's name, to create their own review

~~~
tstegart
What about a Netflix style pop-up when you click on the stars, suggesting
users leave comments, or write a full review? Clicking on full review takes
you to a page where you answer in-depth questions (like have you bought this)
and leave comments (or questions are suggested for you to answer).

Some people will want to do a quick review, others will want to leave a
comment, and still others will want to fully explain how it helped them or
what they liked/disliked. This way you take into account various user
participation levels with the app the user is reviewing. The final rating
could be a weighted average of the three types of reviews, with in-depth and
commented reviews being rated higher. Knowing your review will count more and
be more important if you put more effort into it is another psychological tool
to get people to write about the apps they care about.

~~~
moorage
Love it.

~~~
tstegart
Haha, I love the reviews you're writing. Apparently one person thinks you're
on crack when it comes to Live Journal.

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johns
Let me add an app while I wait for the confirmation email. Don't display it
until my account is confirmed.

~~~
tstegart
I second this. Is there a reason for needing to login when adding an app or
review? I only say this because I saw an article today on getting rid of
logins. What about just requiring a captcha?

~~~
moorage
I agree with this for apps, to be sure - I think I just implemented it that
way because of second-nature.

I will remove the login until app creations become problematic.

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richtaur
1\. Why not use OpenID? 2\. You're using the HTML 4.01 doctype but you're
coding in XHTML. Not a huge problem but your pages are VERY invalid.

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moorage
We should use OpenID - it was just lower on the list of features.

Ahh doctypes. We'll have to get that squared away too, thanks.

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johns
Couple other things I noticed: \- Standardize on either "Log in" or "Sign in"
\- Logo doesn't have weird apostrophe in Wapp'ied like other text does (why is
it there anyway) \- When adding an app, it isn't immediately clear how to
upload a logo. The empty picture boxes don't tell you anything \- Category
counts would be useful \- Getting a 500 error on 'Newest'

~~~
moorage
These are all good suggestions, which I've added. Sorry about the 500 errors -
I pulled the trigger too quickly on deployment. I've started to keep track of
the todo list publicly at: <http://www.wappied.com/about>

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axod
"Service Temporarily Unavailable"

For a lot of pages. What's up?

~~~
moorage
Sorry, I was pushing a fix for a few errors, and it took 60 seconds or so for
apache to figure out Mongrel was up and running again. I'll stop pushing fixes
for awhile!

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tstegart
Just curious, how long did it take you to code this site? I take it you can't
just make it in Sprout.

~~~
moorage
Probably 2-3 weeks of on and off development work. I've got a lot of other
things going on, so I didn't keep track too well. I did hire another ruby on
rails contractor to augment some of my development work, which I highly
recommend (if you're good at finding them).

~~~
tstegart
How many people are working on it now? You say "we" in your comments. Is there
a team involved, or is this a solo project. Either way, it looks great.

~~~
moorage
Just 1 developer on a continuing basis (me), and I paid another contractor to
do some programming work, and another contractor to input some data.

~~~
tstegart
Are you full time, or part-time? How much time do you estimate you'll be
putting into it per week once its up and running?

~~~
moorage
I'll probably be paying more for others to work on it, and I'll focus on
writing reviews.

I need to take a week to regroup though, and figure out the strategy for this.

It looks like success hinges on two things (which in retrospect is obvious):
(1) getting a really well organized (categorized) database of apps (2)
creating momentum on review writing.

~~~
tstegart
App owners have incentive to add themselves to the database. Maybe an email
announcing yourself to App owners would be less work than going through and
adding them all yourself. It also is a sort of secondary press release and
will get people talking about you.

