

Our startup Seekler just launched (alpha release). Feedback is much appreciated - bhb

<a href="http://seekler.com" rel="nofollow">http://seekler.com</a><p>In a nutshell, Seekler makes it easy to find and create lists of the best stuff (songs, movies, artists, comics, jokes, restaurants, or anything else you can think of). Seekler merges users' lists together to create 'community lists' that display the aggregated opinion of the entire community. Some of the popular community lists include Best Movies, Best Cities to Visit, and Best Presidential Candidates.<p>We're doing a staged launch, so we're limiting the number of user accounts for now (until we complete some important features). However, you can still search for and view Seekler's community lists on a wide variety of topics.<p>We'd really appreciate any questions, comments, or criticism about the site. Thanks!
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ajkates
Looks good overall. I understand where you're going with it. However, I agree
that the navigation is just a bit confusing. Also, the value proposition is a
bit unclear, in my opinion (perhaps because there are limited amounts of
users, and it's new?)

For instance: What benefit do I personally gain from using the site? To see
what other people think?

I don't mean to belittle your startup, I just want to be sure that I'm not
missing the point. Perhaps a bit more explanation on the landing page would
help?

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bhb
No, you're not belittling it at all. Communicating the purpose and value of
the site clearly and quickly has been a recurring problem (and we still
haven't gotten it right yet).

To answer your question: The value to you is to find new stuff. So if you are
interested in crime comics, you would come to Seekler to quick find some new
comics to buy. Ditto with music, movies, etc. If you happen to have an opinion
on some area, it'd be awesome if you made a list yourself, but it's not
necessary.

~~~
wastedbrains
For most users it will simply be a place to find new things or peoples'
opinions on things, much like people go to Wikipedia for facts. I would also
like to point out that we are working to help users that create lists to be
able to use that information to help them discover new things. If you have a
list on your favorite movies, we could suggest users' lists with similar movie
tastes. This would help you to find movies on other people's lists that have
similar interests to your own. Along these same lines we plan to eventually
add features letting you view merged lists other than the entire community,
allowing you to view merged lists on groups like your friends, people from
your state, or other groupings that users might find interesting.

In that way the site will be rewarding to users who build up communities to
express opinions on any common shared interest.

~~~
ajkates
Ahh, now I see. Yes, that's very clear. Cool.

I think that this would be very useful. My biggest complaint would involve
having to sign up and create my own lists in order to see lists that best
match my own. That takes a lot of time and energy.

Perhaps utilizing lists people have created elsewhere on the internet, just to
supplement things? I mean, I have all that stuff already in facebook. Perhaps
you could use that information, and allow me to find other
people/movies/books/magazines without having the feel like i'm putting time
and effort to join a new community.

That's the only thing that would stop me from signing up and doing it all
right now. (I'm playing devil's advocate just a bit, sorry for the harshness).

~~~
bhb
No, a devil's advocate is definitely what we need. I hear good feedback, not
harshness.

I think you're right - the user account is going to our biggest barrier to
entry. I think that using the info that already exists in a user's profile on
Facebook, Myspace, etc is a great idea. For Facebook, we could build an app
that grabs this data. For other services, we might just be able to scrape the
data from their profiles on demand.

We definitely want to make it as easy as possible to input data into Seekler.
Thanks for the great feedback.

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asmosoinio
One quick comment: Your layout doesn't really work on a smaller screen --
here's a screen shot from my laptop with 1280x768 resolution as I was browsing
and having some stuff open (visible) behind the browser window:

<http://screencast.com/t/6ufdUZOW>

All other sites I usually visit work fine at this size.

~~~
bhb
Interesting. The site is designed for 1024x768, it should should not require
horizontal scrolling. Is your browser window full-screen, or do you browse in
a smaller window?

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asmosoinio
As you can see from the image in the link, I was not using the full width of
my screen as I was having an eye on some things running in the background
while surfing. The window width was 923 pixels, height 770.

My screen is actually 1280x800. Even at full screen, the site requires
vertical scrolling, even though the content would fit just nicely on my screen
if just packed a little.

Anyway, my point was: didn't look as good as it could have when using the
screen size I was using. I know it is impossible to please everyone...

~~~
wastedbrains
Yeah I guess we can look at redoing some of our CSS as fluid to allow for more
compact views on smaller screens. We avoided it for now as our graphic
designer said it was more complicated and we would likely face more cross
browser compatibility issues. After nailing down pretty much the whole UI, it
is probably worth investing the time at that point for scaling CSS.

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MuddyMo
Overall everything worked well. However, I did find the navigation in the
"Results" page a bit counter-intuitive:

I entered "beer" as the seek term and was taken to the "Results" page and I
clicked on the first entry in the results--"Beers" which is a list--and got a
new page with a view of the items in that list. But when I clicked on the
second entry in the results--"beer" which is an item--I didn't get a new page
with a view of the item. Instead I got a preview of the item in the frame on
the right-side of the Results page.

After further review, I saw the link to the right of the "beer" entry labeled
"view" and was able to view the page for that item. I really don't think
labeling the links to the right of each results entry differently--"preview"
for a list and "view" for an individual item--will prevent the user from being
surprised by this behavior.

Seeklr is a very intriguing site. The presentation is very attractive and
implemented nicely. Good job and good luck.

~~~
bhb
Hey, great feedback. I totally agree with you - the navigation on the results
is pretty confusing and we should make it all consistent. Thanks a ton!

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coffeemug
Something about the design of the front page makes it look like one of the
linkjack/adsense pages. This is a first glance kind of thing, but it's
important as it can turn off a huge percentage of visitors.

Also, the footer on the front page seems a little off.

~~~
wastedbrains
We pushed a fix that includes cleaning up the footer thanks for the feedback.

I can see the linkjack/adsense page look and feel, any thoughts on what gives
it that vibe? Is it just that we have a collection of plain text links at the
bottom of the page? Would adding some more content or more text describing the
site help give it a more valid look?

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rsa
<http://unspun.amazon.com/>

~~~
bhb
Thanks for the heads up. We have been looking around for competitors (and have
already shown the site to a large number of people) and you're the first to
point out Unspun (so at least they are not really well-known yet).

There are a number of existing competitors out there, but this one definitely
looks the most similar to our concept. We'll just have to differentiate
ourselves with features and usability. Thanks!

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german
When I displayed the Movies list, it appeared with only results 1-10 of 257.
Maybe you should have the option to increase results to 20, 50 or even 100
results per page.

Good luck.

~~~
bhb
Great idea. It is pretty tedious to go through that many pages of results.
Thanks!

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waleedka
Another potential competitor: <http://www.listible.com/>

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brlewis
Front page starts with a link to itself.

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bhb
Do you mean the "Seekler" image in the top left links to itself?

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brlewis
yes

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bhb
Interesting. What would you expect to happen when you click on that image? We
weren't sure what to do with that link, so we just had it take you to the main
page. This seems to be a pretty common pattern (Reddit, Digg, and Favebook all
behave similarly), but if this goes against user's expectations, we'd happily
change it.

~~~
brlewis
When you are already on the main page it should not be a link.

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asmosoinio
Are you really bothered by this? For example reddit and news.yc does the same,
I don't see it as a problem. Odd? Yes. Standard? Yes.

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brlewis
Being a web-savvy person myself, I'm not thrown by this particular usability
error. It's an easy one to make when working with templates; I have pages
myself with this problem. However, I do think it's worth pointing out.

It's standard just like stubbing your toe is standard. Everybody does it
sometimes, but it's worth avoiding.

See #10 on this list:

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20031110.html>

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asmosoinio
I guess you are right, it is worth avoiding. I am just so used to that
behavior that it is what I expect a page to do, but I guess another way to
refresh the page doesn't justify confusing the user.

~~~
asmosoinio
Btw, I was just checking how sites handle this, and here's an innovative
approach by Nokia: Let the Home-link take you to a totally different page if
you are already on Home:

<http://mobilecodes.nokia.com/index.htm>

;)

