

Ask HN: Web app for non-web savvy audience - msquared

Going along with the general consensus of those "I'm working on a super-secret-confidential-double-dodeca-awesome project and I can't give anything away" lines, I have a question for you HNers.  This isn't a throwaway, this is my account.  Mind you, I hardly post, but believe me, I browse.  I browse like a badass.<p>I'm working on a tracking tool and social network for a very (very) specific niche market.  It's not particularly small, but it's a market that isn't intimately familiar with the concepts of Web 2.0.  I'd wager most of them still use antiquated versions of IE.  That being said, most of them are involved in forums of some sort or another.  In fact, what I'm trying to do is centralize and standardize what they do in some of these forums.  I'm unsure how my notoriously stubborn audience will adapt from phpBB to my proprietary tool.<p>The purpose of this project?  Well, I'm part of this community (not the web-illiterate part).  I wanted to build something for myself (started in Excel, years ago, ugh).  After speaking with a bunch of people also involved, it seems that virtually everyone I spoke to is enthusiastic about my idea.  I've gotten a group of beta testers that I define in a range of browsing skills to see how my program works.  It's an interesting challenge, building a web app for people that barely understand the concept, let alone the definition.  I've never built a site this large all by my lonesome, so I'm excited to see how I manage, from conception to production without a cofounder or team.  This is more of a portfolio builder that I scrape a few hours a week together to work on than a business venture, but it wouldn't be terrible to earn a little advertising revenue.<p>Have any of you dealt with a large, decentralized, and non web-savvy audience before?  If so, any advice?<p>EDIT: from my comments, revorad broke me down and got me to spill the beans on my project.  It didn't take long.  I would make a terrible spy.  Here's the project info, in a little more detail.<p>It's a target score tracking tool for gun owners, built around aggregating scores, ammunition makes/types, individual gun scores, etc to let individuals track how well they do (in general, with one of their guns, etc) and track performance metrics across the user base to determine which ammo works well, which guns perform best, etc.<p>So, a tracking tool mixed with a social network. I guess.
It started as something to help me track my scores and see how I progressed. I made a score calculating algorithm just using Excel that factored in ring size, distance, wind, and a whole load of other factors and it worked really well. I had one of those "this is madness" moments and started porting it into a CakePHP app.<p>There are a ton of AJAX page interactions, UI/UX elements, etc that are very different from what traditional message boards and forums use.
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Darkstar
The best thing I can tell you is to be consistent. The impression you first
give the user will be what they will expect throughout your site, web-savvy or
not. If you change how you input or display data in different parts of your
site it will only serve to confuse the user.

For the older crowd that uses just email I would suggest not overloading them
with information. Too much information on one screen can be a pain to sift
through and usually the younger crowd doesn't mind it as much - mostly because
they don't read so much as skim, though - but the older crowd will find it to
be a chore.

Users understand the back and forward buttons on a browser. Try not to create
a situation where the browser buttons would not function as expected. Too much
AJAX or wanton use of a lightbox could be considered such situations.

Lastly, visually offsetting the content of your site versus the layout (menus,
headers, footers, etc.) can go a long way to guiding usage of your
application.

~~~
msquared
Agreed. I've been templating the site to maintain placement of information.
This is the third iteration of this projects design, and it has been trimmed
and slimmed in each version. I like the most recent one. It's not
overwhelming, but it contains all the necessary information.

I do have to keep in mind browser back/forward links and how they will affect
site usage. I know I'm part of my target demo, but I'm also more technically
inclined. Plus, I'm close to the project so I need (and have) people with
objective eyes to review it.

------
revorad
Please just show us what you built. Don't waste time.

~~~
msquared
It's not live, and it's for the gun owning community. You didn't really need
to know that to answer the question though, the basics still remain: do you
have any advice for dealing with a non-web-savvy audience?

Sorry I don't have anything to show right now, though. Wish I did.

~~~
revorad
Well ok, fair enough. But at least describe it in detail. Non-web-savvy people
is too vague.

The only thing I can think of for "dealing with" your audience is to go and
talk to them and listen to what their problems are. If they match your idea of
what their problems are, then tell them about your product. Otherwise, build
what will solve their problem.

If you're wondering how you will get them online to use your webapp, find out
what they use the web already for (email) and use that as a channel to get in.
If your audience is people who're not using the web at all, pick another
audience.

PS A lot of stuff like this gets posted on HN. If you want to get noticed and
useful help, be specific and detailed.

~~~
msquared
Thanks for the advice, will take it into consideration. Saw a similar post
that made it into the top submissions, figured I'd add my own.

~~~
revorad
There's a lot of luck involved in submissions getting to the top. All you can
do is make it the best possible.

Here's an idea: Make a simple landing page explaining your idea with an email
sign up form. Submit that as a link, rather than a text post.

It will most likely get a lot more upvotes.

