

Our startup (Seekler: community-built lists to help you find new stuff) goes beta. Feedback please? - bhb
http://seekler.com

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webwright
It looks well-implemented... Design is slick. In the "build something people
want" vein -- why does anyone want this? If you can answer that question, you
should add benefit statements to your home page... Or example use cases.

My gut response is that your most common use case is that a person wants to
build a "best of" list that other people can contribute to... The end benefit
being that you might discover stuff that you weren't aware of, right?

If I'm passionate enough about a subject area that I want to make a best-of
list, is discovery a huge motivation? And if it was, wouldn't I head to a
destination site centered around that subject area for that discovery? Or just
google for "best sci fi books of 2007" or somesuch? It seems that you'd have a
better chance finding great unseen movies on IMDB instead of creating a list
on Seekler (given that movie buffs are likely to hang out on movie-centric
sites).

This seems like a classic example of trying to appeal to all audiences. I'd
suggest creating a 3rd level domain for the most list-centric audience you can
find. If it's comics, create "comics.seekler.com" and see if you can make it
fly.

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bhb
Well, I'm pretty passionate about comics, but I'm always having trouble
finding the next really great Batman graphic novel. We're trying to appeal to
consumers who know something about an area, but are still looking to find new
stuff within it.

The scenario we imagine is this: I'm looking for a new Batman comic. I google
'Best Batman Comics' and Seekler appears in the first page of results (we're
not there yet, but we on the front page for a few of our lists). I go there,
and hopefully quickly find something I hadn't heard of. But, during this
process, I find that 'Batman: Year One' is ranked above 'Batman: The Dark
Knight Returns'. I think that's obviously wrong, so I create my own list to
rank the Batman comics I have read, putting TDKR on top and adding another
Batman comic that wasn't even on the list.

So in our mind, the scenario is reversed - most people will come just to find
new stuff on lists built by experts (who will be us and outside sources,
initially). Eventually a small percentage of them will start contributing back
to the site and make the lists even better.

Thanks for the feedback. You're right that we need to clarify the benefit on
the home page - and narrowly targeting a list-centric audience is a great idea
too, we're planning on doing exactly that.

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kyro
I'll tell you why it looks spammy.

First, you have the nicely designed part of your site sitting in the
background, and your main section enclosed within a box, which separates it
from the rest of the site as if it's disconnected content, and making it look
like a huge ad placed in the middle of your site.

Second, building off of the first reason, your design is discontinuous. You
have nice web 2.0-ish designs with the logo and the pinstripes in the
background, but your foreground content is a white box with text of various
colors and sizes, versus designed boxes that section the site, text that is
styled well (like the seekler logo), and an overall design that promotes
unity.

Suggestions: take your content out of that box and mesh it with the background
in general. Take the login/create an account/search bar and place it in the
upper right. Make the pinstripe background permeate throughout your main
content and vice versa. I almost expect an 'X' in the top right of that box
that would let me 'Close this box,' like many ads I have seen.

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bhb
We released our alpha a few months ago and got great feedback from this
community. Now we've added some new features, fixed bugs, and most
importantly, anyone can create an account.

We'd love to hear any and all feedback. Thanks!

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davidw
Something about it looks sort of... spammy. That's my first impression, no
real motivation behind it.

Maybe there's just too much text?

For me, it doesn't have any... "oomph" that would make me interested in coming
back.

~~~
bhb
We have heard that during our alpha as well. Do you mean the home page or when
looking at one of the lists? Or both?

One of our challenges has been to present a lot of information without, well,
looking too spammy. We'll continue to work on it.

~~~
davidw
The whole thing. Which is odd, because the information isn't actually that
spammy, it just looks that way for some reason. Sorry I can't give you a real
reason.

~~~
axod
A lot of spam websites I've seen have slightly similar colour schemes. You
know the ones with a ton of text, with selected words highlighted with a
yellow background.. ok so it's orange, but it's the only thing I can think of.
And I do think there is just way too much text on the front page.

~~~
bhb
Very interesting. We actually got feedback that we didn't have enough on the
front page before (and as result, we weren't getting the main idea of site
across).

Do you think the 'too much text on the front page' issue is primarily because
of our example lists (the 'popular','recent', and 'featured' lists)?

Thanks for the thoughts.

~~~
mwerty
The white square boxes on the two sides reminds me of google ads.

~~~
bhb
OK, good to know. We'll definitely try some tweaks to decrease the spamminess
of the site.

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ashu
Alignment is broken. The title does not align with anything else. Similarly
for the three boxes (featured lists, etc.) - they don't align with the title,
etc. Just put things in a simple (invisible) grid and everything might just
look much better.

Also, the list-details page is very crowded. When I go to the list-details
page, I am interested in _that_ list, not everything else. The left and right
columns could easily have expandable boxes (unopened by default) for Popular,
Featured lists, etc.

~~~
bhb
Thanks for the feedback, we'll continue to try to simplify the page so it's
less crowded.

------
bhb
Oh, if you'd like to see an example of a list that's got a number of
contributors (and some good information and tags), check out

<http://seekler.com/lists/Anticipated+Movies+of+2008>

Ideally we'd like to have a ton of lists that have this much info.

