Comment by tstegart | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tstegart | Hacker News Reader

It looks good. I do have one minor suggestion. Part of what you're about is helping people find apps. From About Page: "What if, ... you could find the best webapp for your needs, at any given time, and instantly compare it to all of its competitors?" I really like that idea, and it would be useful to me. Currently, no one has got them all in one place and compared them. In fact, just a short time ago I did a post on YC asking about tools because I know I had read about them but forgotten where. So you definitely have me there.

I thinking building on this would really up the usefulness of your site immensely, because people want to know what's out there when they're looking for tools. Rating is secondary to someone looking for tools. Instead, they need to know what tools exist. Building out the categories more is a suggestion, as would be providing your own content (editorial) on how well apps in the same category work compared to each other. For example, if you're looking for a commenting system for your blog, what are the pros and cons of the major offerings. I understand this might run into a problem of what is a web app and what isn't, but people love to have someone else do the work of finding them a solution. That involves more than a one line description and a rating.

Rating is good to eliminate the lowest bottom feeders, but it doesn't help you choose between two five-star programs. Original editorial content helps people by providing more information, as will user comments of course once you get a mass of users.

Hey, Thanks tstegart. I whole-heartedly agree. The categories, aside from high quality reviews are the most important part. When you want to find the best app for a particular use, you don't really care about how good it is for some other use.

To me, it's kind of like Yelp - sometimes I want to just know what has the best food, and don't care about the service. Sometimes I want to know both.

What I'm still trying to figure out is how to implement this from a user perspective - it's difficult enough to get a user to provide a review, let alone multiple reviews for different purposes.

Perhaps the genii of YC have some good ideas...

To be honest, having the call-to-action to write a review separated from the main text doesn't help. Right now, you've put your ads in between where you learn about the app and where you find the review button. It almost completely ruins the work your interface (which is great by the way) is doing to get people to click on the review button. I'm not sure having the ads there is worth the ruination of your review button click-rate.

People like seeing information where its supposed to be, and ads where they are supposed to be. Part of what makes Web 2.0 websites so great is that the ads aren't in-your-face annoying. Here, your ads are messing up the user experience in an attempt to get in front of the user.

I agree. I took the ads and pushed them to the bottom. To your point, creating a review has to be incredibly easy. I think there are a couple other things UI-wise that can be done to make sure of this, like letting users click on the stars under the app's name, to create their own review

What about a Netflix style pop-up when you click on the stars, suggesting users leave comments, or write a full review? Clicking on full review takes you to a page where you answer in-depth questions (like have you bought this) and leave comments (or questions are suggested for you to answer).

Some people will want to do a quick review, others will want to leave a comment, and still others will want to fully explain how it helped them or what they liked/disliked. This way you take into account various user participation levels with the app the user is reviewing. The final rating could be a weighted average of the three types of reviews, with in-depth and commented reviews being rated higher. Knowing your review will count more and be more important if you put more effort into it is another psychological tool to get people to write about the apps they care about.

Love it.

Haha, I love the reviews you're writing. Apparently one person thinks you're on crack when it comes to Live Journal.

If you removed thumbnails for apps that only have one screenshot, and moved the "suggest changes" button directly to the right of the vital details, I think the top of the reviews section would be visible above the fold.

The idea is great, but how about grouping the types of apps into sub directories? Perhaps you could separate the pure "utility" apps such as webmail, blogs, organizers and office applications from content sites like BarackObama.com and YouTube?

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