

Show HN: Vetter - please critique my first web app - onBlueDot
http://www.getvetter.com

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greendestiny
I like the idea and the pitch. I think the copy itself reads a bit strangely
and the design is a bit rough.

Is the vetting an essential part of the process when a company uses this? Are
you sure? It seems like you're almost afraid just call it a suggestion box app
because it might be too simple. Or even if the vetting is essential is it
really the way to pitch and name this app?

~~~
onBlueDot
Yes, still learning a lot about copy and design... But hopefully we will be
able to improve this with time.

Good question about the Vetting - I see what you're saying about it, and we've
looked at some alternative approaches, but it seems to do a good job of
getting users engaged in the rating / voting process at this point.

Do you think just a suggestion box app would be too simple?

Thanks for the feedback.

~~~
calebmpeterson
I can see "just a suggestion box" from the submitter perspective being really
nice if it is _really_ simple. I'm talking "e-mail your suggestions to
box@getvetter.com" simple.

Perhaps some sort of analysis/aggregation on the backend for the person(s) who
review the submitted suggestions. An interesting idea is using Bayesian spam
filtering techniques to filter out "whiny" suggestions...

~~~
onBlueDot
Aye the backend could certainly use some additional processing. We're just
working out the best way to approach this now. For the time being we just
offer some simple sorting, tagging and categorization options, but we're
working on locking down the next iteration. Thanks

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onBlueDot
Quick bit of back story: Myself and a co-worker founded Vetter last year. I
had been learning rails, and he had the idea for the project.

It has now been about 9 months, and we've learned a lot, are profitable, and
fully-bootstrapped (aside from a small prize at the end of start-up weekend).

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

~~~
chinmoy
could you please elaborate that a bit? Is this your first project since you
you were learning rails? Is rails your first language?

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davidlumley
> Is rails your first language?

Sorry to nitpick, Rails is a framework, Ruby is the language :)

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onBlueDot
Haha, fair enough. In either case, Ruby is my first language, and rails is the
framework which I opted for~

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ckluis
Contact me at ckluis [at google's email system] if you'd like details for
these suggestions.

I think the biggest improvement you can do is to create a 3 part footer with a
teaser (mini-intro) into the 3 case studies. This would provide a very
tangible benefit that is visible on every page. I would probably remove the
case study link from the main menu.

Part of the benefit from this is it provides something on the blog side, where
there is literally no calls to action or conversion.

Here is a hint. Go to hubspot's blog. Notice how they have a call to action on
the bottom of every single post? It seems like a waste to have someone read
something and have no way to convert.

The social set-up is pretty weak too. If you are not going to tweet your own
posts - why should anyone else?

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Faulconbridge
Have there been any issues with the star rating system? I've seen that a lot
of times users will tend to automatically avoid low ratings unless they have
strong negative feelings about what they're reviewing: people generally just
don't like to be mean.

Have you guys considered an upvote-only system (cf. Facebook, Quora, HN)? That
removes the stigma of negative reviews, reduces the number of ratings that are
inflated by sheer politeness, and still gives quality ideas prominence. Plus
it's strict positive reinforcement (generally more addictive than negative
feedback) versus no feedback at all: rather than becoming discouraged from
low-star ratings, a user should be more motivated to create an idea that his
coworkers respond strongly and positively to.

~~~
onBlueDot
Definitely something to consider. The tendency to rate things higher is
definitely apparent with the star-rating system, so this is something we've
been considering.

You've done a good job summarizing the pros of using an upvote-only system...
something to consider over the next while. Thanks

~~~
Faulconbridge
(Oh! Forgot to mention that Vetter looks like it's shaping up to be a really
great enterprise product!)

And have you looked at any ways to gamify Vetter? I'd imagine that having your
ideas socially validated by your peers by itself would drive great engagement,
but is that something you've considered?

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skyhook_mockups
nice product I like the idea.

just fyi: your domain <http://www.onbluedot.com/> is giving a folder listing
atm. Probably not what you want.

A bit of feedback:

\- Validation errors on the signup, such as pw too short are too small/hard to
see. I submitted the form and then was puzzled because nothing happened. Only
after closer inspection did I see the error.

\- The site gives a mixed content SSL notice.

This is a nosy question so feel free to disregard: You mention that you're
profitable at the moment. Does that mean 'Pay the hosting bills' profitable,
or closer to 'Live off of this' profitable?

~~~
onBlueDot
Thanks for the feedback, I'll tidy up the validations / make them more clear.

Strange about the SSL notice - I'll look into this one.

As for profitability, we're somewhere in between the two points you mentioned
:)

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dkasper
Layout is a bit wide I think. My laptop has 1440x900 resolution and I have to
scroll horizontally to see all of your screenshot.

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nns1212
How is it different from IdeaScale? <http://ideascale.com/>

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duncanmurtagh
IdeaScale doesn't specifically target internal ideas for companies, and there
product is too complicated - they have way too many features.

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onBlueDot
Yeah we tried to keep things simple the whole way through, and our focus is
solely on the enterprise, rather than an external-facing "consumer" suggestion
box.

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gregcohn
Are you looking for feedback on the execution or the idea as a viable and/or
potentially large business?

~~~
onBlueDot
Anything and everything! At this point we are definitely looking to build our
customer base, as it is relatively small currently, but feedback from users
has been quite good so far.

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nlh
Looks great - congrats! Are you based on Twitter Bootstrap or does it just
have a similar style/theme?

~~~
onBlueDot
Yup it is based on Twitter bootstrap... this was added in about 4 months after
we launched. Thanks!

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tlianza
Seems similar to SoapBox... are you familiar? <http://soapboxhq.com/>

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pcopley
Do you have paying customers?

I only ask because it really bugs me when an obviously brand new application
has a "Most popular" distinction for one of their plans when it's clear that
they really mean "Most profitable."

