

Ask YC: Review My Startup Request - NoBSWebDesign
http://www.ratemystudentrental.com

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zasz
The value proposition and purpose are clear, but I'm not sure why you're
focusing on students. It seems like it shouldn't be too bad to make it more
generic and show good rentals within a decent radius of some user-supplied
location. Also, if you're going to be appealing to landlords, I don't think
"screwed" is a professional word to have in your slogan.

Even if the "Houses, Condos" etc. icons are supposed to work in the future, I
think they're too huge and don't really add anything visually.

When I search for a rental, I think the map takes up too much space. I think I
would prefer to decide which results to focus on based on the information
returned first. The search results page kinda pisses me off because I can
barely see the first result since it's taken up by this gigantic search box
with so much space around the "Filters" drop-down menu.

On the "Browse Rentals" page...what's the purpose of this page? Why should I
want to browse all the rentals available on your site when I'm only interested
in some locations I have in mind already?

Otherwise, I think it is a good idea since people might start renting more and
would like to know what they're getting into beforehand, but the site just
looks really busy right now. Too many different colors; you have a million
different shades of blue for example.

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NoBSWebDesign
Ah, thank you very much. The "House, Condos,..." icons were a new addition to
the site as of last night. I didn't even think of the fact that visitors would
perceive those as links, so that is exactly what I'll make them. One of the
problems we had been seeing is that users keep assuming that we only do
houses, or only do apartments, because that is how everyone else operates, so
we wanted to mitigate that popular assumption at the front page.

I agree about the enormous space the options boxes take up on the results
page, and I'm still working on a redesign of that.

The browse rentals page doesn't serve much purpose other than to give casual
views something to look at. Typically users who are actively looking for
rentals either search for their school or type in a city or something, which
of course returns much more relavent results.

Perhaps I'll change the results page for the "Browse Rentals" to show the
schools on the map and allow the user to click one to narrow down the search.

As for the "screwed" in the slogan, most landlords love it. I've also won a
couple Elevator pitch contests by working the slogan in there, and had people
coming up to me the rest of the conferences laughing and saying how memorable
it was. I think it's all about knowing your audience and your boundaries and
then listening to feedback from your customers to make sure you're not going
to far. As for us, most landlords love it too and agree whole-heartedly that
they don't want to get "screwed" by student tenants.

And as a side note, when landlords log in to the site, all of the language and
vocabulary on the site change to a much more professional tone.

Thank you very much for your feedback. We appreciate it a lot!

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colinplamondon
@your slogan- I laughed out loud when I read it, it's perfect :)

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NoBSWebDesign
I figured it's about time to bite the bullet and get some feedback from a
community I've come to respect and trust.

If anyone here is a student, it would be awesome if you could create an
account (you may need me to add your school to the site first) and give it a
whirl. Otherwise, just play around with it and let me know what you think.

Hopefully the value proposition and purpose of the site are clear on the
homepage, so I'll let you have at it!

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NoBSWebDesign
Oh, and one thing I would ask about in particular is what your opinions are on
homepage calls to action.

RateMyStudentRental essentially needs students to rate their rentals. However,
just saying "Rate your rental now" on the homepage doesn't offer much
immediate benefit to the student, and thus does not convert very well. I've
had several iterations of the homepage that I've tried out, and just recently
made a change (last night) that focuses solely on "Browse Rentals" for the
main call to action.

A lot of my knowledge on the subject matter comes from studies and reports
such as this: [http://www.marketingexperiments.com/improving-website-
conver...](http://www.marketingexperiments.com/improving-website-
conversion/optimizing-ecommerce-websites.html)

Anyway, your thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

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alaskamiller
I kept clicking those icons but they don't work. Then I scrolled down and that
single pixel HR separating the entries was hard to see so I didn't get why the
bubble boxes were there, with no pictures as well. Then the slanted background
gave me a headache as I scrolled so I closed the window.

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NoBSWebDesign
Good point on the icons, I'll fix that. Do you mind if I ask what
OS/browser/display settings you're running? In the few months we've been
testing the site at our school, you're the first user to complain about the
stripes (including students and older landlords), but I take this sort of
usability issue seriously.

~~~
alaskamiller
I think the slanted strips background is a poor design choice. People may not
have complained but have they applauded you on it?

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NoBSWebDesign
A few have given us complements on it, yes, but both were students (i.e.
younger probably with better eye-sight). The one I remember well enough to
quote said, "I usually don't like dark-colored sites, but this one I
definitely do."

Maybe we'll do a poll for our existing user's and see what they say. I've got
no problem changing it if people don't like it... and I'm the only designer,
so I've got no red tape to go through ;)

