It looks well-implemented... Design is slick. In the "build something people want" vein -- why does anyone want this? If you can answer that question, you should add benefit statements to your home page... Or example use cases.
My gut response is that your most common use case is that a person wants to build a "best of" list that other people can contribute to... The end benefit being that you might discover stuff that you weren't aware of, right?
If I'm passionate enough about a subject area that I want to make a best-of list, is discovery a huge motivation? And if it was, wouldn't I head to a destination site centered around that subject area for that discovery? Or just google for "best sci fi books of 2007" or somesuch? It seems that you'd have a better chance finding great unseen movies on IMDB instead of creating a list on Seekler (given that movie buffs are likely to hang out on movie-centric sites).
This seems like a classic example of trying to appeal to all audiences. I'd suggest creating a 3rd level domain for the most list-centric audience you can find. If it's comics, create "comics.seekler.com" and see if you can make it fly.
Well, I'm pretty passionate about comics, but I'm always having trouble finding the next really great Batman graphic novel. We're trying to appeal to consumers who know something about an area, but are still looking to find new stuff within it.
The scenario we imagine is this: I'm looking for a new Batman comic. I google 'Best Batman Comics' and Seekler appears in the first page of results (we're not there yet, but we on the front page for a few of our lists). I go there, and hopefully quickly find something I hadn't heard of. But, during this process, I find that 'Batman: Year One' is ranked above 'Batman: The Dark Knight Returns'. I think that's obviously wrong, so I create my own list to rank the Batman comics I have read, putting TDKR on top and adding another Batman comic that wasn't even on the list.
So in our mind, the scenario is reversed - most people will come just to find new stuff on lists built by experts (who will be us and outside sources, initially). Eventually a small percentage of them will start contributing back to the site and make the lists even better.
Thanks for the feedback. You're right that we need to clarify the benefit on the home page - and narrowly targeting a list-centric audience is a great idea too, we're planning on doing exactly that.
First, you have the nicely designed part of your site sitting in the background, and your main section enclosed within a box, which separates it from the rest of the site as if it's disconnected content, and making it look like a huge ad placed in the middle of your site.
Second, building off of the first reason, your design is discontinuous. You have nice web 2.0-ish designs with the logo and the pinstripes in the background, but your foreground content is a white box with text of various colors and sizes, versus designed boxes that section the site, text that is styled well (like the seekler logo), and an overall design that promotes unity.
Suggestions: take your content out of that box and mesh it with the background in general. Take the login/create an account/search bar and place it in the upper right. Make the pinstripe background permeate throughout your main content and vice versa. I almost expect an 'X' in the top right of that box that would let me 'Close this box,' like many ads I have seen.
We released our alpha a few months ago and got great feedback from this community. Now we've added some new features, fixed bugs, and most importantly, anyone can create an account.
The whole thing. Which is odd, because the information isn't actually that spammy, it just looks that way for some reason. Sorry I can't give you a real reason.
A lot of spam websites I've seen have slightly similar colour schemes. You know the ones with a ton of text, with selected words highlighted with a yellow background.. ok so it's orange, but it's the only thing I can think of.
And I do think there is just way too much text on the front page.
Very interesting. We actually got feedback that we didn't have enough on the front page before (and as result, we weren't getting the main idea of site across).
Do you think the 'too much text on the front page' issue is primarily because of our example lists (the 'popular','recent', and 'featured' lists)?
Alignment is broken. The title does not align with anything else. Similarly for the three boxes (featured lists, etc.) - they don't align with the title, etc. Just put things in a simple (invisible) grid and everything might just look much better.
Also, the list-details page is very crowded. When I go to the list-details page, I am interested in that list, not everything else. The left and right columns could easily have expandable boxes (unopened by default) for Popular, Featured lists, etc.
My gut response is that your most common use case is that a person wants to build a "best of" list that other people can contribute to... The end benefit being that you might discover stuff that you weren't aware of, right?
If I'm passionate enough about a subject area that I want to make a best-of list, is discovery a huge motivation? And if it was, wouldn't I head to a destination site centered around that subject area for that discovery? Or just google for "best sci fi books of 2007" or somesuch? It seems that you'd have a better chance finding great unseen movies on IMDB instead of creating a list on Seekler (given that movie buffs are likely to hang out on movie-centric sites).
This seems like a classic example of trying to appeal to all audiences. I'd suggest creating a 3rd level domain for the most list-centric audience you can find. If it's comics, create "comics.seekler.com" and see if you can make it fly.