Review my startup - shouldget.com | Hacker News Reader

Review my startup - shouldget.com

shouldget.com

25 pointsempire2950 comments

I think there's a lot of space in this area for time to be factored in.

Some of the questions on there already are really moving targets... the answer changes as the market reacts.

An example might be "What netbook should I get?" and with the amount on the market what was once a no-brainer (Samsung NC10) changes (HP Mini 210).

So you have this staleness factor that will creep in and reduce the value of the whole site as people will learn to distrust the answers.

If you could somehow factor in time it would be a real benefit.

And I don't mean "Sort by time"... because then if you have a stack of "What iPod should I get?" you'll be encouraging frequent duplication from people who want a current answer.

Maybe consider actually showing when the votes were placed so that over time you could show how the target moved.

buro - I was actually thinking about putting in a warning based on the age of a question.

I had thought about how to display votes based with various weights.. i think weighting by vote "newness" may be very interesting way to go about it.

The more i think about this, the more i agree it is a crucial aspect - especially since the site focus on tech which is inherently a fast moving industry.

thanks again for the feedback.

Thanks - I would like to keep the design as clean (read ad-free) as possible. I plan on monetizing via affiliate links to the products users are asking about, as well as possible intelligent product recommendation which could also be affiliate driven. The last thing I want to do is have an obtrusive monetization mechanism when there are transparent options, or even options that add value (recommended products, featured products (that are actually good), etc).

I'm just curious, is there a particular reason that you suggest another browser to people using IE? Other than your personal opinion?

I don't really think that's adding anything, and if anything it will have people using IE bouncing without giving it a try. I only took a quick look with IE and everything seemed to work fine, so I don't really get it.

That being said I think this is a nice, simple idea that's pretty valuable. I like it.

I was just trying to be cute which has clearly backfired ;) The site does look a little nicer in Webkit/Mozilla browsers but should work across everything.

I'll take it off since it appears to be quite distracting to IE users.

This is your site with Javascript disabled: http://i.imgur.com/x7TEK.jpg

Agh - I assume the only people that disable Javascript anymore are developers that know what theyre doing.

im trying to rationalize not fixing this - can i get some help? maybe i should put that as a Question on the site ;)

Your site should never look like this with JavaScript turned off: and I LOVE JavaScript. What on earth are you doing that the raw html/css looks like this?

jquery easyslider plugin w css image sprites -- all the slider images are in a single image, and the text overlay is all in a long UL. I have to toss a CSS class on to hide the overflow.

Agreed. If you're serious about a business, this kind of ideology doesn't have a place. And it's not just the suggestion, it's the wording, it's condescending.

IMO, given the choice, you should opt for graceful degradation. But past that, for any browser that will simply not work on your site, keep that bar and rework the language.

What you're doing here... it seems the same to me as saying _"McCain? Really? Maybe you should vote for a good candidate like _Barack Obama_... And don't worry, he's not a terrorist."_ Save it for your personal blog. It doesn't belong on a business website.

point taken - ive removed it.

also, this isnt a "business" site -- this is a side project that i was hoping other techy people would find useful.

i do appreciate the feedback!

This is a fun idea! Here is a quick design suggestion. The actual voting page (http://shouldget.com/questions/17/votes/new) is the most important page so you should spend some more time on it. The design should guide users along a path. Right now, the description / voting box / comment box are all visually equal (see http://i43.tinypic.com/35bz5gm.jpg). This is bad because users don't know what to do.

Here are the decisions everyone is required to make before voting:

- choose which box to check

- should I visit that external link to apple?

- oh wait, am I expected to explain my vote in this huge text box?

- OK I'm ready, wait a minute, I don't even have to vote. I can just view results.

I think this page should be optimized for gathering a vote. Get rid of all the other distractions. Without votes, none of the other features matter.

ccollins,

Very much appreciate the feedback!

- I add the external links to the product incase voters arent quite sure what each product is. For things like the iPad that are "well known" I agree, its extra and may be distracting, but if the question was about two different motherboards, as a voter I would probably need to look at a product page to make a informed vote.

- I was hoping the "Optionally, explain why you voted the way you did" would let folks know it optional, but you do have a point in that many people dont "read" when on a page. I was hoping putting the comment box under the buttons and the arrow would help people realize its an option, but not required.

- I have the just view results because I would (as a question asker) have people that don't have insight on the answer not vote rather than toss up a "bogus" vote just to see the results.

That being said, i think you have some valid points in around optimizing the page. I really appreciate the feedback.

Great idea, and nicely done!

One thing that really bugs me about it: it's yet another site built on the flawed assumption that popularity equates to quality. I would love to see the site emphasize pro/con points for each product more, and completely de-emphasize the voting or popularity ranking feature.

The best products usually are not the most popular. I prefer to pay $50 more for better shoes, or $20 more for a better flashlight, or $200 more for a laptop that has features the other laptop does not have, like a magsafe power cord. But the majority of people instead choose mediocre products, and you end up with the votes actually detracting from the solution (because people tend to claim they chose the best product for the money, even when they didn't).

Great start though.

Thanks - any thoughts on how to rank pro/cons? It seems like it would be a manual process. Is the ranking or pro/cons something you think users could "vote" on?

Interesting observations.

Many people might come to the site asking the question "which laptop should I buy?". However, that doesn't mean they have the same question, because that question has a variable in it: "I". The laptop I buy as a computing professional will differ greatly from the laptop someone else might buy.

I think you want to direct all people with that question to the same page, but then make it easy to distinguish themselves and their criteria with simple statements. For instance, under "Which laptop should I buy?", you could then have distinguishing statements like "I use my laptop more/less than 8 hours a day." or "I care more about weight/screen size.". Make a game out of it, and simplify the ranking process as much as possible. For instance, put the question at the top ("What laptop should I buy?"), put two "person" icons on either side of the page each with a speech bubble saying "I use my laptop more than 8 hours a day." and "I use my laptop less than 8 hours a day.". Then, users can drag laptops under the left or right user icon depending on which statement fits the laptop better.

You don't necessarily even need opposing statements on the same axis; if you let users categorize laptops between any two arbitrary statements, you then have the information that user U believes laptop L better fits statement S1 than statement S2. Put enough of those together and you can derive some useful information.

Then, when a user wants to ask the question "which laptop should I get?", they can rank some statements they agree with, and get a laptop that fits those statements.

I 100% agree that each persons situation is the critical aspect. If it wasn't review sites (since they are usually general) would be able to fill this niche.

The idea behind the slider on the Home page wasn't to make people think there is 1 question they should look at, but rather let them see all the questions other people have asked about that item (laptop). Maybe it would be better to have "clicks" on the slider to take the user to the "Ask a Question" page.

Just FYI: this is what it looks like in Firefox with NoScript: http://i.imgur.com/b85b2.png. Javascript can be required for a site, but usually layout is built so it looks ok without it.

yup - think its a problem with the jquery slider plugin im using. ill go back and see if i can fix that up with some CSS.

People based recommendations sites, get a lot of spam when they grow. Eg. A company spamming on the competitor products, and things like this. It's a too much populated space.

In my opinion, focus on a niche, like recommendations for engineers, or make it as a complementary to Octopart (YCW07, search engine for electronic parts). And if you do great, then you may apply to YC.

I like the design.

A couple thoughts:

What is the incentive for people to provide recommendations (votes, comments)?

Why would I get better recommendations from here vs. Amazon reviews or any other review site specific to the items I'm considering vs. a knowledgeable friend?

You ask some tough questions - ill do my best to answer.

1) the incentive.. to be nice person and help other people out, and possibly appeal to people's desire to give advice and be listened too? Maybe having accounts, and public "status" (ala stackoverflow) might help incentivize use?

I was tossing around the idea of adding tags/categories - and using some metric to designate the "mayor" (ala foursquare) of that category/tag and then people that are very active could be "candidates" or something .. i dont know about the terminology, but something to highlight active/respected (have to figure out how to compute what "respected" is) users.

2) My personal experience is consumer reviews are the best reviews. Be it amazons/newegg's product reviews, or forums. "Commercial" review sites can be good (Toms, etc.) but its difficult to get a comparison review between products. You generally have to do a bit of leg work because most of these reviews aren't juxtaposing several products saying which one is better, and also so much of the choices depend on the particulars of your situation.

Sure, you can eventually figure out what the best option for you is, but it can, and often does, take a long time to do. Alot of the time I just want well informed people in a particular niche to take a glance at my general situation and say "This is the best option for you"

"Internet Explorer? really?"

Really?

I agree - the color and top bar you chose for IE8 (which is a conscious decision - use the tools your audience uses!) distracted me to the point that I didn't get much further.

Kind of surprised I have not seen this before. Its a good idea and you implemented it quite well.

I like the concept, but when I clicked on the "blackberry smartphone" example I got no search results (http://shouldget.com/search/?q=blackberry+smartphone).

eric,

thanks - fixed that .. There are still relatively few questions since this is the first real public exposure outside friends/family.

Why is search behind a link? It seems to me that that might be one of the main things people want to do on the site first-- see if anyone's already asked about what they're looking for.

Good point .. its behind a link because it was an easy place to put it :)

I think ill make a search field in the interim that appears in the right sidebar on pages, and look for a more permanent spot in the header for it later.

Checkout these recent questions

"Checkout" is a noun. "Check out" is the verb.

Helping you find best technology products & services around.

Missing a "the"?

danke - all fixed.

Nice clean design-what are your plans for monetizing it?

It ought to monetize really well with ads because the users are intenders.

Affiliate programs seem like the obvious choice: make it easy to purchase the products, and get a cut of the purchase.

Looks nice. Similar to Bestcovery: http://bestcovery.com/

Thanks! its a similar concept to bestcovery, hunch, retrevo,testfreaks, etc.

The reason why i dont care for those sites very much is they are so generic, and because of that, have a hard time really addressing and comparing based on the particulars of each person's situation.

I would compare it more to a yahoo!answers specifically for tech prods/services, or even a stackoverflow system geared more towards tech products/services.

I'm not really sure how you'd thoroughly fix this but clearing your cookies lets you vote multiple times.

This would be super easy to do with stack exchange.

How much time did you put in to it?

This is a project I did to learn Ruby on Rails. Im sure I could've done it faster with the stack exchange framework. I started it about 4 months ago and i worked on it on and off, did a redesign, learned how to run a VPS (which is awesome btw, any non-.NET dev who programs for fun (not work) should pick up a cheap VPS!) under linux ... In terms of hours its hard to say. It certainly wasnt the most efficient process since I did everything on my own and much of it was a learning experience.

I like the idea. I get asked weekly about laptops and cameras from friends and family.

Remimds me much of http://hunch.com/

I've seen that site before .. I just never have good experience with the psuedo-intelligent recommendation engines.

In my experience so much revolved around the particulars of your situation which seem to be very difficult for a computer (and sometimes even humans!) reduce to computable data.

But i agree, its like hunch, or yahoo answers, or any of the other recommendation sites out there.. I just wanted something good for tech so I could ask about what watercooling kit i should get for my gaming rig, or what not.

You linked to an IE article from July 29, 2008. Really? Welcome to 2010.

Man .. I knew poking fun at IE would come back to bite me

Touche on the date ;)

The sad thing is that almost all of the points are still valid.

The gray text is too hard to read.

fnid - thanks - anyone else of this opinion?

I can see where youre coming from on some of the smaller grey fonts.

Yes, in the "Checkout these recent questions" section. All the gray text there is difficult to read. Right now it's blatant form over function.

The darker near-black gray text you have seems fine to me.

very nicely focused on the tech space. attractive, will use :)

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