

We wanted it, so we built it...feedback? - rwebb
http://www.analystsedge.com
thoughts?
======
mattculbreth
I think you've got something nice here. I personally don't care for the color
scheme or the letter-based voting, but as you mentioned your likely user base
will be comfortable with that. Probably a good move.

I'd actually use more line spacing between news stories though. It feels a bit
too cramped to me. I agree with other comments about the ads too--lose them
for now.

~~~
rwebb
thanks very much for the feedback! it has been an interesting exercise for us:
balancing what users what, what users actually DO on the site, and "good"
design all at the same time. We've ended up going after the first two more
aggressively at the cost of the third...simply because good design alone in a
forest is worthless :)

------
kyro
I think it'd be handy to have tool where users can type in or mark certain
companies they'd like to follow, and then get a feed of all the recent news
pertaining to said company.

~~~
rwebb
that's an interesting idea, but we're really focusing on "industry" news for
the private finance world. specific company news is a huge box we don't want
to get even remotely close to. the only reason there are specific companies
mentioned in our news is because there is some sort of private finance move
going on in relation to them. the goal is for the site to be a place where pe,
m&a, hedge, and vc folks can keep track on the buzz in their industries.

~~~
kyro
I still think a feature like the one I stated would fit in perfectly. With a
feature like that, I would most definitely be inclined to register with your
website and check it on a daily basis.

~~~
rwebb
i would sign up too :)

------
davidw
The colors/layout give me a headache.

~~~
rwebb
yeah the black background was a topic of debate. we went for black because all
finance guys think bloomberg is the best thing since sliced bread.

~~~
pg
Not being physically painful is more important than vague associations with
Bloomberg.

Also, use lighter fonts or more interline spacing.

~~~
rwebb
advice: taken

we increased the line spacing, toned down some of the colors to make them
easier on the eyes, and fixed the job board iframe headers.

thanks for all the great feedback!

------
vegashacker
I don't know much about this world, but it seems like the idea could be a good
one. I found it pretty hard to read though. Might have been the color scheme,
or that everything was too close together, or both.

I also don't see the username of the person who submitted the story. This
might not actually be important, but I did catch myself scanning for who
submitted each story. In this case, it was to see if it was all one or two
submitters (i.e., you guys), or if you already had a real community going.

------
comatose_kid
A few thoughts:

What about searching? I might want to see all articles with Citigroup in the
headline for example...

Why not add regular news as well - news that affects the finance world?
Actually, on a totally different topic, it would be really neat to create a
site which somehow reads the news and correlates it with stocks that could be
affected. For example, Apple's ipod news caused shares in SNDK to get whacked
(the ipod nano's didn't use as much flash as SNDK investors hoped).

~~~
rwebb
search feature is linked to on the right side in the "this site" box...

someone above wants stock news too...not something we want to get even close
to though :) toooooo much info!

------
donna
I'd use this but the color scheme is too hard on my eyes as well; doesn't
allow me to spend a lot of time reading. I'd also like to have the ability to
make comments on the story and hear the chatter of others. It would be nice to
be able to look-up stock quotes. Thanks, nice start.

~~~
pistoriusp
The small speech bubble icon seems to be used for commenting.

~~~
rwebb
yup...

~~~
euccastro
This was an example of the power of plain text. I don't think anyone has much
doubt about how to find the comments in news.yc or reddit.

~~~
rwebb
what about digg? ;)

------
DougBTX
The line spacing for the list of links is quite small, it makes the page feel
quite cramped for me. Notice how the links on bloomberg.com are about twice as
far apart. You could also put more space around your logo, again like
bloomberg.com. Not sure about the serif font.

~~~
rwebb
yeah - there is tons of content every day that we want on the site, so we
tried to get as much on as we could :) not great from a design perspective,
but our users like it way more so far.

------
qvtqht
I like the color scheme.

You should allow logging in with the user name as well as the e-mail address.

The upgrade/downgrade links give me no feedback, but that may be because I'm
using Opera.

I'll be checking up over the next week or two. The news is good from what I've
seen so far.

------
pistoriusp
It might make it look more uniform, and less chaotic, if you move the voting,
commenting and other elements that have static widths to the left side of the
link.

~~~
rwebb
that's an interesting idea. the one line + variying lengths + static lengths
produces some issues for sure.

~~~
euccastro
I think it would be better to align the vote arrows vertically, like in reddit
and here, rather than putting the down arrow at the right of the up one.

~~~
rwebb
good call...tough to squeeze them in there since we're putting a premium on #
of stories per view though...

~~~
euccastro
You are getting asked to increase the spacing between lines anyway. Good luck
with your decision. :)

------
byrneseyeview
I like this a lot. It's much more professional than <http://digstock.com/> ,
which never really took off.

~~~
rwebb
thanks! digstock really is focusing on stock specific news though. our focus
is on private finance news.

------
whyleyc
Looks like the jobs page is not picking up your stylesheet ? I see borders
round the logo and the major links have default HTML formatting.

~~~
rwebb
ha - yeah that's jacked up! we weren't going for the purple borders...

~~~
rwebb
fixed now...

------
kingnothing
Black on white text > white on black text.

I won't even look at it long enough to find out what it is supposed to do with
that color scheme.

------
menloparkbum
Now that all that information is aggregated into one convenient place, it
doesn't really provide an edge, does it? ;-)

------
nreece
My one suggestion: invert the color scheme to black on white. It will make the
site look more professional.

------
byrneseyeview
Also, there doesn't appear to be any indication of who submitted a story.

------
byrneseyeview
I see no indication of how many comments a story already has.

------
mynameishere
Drop the google ads until you get serious traffic.

~~~
rwebb
why?

~~~
rrival
Nice site. Going to pass it on to a few friends in the industry to see if they
have any comments I might pass along.

SEO theory suggests dropping ads until you have lots of traffic b/c with
AdSense you provide random relevant exit points and they're not hooked on you
yet. It's also distracting, takes away from the experience, etc.

In your case I think it's subtle enough not to detract.

~~~
rwebb
yeah we're not getting huge traffic, but i doubt anyone is not looking at us
because we have some ads...and if we can get any but closer to breaking even,
i'll take it!

------
chengmi
I'd like to see the numeric rank next to the link.

~~~
rwebb
we opted for a letter based ranking system (derived from moody's debt ranking
system) because it relays relative value like a numeric ranking does, but
avoids the issue of the user "let down" when they see everything has 0 - 20
votes. there are no +1000 point posts on anything other than digg and
reddit...no need to use their system...

~~~
chengmi
The reason I say to enumerate the links is not so much for ranking purposes,
but to reinforce the visual aspect of the page. For me at least, it's much
easier to parse the page if there's some kind of visual cue to help me keep
track of where I am on a page.

Also, I've been on the web long enough to have learned to scan over and ignore
ads (image and text ads), and a list/block of text without bullets or numbers
screams "avert your eyes... ads!!" For example, the main content of the page
looks very similar to the Google ads on the right column (with the exception
of underlines), while the RSS feeds with the bright orange icons screams "look
at me on this page of monotony!!"

I hope this helps. Keep up the great work!

~~~
euccastro
You are talking about different things: chengmi talks about 'hotness' ranking
numbers at the left of the links, while rwebb talks about the 'votes' ranking
letters at the right.

I myself was confused by this AA BBB thing, but I suppose your target audience
knows better?

~~~
rwebb
ah i see - yes i was referring to hotness ratings and he was referring to
numerical ordering. interesting ideas - i definitely think numbers help
"parse" the text...

------
blored
Looking good !!!

------
ulvund
Loads slowly

