

Ask HN: Startup Critique Request for Qwanz.com - polling site with a twist - byrneseyeview
http://www.qwanz.com/

======
apsurd
"Ever wanted your opinion to _actually_ matter? Qwanz groups your opinion with
other passionate people and lets you take action, _together_."

I am a big fan of blatant one line descriptions of what a site does. You can
follow this with your "why qwanz" graphic. I'm not saying this is the best
line ever, but you have to think of what benefits you are trying to convey.

Polling sites are boring. I'm not going to get excited about a polling site.
Seems like you are pushing more emotion though. People passionate for causes
can group their opinion and actually "do something about it". Sell that
passion to me, not the details and certainly not "polling".

First impressions:

Terrible enterprisey, hard to remember (how to spell) name.

I like the 3 top create, view, browse boxes. They were the first things I
noticed and helped me understand the site a little better.

Usability impressions:

Right panel is too big. No need for that. Looks like ads. Encroaching on the
content. Flash movie looks like an ad and could very well be thrown into a
"learn more" page. Seems like you are trying to oversell your concept - dont
add more, just be clear! Benefits, not features.

Take some organizational influence from stackoverflow. It's all about scope.
You have 10 main categories. Each of those cats has filters and sorters. Then
your categories apparently have sub-catories. I don't like how sub-cats are
simply partitioned within the list. The Main category "home page" should have
a sub-cat drilldown, and a global (relative to the category) list of all polls
with sub-cat tags. (think stack overflow).

This logic should be true for the global list of all top level categories.
I.e. like the stackoverflow homepage. A list of the top global polls with
tags. Organization and scope imo is very important.

Using this logic, you don't even really need a right panel, maybe just a tag
list or other popular filters, sorts.

Links:

<http://www.qwanz.com/poll/248>

could easily be : <http://www.qwanz.com/poll/248/what-changes-should-qwanz-
make>

thats it for now.

------
spokey
One nit: you are missing a question mark following the first bullet under "Why
Qwanz?", so "Feel powerless to influence matters that are of interest to you"
reads like a benefit statement instead of a question. (I.e.: "It can make me
feel powerless? Sign me up.") I assume you meant "Do you feel powerless...?".

Also, maybe it's just me, but that whole image is very fuzzy looking, while
the rest of the text on the page is nice and crisp. Maybe it should be PNG
instead of JPG?

------
byrneseyeview
Hi HN,

I'm working with the founder and dev team of Qwanz.com, and I'd love to hear
your thoughts on the site. Qwanz is a polling site, with one key feature: once
you've answered a poll, it gives you some next steps you can take -- including
political / media / business figures who can actually use the information.

For example, someone who voted in this poll (<http://www.qwanz.com/poll/245/>)
about Olympia Snowe could then forward the results to Snowe's press secretary
(or call their office directly).

Qwanz is a startup with a thesis, and the thesis is simple: people fill out
polls because they care about issues. If they really care, they'll welcome the
chance to make a bigger difference.

Your feedback is appreciated! We're in the very early stages, so HN's comments
will play an important role in what Qwanz does next.

Here are some Qwanz polls on what Qwanz should be doing:

<http://www.qwanz.com/poll/248>

<http://www.qwanz.com/poll/247>

~~~
frig
You're smarter than this site looks. Good luck.

Allow anonymous poll response but keep separate results tables for anon /
logged in / everyone.

How are the follow-up steps created? If it's just some googly thing it won't
be that compelling.

Homepage is extremely cluttered in a bad way for first-timers; this isn't
always a big deal but it's good to be aware of.

Consider organizing it s.t. eg Olympia Snowe could have an official "polls"
channel for polling her constituents; impact of poll results is more credible
that way.

Have a "clone this poll" feature and follow-up / "poll response"; if some user
dislikes a poll's phrasing or options they ought to be easily able to clone a
poll and tweak it....keeping around that metadata so that people taking either
poll can see other related polls. Similarly with response polls -- some way to
post a counter-poll. Good for user engagement.

Settle on if your sideboxes have rounded or square corners plz.

~~~
levirosol
i second the comment about allow anonymous responses.

------
Tichy
On the hp I don't see what makes it special.

The name sounds awful to me and combined with the design it inspires
associations with unpleasant business products.

------
biohacker42
I'm guessing you're going to get bit of traffic from people who meant to go to
QwanTz.com

~~~
byrneseyeview
Well, that would be nice. Not exactly targeted traffic, unless we start to do
dinosaur-related polls.

(I didn't pick the name / URL. I would have gone with something like
"pollsthatwork.org" or "pollsbutbetter.com".)

------
maukdaddy
Sounds a lot like Kwanzaa =)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwanzaa>

~~~
aaronblohowiak
or dinosaur comics

------
adityakothadiya
Nice UI and features, but I have basic problem - what does Qwanz mean? I'm not
able to correlate to its idea. Its very hard to remember...so very unlikely to
come back... Just my $0.02!

------
chriseppstein
I prefer <http://gopollgo.com/> It has a super clean UI and tons of real-time
features that kick ass.

~~~
byrneseyeview
That is a great-looking site. (Although if you happen to know the designer,
you might suggest making the voting statistics chart more clear. You can't
tell which choices correspond to which colors unless you vote.)

~~~
BenSchaechter
Hi there,

I'm the main developer for GoPollGo.com. Some pretty big changes are coming
along in the next few weeks and we're definitely fixing up the voting
statistics portion of the site.

~~~
nym
The light blue on white text is terribly hard to read.

~~~
BenSchaechter
Thanks for the feedback. We'll definitely take that into consideration for our
next deployment.

------
nym
Make the twist more obvious.

