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Ask HN: Review my site - thefabulicious.com
20 points by wushupork on Jan 23, 2009 | hide | past | favorite | 30 comments
Hi HN

I humbly ask for your feedback for my new site http://www.thefabulicious.com/

anything from design, to usability, first impressions, why it's cool, or why it sucks

I've been a long time reader of this site but only recently started participating in the form of voting and comments. I find the support and feedback of the HN community invaluable.

Thank you




I'm writing it down as I go.

Page loading... I see the title.. very nice and descriptive. Also seems very SEO friendly.

I see no description on the landing page (which was a tad bit slow to load). What's this site do? I'm not sure what to expect. I see a menu like navigation with search in the center. Is the left different from the right? Sort of. Seems like it should be footer stuff.

I don't like the search in the center... I'm not even sure what it's searching for, and don't want to waste time typing in something only to see no results.

Ah, ok, here's the real menu. Beauty, design, fashion.. etc. What about it? Is it going to be articles, or products? I'm guessing products. Yeah, looks like they're just selling stuff on this website. I see prices and product pictures.

I'm not really interested in shopping, and there doesn't seem to be any catch to this site other than: "here is stuff to buy" so at this point I'd leave.. but it's an HN reader so I'll dig a bit deeper.

I click "Wing It" because of all the pictures I see, this one almost has cleavage in it...

Related posts? Shouldn't it be related products? Weird having reviews on the left, I'd expect them on the right, where there's more space. No reviews.. I wonder which products have the best reviews? Doesn't seem to be a way to find out. Is there something that this site really thinks I should see? No... just that stuff on the frontpage that didn't really interest me.

OK, this is clearly just some blog system that's been "hacked" to be browsing products. Blog posts = products, and comments = reviews. Got it. Not that interested...

There you have it, that was my visit.


Cool idea for stream of consciousness feedback. I think the OP can learn a lot from that.


It's the ideal feedback for usability... stream of consciousness and laying off the "you should" or "i would do that if..."


Someone should do up an app that has two frames, one where you type in the URL of the site you want to review and the other that contains a text entry area that lets you type, press enter, type, press enter, creating a stream of consciousness of your impressions of the page in the other frame. When you're done, you click save, and the review is saved to the app and you get a tinyurl style link to paste here for people to see your review.

appreviewr.com is available...


Just a little clarification on the site - it's just going to feature cool stuff for women. It doesn't necessarily have to be stuff to buy. Basically anything a fashionista would think is cool and worth sharing. This can be a site, a movie, goods, services - whatever.

Having a tagline is a good idea.

This is a very early version - basically just see if women even care about this sort of thing. Having profiles and a community would definitely be a cool thing to do.


It all seems a bit vague. For instance, why would something be listed on here? What are the standards? If there are different standards for different categories then put these in a summary at the top of the page.

For instance, with fashion, are you trying to be on the cutting edge or price sensitive? Are you seasonal?

If you want your audience to relate to the site then they need to know what your standards are. You can't just go for 'all women'. Figure out your exact demographics and tailor your selections for them. If it's 20's and 30's professionals then have 'fashionable working wear' and 'friday night on the town' stuff. (and you don't need a 'myspace' icon since they are all on facebook)

The descriptions are moderately witty, but it would be good if there were a 'person' behind it, even their initials. Then later on when you are getting submissions from your user base they can sort + find authors with whom they have similar taste's.

And when I clicked on the 'obama cupcakes' there is an odd picture under 'related posts'... apparently it's for a music festival, though just showing the image under 'related posts' with no caption underneath is, well, just kinda odd. Mixing events that are location based can be tricky and alienating because most of your audience won't live in austin and probably won't travel to a music festival, though again it depends on the demographic you are trying to reach (college road trip?).

The 'buy it' and 'originator' links are mostly the same. I thought 'originator' would link me to the person who is recommending this.. again, then I would have more of a 'warm and fuzzy' if I knew the interests of the person behind it appearing here. And because they are on the search pages, I didn't actually click on a box until a bit later when was wondering where the 'related posts' section was that a previous person had commented on.


That's great feedback. Putting a person behind it is a very good idea. Also figuring out what we want to be is something I am working on. I'm the idea guy who created the site - but being a man, I really have no place in picking and choosing what goes on there.

As far as related posts go, I agree that it needs to fit. The site is still early - you guys are getting a very early look at it so there's not a whole lot of content and even less related posts.


Nice layout and idea. My girlfriend spends an inordinate amount of time online "browsing pretty things" so I think you may be onto something here. Reminds me a bit of a more-visual and more-female version of Thrillist.

How are the items selected? I tried clicking the "Suggest" link in the menubar, but it's linked to #.

The "Buy it" link for the first item on the home page (Art Noveau Portrait Bag) takes me to a page that says, "Online Ordering is temporarily unavailable. Please call (312)698-8685 for availability and to place your order. Thanks!" Could be a frustrating experience for end-users, and implies that you need somewhat better feedback from the merchant about what's featured (or maybe vote up/vote down functionality for users).

Also, I agree with the previous comments about the ads - they're visually jarring. If they're required as part of your business model, maybe there's a way to better integrate them into the site design?


I wasn't quite sure what the site was about when I first landed there. Maybe some explanation about the site and a byline would help. Something like "everything that girls like". I just found that quote on the about page. If it was on the homepage it would help. Though the pink F favicon is a good indicator.


You need a tagline that explains what the site is and differentiates in from competitors. I would also nix the advertising. For a new site with little traffic it won't make you much money and undermines your brand. I think you'll also find most of your revenue comes from affiliate commissions related to the products you feature. Send your traffic away via ads will probably reduce your revenue.

I would also remove all the bookmark buttons under the items. Those sites aren't really reception to the type of content you have for the most part and power users are quite capable of submitting on their own.

That said I really like the layout and think it's a great idea for a site. If you put effort in more editorial blog style content surrounding the products, you could generate quite a following.


I'm not a fan of the "sharing links" or rating stars. How often do you expect people to share an item here? It doesn't look like stuff that would be quickly submitted, since it's product sales. It adds clutter. Rating I like, but stars? Too generic. It's not adding anything.

I like the layout. Dunno what the audience will be - this isn't my kind of site - but it looks good and mostly clean. Question: how do I sign up to add my own things, if I think it's good? Is there a community for that? Or do I have to contact you directly?


Maybe you could use diamonds instead of stars since the audience is obviously women ;-)


"It adds clutter. Rating I like, but stars? Too generic. It's not adding anything"

How do you know? Are you in the target market? Do you have any data to back that up?

I'd try anything and everything, measure it, and see what works. Who knows? One woman's clutter is another woman's awesome feature.


I was speaking entirely from the point of view of my own aesthetics. The more unnecessary images, the worse it is. It's why I like Hacker News' aesthetic so much: for what it does, it only uses two different images, one on the main page.

I think and have thought for a long time that having a 5-star rating system to create a massive opinion is unnecessary. It's good for when you have a focus on the individual, because then it focuses on the user's own tastes; for a site like this, I don't see why up-and-down wouldn't be sufficient.


That was the mentality - it's easy enough to throw up there so let's just do that and see if it resonates.


I took a quick look. Overall, the first thing that I thought was, "Oh, this is an e-commerce site for women". That's just the first thing that popped into my mind upon looking it over.


Hey, I like the concept. Here are a few suggestions:

The landing should have some kind of description about what the page is about.

Reduce the space between the header and the main content.

Do not underline the Buy it and Originator links and align them to the right.

Reduce the space for the suggested links. What I mean is make the column of the product shown wider and the suggestions narrower.

Those are all minor things. You really should put a brief description about what you do. Other then that I like it.


First impressions: The url at first did not seem pronounceable. I really had no idea what the site was for when I got there, then I read the page title in the browser, made more sense. But I still dont understand...

Seems like random (female oriented) items for sale? The idea seems fine and the design looks nice, Maybe just a little clarification as to what one is supposed to do there?


I would suggest looking @ notcot.org and notcouture. People love it, they seem to make money, and you can learn a lot about (1) how to present non-standard images in an appealing way, and (2) the types of inventory/writing that appeals to folks.

Also, i like your username.


I found this site through yours. Hand crafted keyboards. Check 'em out: http://www.datamancer.net/keyboards/keyboardfaq.htm

Regarding your site. I'm interested. Thumbs up.


First impressions: Site wide design is good, banner looks a little 'Text Generated'. The flashy ad up the top is a little annoying. Mayby try replacing it with static text, or put adwords in between the products listed.


I don't think I'm the target audience, but it looks nice and clean to me. Lots of big pictures all on one page is good for browsing quickly. Maybe give me an option of how many items to display on a page?


I may be wrong on this, but assuming the readers are mostly male here, I would also appreciate it if you should it to your SOs - I'd really like their impressions and feedback.


Explain in one sentence why I need your site, what it does and why my present "system of sites" isn't good enough.

And then put that sentence on your site.


Cool idea, just need a slogan or short description, I think try to make the ads more elegant or leave them for inner pages.

I think is viable, good luck.


I remember that teapot from the Jelly (http://www.workatjelly.com/) video!


I would remove the ads until you have a user base. You won't make anything until then anyway.


That tea pot is so bomb, me want =)


also ideas on how the site could be expanded and business models would also be appreciated


Beautiful concept. You are definitely targeting a market made of people who like to spend on nice stuff. The nice aspect of such people is that they are spendaholics, and will buy nice stuff before they take care of rather important matters.




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