

Ask HN: Review our app, Site Assistant - middayc
http://www.site-assistant.com
I would really appreciate any feedback on any angle of S-A.<p>Thanks!
======
JangoSteve
Looks pretty cool. Lots of useful stats, though they are stats that are
usually pretty easy to obtain elsewhere. I would have said I'm not sure I'd
pay for it, but the plans are cheap enough. I just probably won't ever be
_actively_ managing more than 10 sites at once, so I don't think I'd ever need
one of the pay plans.

I actually have a buddy developing a similar concept to this that does a
little more in terms of utility, though his hasn't launched yet.

The design leaves a lot to be desired. I would consider a severe make-over. A
lot of the interface just doesn't _feel_ right.

Oh, and also, I couldn't do one of my sites, because it doesn't allow the .edu
domain apparently. Is there a reason it whitelists the tld's that can be
monitored?

 _edit_ I just realized this "review" came off with much more negative
feedback than positive, which I don't think is appropriate, because I really
do like this app. So, I'll just leave it at that.

~~~
middayc
Yes, those stats can be obtained by other means.

S-A helps webmasters that need to manage 30, 50, 100 websites and obtaining
stats for that many websites (and making them easily viewable with
views,filters, details) would take A LOT of time. S-A is made to start being
useful after you add at least 10 websites.

==== I would really really appreciate if you give me some hints about the most
painful parts of design/interface :) ====

.com .net .org .biz .info .us .eu .fr .si are allowed for now. The reason is
that each TLD's whois returns differently formatted data that we then parse
and extract the relevant bits from. They start repeating after a while and we
will certainly be adding other TLD-s. We are still more focused at designing
the core, what to show, how.. etc.

it's ok, and thanks a lot for your review :)

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brandnewlow
Just signed in. Feedback.

When I join something called "site assistant," I'm doing it because I want to
add my site and start getting info about it.

But when I log in, the only call to action I see is "add group."

Where's my "add your site" button? I don't want to add a group. I'm at
sitemanager.com not groupmanager.com

~~~
middayc
hm.. good point .. I will think how to make this clearer.

otherwise current situation is that you add sites into groups so you must
first create a group.

Maybe simple solution is that we precreate group My websites for you so you
have a basic group and "Add website" button.

Thanks for feedback :)

~~~
brandnewlow
That'd be perfect. Just give me an obvious link that says "add your site"
after I take the time to register.

------
javery
Interesting idea, here is my feedback:

1) Whois information is basically worthless to me so I wouldn't lead with it.
Lead with the SEO information as that seems the most interesting.

2) Emphasis the benefits of having the data, not just what the data is. How
can I make more money or build a better site knowing this information?

3) Hire a designer, if your serious about the application spend $1,000 and get
something that looks nicer (the buttons really need work).

4) Your pricing seems way off, how many people have more than 10 sites? I
would give away 1 site for free and then charge for anything more. I feel like
I have a large number of sites and I think I only have 11.

~~~
listic
Though I like pretty graphics not less than other dude, in this case I advise
to wait before hiring a designer. If you were doing an application whose use
pattern is clear and firmly known, if everything is basically in there, then
sure, add a layer of polish! But as far as I can see, this is not yet the
case.

Maybe you'll have to redo your application several times before it takes its
final form, and the buttons will change. It'll be better if sunken cost of
design work not make you hesitate tweaking your app. After all, I think if
your service will be of use, people will use it without any graphics. Look
i.e. at tarsnap: it was launched and went to profit with very minimalistic,
text-only, non-friendly website.

Whom is your site aimed at? SEO professionals? Nice graphics is not essential
for them, I guess. So far it's not clear to me what value your site brings
them. So far I see only that it displays whois and search engine info in one
place. Nice, but probably not enough to pay for. Have I overlooked something?

Anyway, I'll show your app to my younger brother, who is SEO guy, tomorrow.
It'll be interesting to know what he'll say.

Can I have your email, please, so we can better get in touch?

~~~
middayc
I am iterating the whole thing as you say and one benefit of me doing the
graphics also is that I can redo it quickly without cost or complications. And
I did it several times already, mostly trying to get the message across
better.

No, S-A is not aimed specifically at SEO. As it says it's for webmasters and
by that it's more general. I am aware that this is sort of a bad point because
it doesn't specialize in anything, it doesn't focus on any hot topic, as SEO
is for example.

I offers more than it can be seen from those two screen shots. It doesn't go
into extreme depths, it is focused at helping webmasters with A LOT, for
example at least 30 websites. If you add just one website in, the info you get
is probably not that valuable.

I will be very happy to hear any feedback from your SEO brother :)

------
jbgh2
Looks nice but... I signed up and I get a 404 on the sign-in page. I tried to
contact you but your email is an image. Why no contact form? So now I'm
feeling frustrated.

I agree that 10 free websites is far too many. 1 for free then start paying
after that. The pricing looks weird by being per 6 months. Make it yearly or
monthly.

I'll look deeper when I can get in.

 _edit_ Got in, nice collection of information. I'm not frustrated any more :)

~~~
listic
Re: 10 is too many

Hey, this in not meant for Everyday Normal Guy™. If you have 1 or 2 sites, you
can do all that the service does by hand, no big deal. This is meant for some
sort of professionals who have maybe tens of sites, or maybe many competitors
whom they are supposed to watch too, and doing all this by hand is just too
much work.

So to even get some taste of using the service I think you need several sites.
Maybe you could give just 5 for free, but no less.

This is for now of course. If the service could do something special, i.e.
pinging the servers at least, then maybe you could give away just 1.

~~~
middayc
yes, you said it better than I did.

2 out of 7 initial beta testers added more than 120 domains into the system
each.

------
prpon
Is there a way for me to test drive the app without having to sign up? I do
not want to give my email address then regret that this app is not something I
am interested in.

~~~
middayc
So far there is not. Would a video of it's functionality help you at
determining this.

Otherwise I was thinking of making a "get info for this webpage without
signing up" functionality, but so far in my thoughts was that you would give
an email and be notified on it after all bots collect the info (maybe a minute
or two).

But this wouldn't solve the problem as you would still need to give me your
email. I will think of making something in a way that you get info
immediately. I think it's a good idea.

------
listic
Can you please leave contact email, or better even, IM.

Can I IM you in icq or, failing that, Skype format?

------
jusob
You need to allow all TDLs. My websites mostly use .me and .mn, I cannot enter
them.

~~~
listic
With allowing all TLD's comes the problem. Do you have to also show all search
engines? It's a problem of usability and scope.

For example, being from Russia, I have hard time immediately using the service
because most sites that I might input to the application end with .ru. But if
the app allows .ru TLD, to be useful to me it should also show me Yandex and
Rambler indexing stats, and then Google and Yahoo too. But not the Indian or
Australian ones, please, or I'll be overwhelmed with the information. See,
there's the problem.

~~~
middayc
Yes, this is a very good observation. If you have a local website, then you
want to have local related information about it. For example I wanted to
create a localized version for my country (Slovenia), with adding a local
search engine and google.si stats to search engine stats, and local
directories. But this is hard to scale and as you note the scope becomes a big
problem.

If we will go covering local search engines at some point the scope problem
could be solved by offering you to choose from list of (ever growing)
supported resources which you want to see in addition to general
google/yahoo/alexa.

