

Kicking off a new website - appreciated feeback (good and bad) - livz
http://weblivz.com

======
lethain
0\. Can't figure out what your added value is.

1\. Buttons which do nothing ("expand to show further panels...").

2\. The question marks after "Change Location, etc" are really sized badly.

3\. You are displaying escaped HTML in the right most scroll ('<b>Obama</b>
says that...').

4\. You inlined all the scripts AND stylings.

5\. Design is very busy and doesn't look professional. In particular the
'WebLivz' box in the top left doesn't match theme and clips over existing
text.

6\. 'Please get involved' text isn't centered.

In summary, the site feels thrown together and adhoc. There are little
problems, and bigger ones. I don't think this has enough polish or focus to be
released for public consumption.

You need to a) simplify the design, and b) explain your added value to users,
because it isn't clear how this is going to replace my RSS feeds.

Sorry to be critical of your work, but it really needs more polish before you
start asking for public feedback.

~~~
livz
No probs - glad to hear of any feedback. This group are focused on early stage
stuff so good to hear back. Scripts are styles are inlined in some cases (not
all).

The buttons do stuff when it's available - but perhaps i'll hide them when
there are no options.

Hey, no worrie about the critique - useful to hear than nothing!

------
Shamiq
I understand this is totally superficial, but can you keep the same color
scheme that you had in the portal page (ie click to get started)?

Defaulting to politics is no fun. Here's an idea: Can you use the information
which tells you where a user came from to customize the site for him? So say I
came from HN, I would probably like to see stuff about technology, startups,
ect. with the option of checking out other categories.

If the origin in unknown/unclear, then a default page similar to Google News
would be nice, in that it shows all the major categories and top 3 from each.

Definitely work on cleaning up the interface so it's easily readable/scanable.
Most users don't like to and/or don't know how to hunt for information if it's
not amazingly simple to find.

Good luck!

~~~
livz
I am interested in using where a user came from too - i just never had time to
do it right now but i will check out how i could achieve that. Would make
things easer - at least for location.

Once you log in you can customize it.

Thanks - will have a think about the UI.

------
timcederman
"z" in the domain name always makes me cringe...

All this talk of "we do this" and "we do that" actually makes me nervous to
give you my data. It's just a wording/psychological thing.

That announcement thing gives me the irrits. You should show it over top of
the content or otherwise you'll get a high bounce rate.

 _another_ site with square buttons? Isn't anyone getting sick of these yet?

Overall the experience was overwhelming. Where do I start? What do these
things do? What should I click on next? Where is the value?

You talked about taking a river of RSS stuff - why not let me try it with my
Google reader feed so I can see whether your intelligent stuff actually works?

~~~
livz
Thanks. Out last name ends in "z" which is why i use it, but fair enough.
Giving people an idea of what it does it always pretty tricky so feedback on
that is good.

I'll look into the things you mention - the Google feed reader is an
interesting idea - and i already have the cached Atom i generate from the
queries.

------
rw

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        *   This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies.

~~~
livz
Aye - i use cookies to store your language. Maybe something to do with that.

------
livz
Wasn't sure about whether to only use OpenID just now - made the
authentication easier - can concentrate on the functionality more that way.

------
livz
Thanks all - let me have a read and post back some. Very Much appreciated!

------
livz
ok folks - i added RSS feeds - you will see the icon on every data panel on
the front page. Will now work in your favourite RSS Reader.

------
livz
btw - this is an excellent site. Got almost NO feedback on Twitter/FF and then
this. Thanks again!

------
alaskamiller
Why a feed reader?

~~~
livz
Hi - it's not a traditional feedreader - we have written queries in the
backend to return the feeds. We have actually done much more than that due to
the variation in formats and semantic interpretation of RSS and Atom - but
basically it's not a traditional feedreader. Thanks.

