

Ask HN: Feedback on my web app please (BuyersVote.com) - barmstrong
http://buyersvote.com/

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mrcalzone
I can't point out a specific reason, but for me the front-page has a bit of a
"sedo-parking" look to it. Maybe it's the top-menu and the logo, I'm not sure.
Sorry for being so vague, but this was my first thought when I clicked the
link.

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AlexMuir
+1 I think it's the single colour scheme and Arial font.

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kranner
I think it's the ".com" at the end of "buyersvote.com" that did it for me.

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netmau5
Cool idea, I've always wished there was something like this when shopping in a
category. My process always breaks down into cross-referencing several items
on cnet, amazon, ign, etc and a vote would give me a quick top 3 to narrow
down my choices and save me some time.

Feedback:

1) Is there a way to cross-post an item to multiple lists? There are many
categories that are simply subsets of others, ie HP Pavilion 1234 might be in
"Computers", "Desktop Computers", and "Gaming Machines." It would be nice to
collate votes and comments from many sources too.

2) I agree with AlexMuir on the color scheme, and you already have an
alternate color available on the home page in the orange. You've worked this
color in on other pages but not on the homepage. I'd suggest using an orange-
scheme for the list links since those are something you'd probably want to
draw attention to anyway.

3) On the comments page, I tried to click the up/down arrows before realizing
they were just symbols of how a user voted instead of a vote itself. To make
it more clear, I'd suggest using a +1 or -1 icon there instead of a different
colored arrow.

4) You may be able to fill in some blank lists and items by reading through
Amazon metadata or the like. It takes alot less inertia to upvote something
than it does to enter a list or item, so I think that makes it more likely to
get user involvement.

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barmstrong
Wow...great feedback.

Yep you nailed the exact same pain point I had. When I would sometimes do
"best *" type searches on google before buying something, I'd get back crappy
results with old forum posts or affiliate link filled ezine articles.

On adding an item to multiple lists, I thought about this but decided against
it just because an item could have different ratings for different categories
(iPhone is a great computer, not as good at making phone calls), and it would
make the UI simpler.

Good feedback on the up/down voting. When you say Amazon metadata what are you
referring to? Not familiar with that.

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rezrovs
1) on the actual reviews page you could probably save space by not displaying
a whole row for an upvote with no text review

2) if users have the ability to add their own items to the list, you are going
to need a way to monitor the lists for duplicates or items that are not
specific enough - (example, iPhone) or items that are wrong (iPhone
Blackberry). Since you are starting with a clean slate in terms of products,
it will be most useful to you to ensure that the product names are kept as
clean as possible, this will make it MUCH easier to integrate with a price
service if you plan to monetize it that way in future.

3) I'm not sure what the 'revisions' button is supposed to do (not
technically, I mean in terms of usefulness to the site). I was able to
rollback someone else's review to a previous version.

4) Product lists can grow to be quite diverse and you will need a way to
categorize the lists the same way that products are grouped into lists. For
example, you may need an Electronics category where all PC's, cell phones and
GPS's are listed. And futher on you may need to break the cell phone category
into 'Smart Phones' and 'Cell Phones'. Advice for this is that if you do plan
to monetize by connecting with a price service then map your categories to
that of the price service because it will be easier to sync up your products
later (unless they really don't match your categorization in which case you
will need a way to match them up behind the scenes.)

5) Don't know how you would approach this one, but when I went to 'Blogs for
Entrepeneurs' and clicked on 'Paul Grahams Blog' I could see that the response
was positive so I would want to check out this blog. If I didn't know who Paul
Graham was I would need to then google his name to find his blog. It would be
nice for items like that if the person who creates the item could add some
text or blurb about it. But I'm not sure how that would translate when adding
an actual product that is not a blog.

Hope that was useful :) Good luck with it!

[edit: spelling]

~~~
barmstrong
Great feedback!

Agreed, the naming and duplicates are an issue. I was planning on doing this
like StackOverflow with a "did you mean?" type suggestion box, but haven't
built it yet.

Yeah the revisions might be useful in a wiki way if people try to hack it, but
aren't really right now.

For categorization - I thought about this but it kept making the UI more
complicated to pick a category first. I was definitely trying to go for a
Twitter-esque bare minimum approach and solve the overwhelming amount of data
with search instead of categories (like wikipedia). I'm not sure yet if this
will work though. And Google has yet to index all the pages so the Google
custom search I have setup is not 100% functional yet.

On Paul Grahams blog, it does have a link to the "external site" at the top:
<http://buyersvote.com/items/paul-graham-s-blog-reviews> But it's probably not
that obvious. Thanks for the help!

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DirtyAndy
Nice start to your app. I had a similar idea a few years ago which I never
acted on. One thing you might want to do is categorize things by price. When I
thought about this idea it was because whilst if I am going to buy an espresso
machine I go out and research all the details and then make a decision based
on many factors, most of my friends ask me "what is the best espresso machine
under $500" etc. Whilst that doesn't apply to some things you have like banks,
it does for most things people will buy.

Good luck, hope it works.

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barmstrong
Thanks for the encouragement. Yep - I like the idea of free form lists like
that because it does allow anyone to create niche type lists that aren't
predefined in certain categories. So if someone did want to start a "Expresso
Machines Under $500" list it would be fine. Then there oculd be some
discussion in the comments for whether it should be merged into another list
etc, like Wikipedia, and some tool to merge them if needed (although I haven't
built that yet).

Anyway - thanks for the feedback. The hardest part right now has been getting
critical mass. So we'll see what happens with it!

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michaelfairley
What exactly is the etiquette for posting a "Review my Startup/Webapp" as an
ask or rather as an actual link? I've seen it both ways an I'm wondering if
one is preferred over the other.

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jasonlotito
I much prefer direct linking. It allows me to click open the site/app in a new
tab, and I can click in to allow me to view the comments. We are smart enough
here to know how to do that.

