

KnowledgeBid - YC applicant - looking for feedback - rwebb
http://knowledgebid.com

======
jsjenkins168
Very cool. One _small_ suggestion, and its probably just me being picky. I
would advise removing that little graphic on the right of the woman on the
phone for the customer support. Everytime I see those I associate it with late
90's web stores. They are way overused..

~~~
rwebb
ha! how could we remove stephanie!? also, our target users have just gotten
used to using "late 90's web stores" :)

seriously though, we're trying to figure out how to make people feel
comfortable when they come to the site. we ask for a lot of information and
are presenting them with a pretty ridiculous proposition. i'm not sure if
stephanie gives us more or less credibility, but it does put a human (albeit
stock photo) face on there at least. figuring out how to get people
comfortable with us and what we do is definitely one of our next big
challenges.

~~~
jsjenkins168
Very good point. I was not considering your target demographic, but that makes
sense. Getting more users is way more important than small stylistic changes!
Good luck.

------
dfranke
Zoiks. I think the usual YC advice is "take half the text off your front
page". Take 95% of the text off your front page.

~~~
rwebb
That's definitely what folks are saying here. Our next big challenge is to
make the random people who have information our buyers are looking for
comfortable when they come to the site. These are generally folks with little
or no net acumen that we've contacted out of the blue. If making an uber sleek
web 2.0 landing page is the way to make them comfortable, then we'll
absolutely do that.

------
Alex3917
I'm actually going to go against everyone else and suggest making it messier.
I think with a site like this you actually benefit from having some ridiculous
graphics, a la the million dollar homepage. Right now the site is difficult to
read, but that's only because there is too much text too close together. The
problem with super clean is that it gives the site an empty feel. Throw in a
few gifs to give the site a little personality and it makes it feel like
there's something going on. You can always clean it up later, like what Amazon
and eBay have done recently and MySpace will probably do in the future. Some
might argue that eBay should have been cleanly designed from the very
beginning, but personally I think the initial garish layout probably helped it
to gain traction.

The only trick is you still need a way to convey what the site is about, make
it easy to navigate, and display whatever information the user needs to see on
any given page.

~~~
rwebb
thanks? my sarcasm meter is broken. i have no idea if you are serious.

~~~
Alex3917
I'm completely serious. Unless I'm being completely fooled by randomness, I
don't think it's a coincidence that so many of the top ecommerce sites have
started out messy and have gradually become more clean AFTER gaining a
following. eBay, Amazon, alibaba, yahoo!, epinions, squidoo, etc.

~~~
jsmcgd
Perhaps the trend reflects the fact that they finally worked out which one is
actually better.

~~~
Alex3917
If the user knows what a site does and what they're trying to do, then it
makes sense to have a really clean design that gets them where they're going
in the fewest clicks. But back in 1997 most of eBay's prospective users didn't
know what eBay was, what they were doing there, or what eBay could do for
them.

Hypothesis: The less the users know what the site does and what they want to
do, in other words the less clear the goal, the less important it is to
minimize the number of clicks to reach that goal. And the more experience
users have with a site, the more important it is to streamline the process.

I think premature optimization applies to not just code but also design. For
example, joining the Wikipedia community is probably much more difficult now
even though the meta pages are much more ordered and clean than a few years
ago. Whereas when the community pages were a hodgepodge of random crap it was
a lot easier to just jump into the community and start contributing.

------
jkush
I really like your tagline. It immediately framed what the site is about. I
know that's the point, but still, I really like it.

~~~
rwebb
hey thanks! that's great to hear. we played around with a bunch and thought
those were best.

~~~
jkush
No problem. I suppose you want some _real_ feedback too. From what I can tell
about YC backed sites, they are usually very, very, very clean. What I mean
is: your homepage is too busy. Going along with my original comment, you
should drive your tagline home.

Chop out everything that isn't necessary. In fact, the only thing you probably
need to have is exactly what it means to sell and what it means to buy
information using your site.

Make it as clear and simple as you possibly can.

From the way your design looks now, it seems that you're trying to have all
your bases covered. It's a good impulse but you can do that in better ways.

But anyway, good luck on your application.

~~~
rwebb
awesome feedback. you are 100% right about trying to cover all the bases. our
testing has shown that people don't read anything unless they have to, so
putting the actual guts of the market in front of people helps them figure out
what is going on.

------
tx
Good concept and I would suggest the following:

(1) Instead of all those messy listings you should have a GIANT search box
right in the middle a-la google.

(2) Drop the categories. Work on your search algorithms instead.

(3) Make it much easier for visitors to identify themselves right on the front
page: freelancer, employer, curious person, etc

(4) Write down top 3 reasons for why you are different from craigslist or
jobster. Make those reasons obvious and apparent on your front page.

Good luck!

~~~
rwebb
thanks very much - very interesting feedback and ideas

------
DaniFong
Wow. That's something good enough to actually use. I might just do that. It
sure beats craigslist.

~~~
rwebb
THAT is what we like to hear :)

~~~
DaniFong
By the way -- you need to separate preferred name from official name, since
you use the latter to search authenticate and search public records, but that
isn't obvious.

~~~
rwebb
Ah that's a good catch. Thanks! We should note that the name on your driver's
license is preferred. The system can actually disambiguate pretty well (I go
by a random name and it asks me clarification right away) but it obviously
doesn't work all the time.

We just reset your account so you can try to authenticate again with your
official name if you like.

------
german
About the site I personally don't like to see all that text displayed right
away, it looks too crowded for me.

Good luck.

~~~
rwebb
Thanks for the feedback - definitely a consistent message here that it's too
busy.

~~~
german
I'm a designer, in my opinion if you want to have all that info displayed in
the front page you may try adding a margin to the .question_list class and
maybe changing your font-family in the class .description to Verdana (also you
should add more font-families in case the user don't have that font).

I'm just saying that you should let your page breath. ;)

~~~
joefaron
Thanks for the technical feedback. I'm responsible for implementing the
chaotic front page.. sorry. :(

I'm assuming you're suggesting Verdana for the class .description because it's
a little more wide than arial at 11px? I've been switching between the two..
but it's pretty apparent now that the page needs some more 'breathing room'.

~~~
german
Good luck with your startup!

Try playing with font families, sizes, margins and line heights ;)

------
pg
Where did the current listings come from?

~~~
jkush
I wondered that too, and also wondered if there is some sort of template which
the buyers use. If that's true, the template approach hurts because it blurs
all the buyers together when they probably need help differentiating their
request.

~~~
rwebb
there's a set process buyers go through to create a listing. not sure if
that's what you mean by template...also not sure what you mean by blurring
buyers together...

~~~
jkush
The buyers info always starts with something like "We would like to speak..."

I wondered if there was some default text in the set process buyers go through
when they create a listing. Perhaps default text that started with "We would
like to speak...".

Because all the blurbs start out like that, I found it hard to skim over the
list (hence the blurry comment).

This may not be your problem, it may just be that all your buyers are just
copying each other. Does that explain my comment any better?

~~~
rwebb
Ah yes, that does clarify things. We've helped our buyers write their first
listings, so that's probably why they look similar. The steps that buyers go
through prompt them for specific data points that help them create complete
listings, but the description you are referring to is just a text field. It's
interesting that you were scanning those - I just did as well and the
similarity of the text jumped out at me too. Thanks for the feedback!

~~~
nailer
If you're helping them write the listing, suggests they simply say what it is
they want.

Obviously they could like to contact people. They wouldn't be on the site
otherwise.

~~~
rwebb
Good point!

------
slvrspoon
i looked at this space/concept a LOT years ago. lots doing .. nothing made it.
except for fortune tellers on keen. even google closed up shop here. Q&A
markets are free on yahoo because online non-social info is free and low
value. high value stuff is service provision (ie. doesn't scale in time) and
the good people get good rates w/out messing with internet customers who tend
to flake out (just try renting an apt on craigslist). i don't see a way this
works, but sure is a great idea.

~~~
rwebb
thanks for the comment - very cool to hear from someone that is familiar with
the space! we've spent a lot of time looking at GA, YA, Keen, GLG, etc. - if
you're interested in discussing further shoot us an message via:

<http://knowledgebid.com/contact>

lots has changed in the last few years :)

------
rwebb
joe is bummed none of you tried to import your linkedin profile into your
account :)

------
kashif
When did you launch?

~~~
rwebb
the site has been live for a couple of weeks but we haven't told anyone except
potential sellers/consultants. we have a small number of buyers and are
limiting to that for the time being.

------
DanielBMarkham
I could tell you what I think about your app, but that would be $250.

Seriously, looks like a combination of KM and one of those bid-to-program
sites. Beats me what the market is like. I like the general grid layout you
have, but like others have mentioned, perhaps a little cleaning up is in
order.

~~~
rwebb
...add in a little VoIP and identity authentication and you've got it.

clean up is definitely on our to-do list.

thanks!

