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Show HN: Vetter - please critique my first web app

getvetter.com

17 pointsonBlueDot26 comments

I like the idea and the pitch. I think the copy itself reads a bit strangely and the design is a bit rough.

Is the vetting an essential part of the process when a company uses this? Are you sure? It seems like you're almost afraid just call it a suggestion box app because it might be too simple. Or even if the vetting is essential is it really the way to pitch and name this app?

Yes, still learning a lot about copy and design... But hopefully we will be able to improve this with time.

Good question about the Vetting - I see what you're saying about it, and we've looked at some alternative approaches, but it seems to do a good job of getting users engaged in the rating / voting process at this point.

Do you think just a suggestion box app would be too simple?

Thanks for the feedback.

I can see "just a suggestion box" from the submitter perspective being really nice if it is really simple. I'm talking "e-mail your suggestions to box@getvetter.com" simple.

Perhaps some sort of analysis/aggregation on the backend for the person(s) who review the submitted suggestions. An interesting idea is using Bayesian spam filtering techniques to filter out "whiny" suggestions...

Aye the backend could certainly use some additional processing. We're just working out the best way to approach this now. For the time being we just offer some simple sorting, tagging and categorization options, but we're working on locking down the next iteration. Thanks

I think a suggestion box app would be perfect. Just make it so simple and well designed that people want to use it in their company.

My personal preference in copy would not to use ellipses, but I have to admit is a long way from my area of expertise. The typography is probably the area of the design that most needs improvement.

Quick bit of back story: Myself and a co-worker founded Vetter last year. I had been learning rails, and he had the idea for the project.

It has now been about 9 months, and we've learned a lot, are profitable, and fully-bootstrapped (aside from a small prize at the end of start-up weekend).

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

could you please elaborate that a bit? Is this your first project since you you were learning rails? Is rails your first language?

Yes, rails is my first language (aside from knowing a little bit of HTML/CSS beforehand).

I used railstutorial.org, railsforzombies, etc. and spun off from that to get Vetter up and running.

I've definitely developed a passion for development and will continue to pursue it. I currently spend an hour or two each day strictly on studying, since I still have a lot of foundational knowledge to learn (I can get things done, but not necessarily in a best-practice type way)

I went to university for film production, ha!

> Is rails your first language?

Sorry to nitpick, Rails is a framework, Ruby is the language :)

Haha, fair enough. In either case, Ruby is my first language, and rails is the framework which I opted for~

Contact me at ckluis [at google's email system] if you'd like details for these suggestions.

I think the biggest improvement you can do is to create a 3 part footer with a teaser (mini-intro) into the 3 case studies. This would provide a very tangible benefit that is visible on every page. I would probably remove the case study link from the main menu.

Part of the benefit from this is it provides something on the blog side, where there is literally no calls to action or conversion.

Here is a hint. Go to hubspot's blog. Notice how they have a call to action on the bottom of every single post? It seems like a waste to have someone read something and have no way to convert.

The social set-up is pretty weak too. If you are not going to tweet your own posts - why should anyone else?

Have there been any issues with the star rating system? I've seen that a lot of times users will tend to automatically avoid low ratings unless they have strong negative feelings about what they're reviewing: people generally just don't like to be mean.

Have you guys considered an upvote-only system (cf. Facebook, Quora, HN)? That removes the stigma of negative reviews, reduces the number of ratings that are inflated by sheer politeness, and still gives quality ideas prominence. Plus it's strict positive reinforcement (generally more addictive than negative feedback) versus no feedback at all: rather than becoming discouraged from low-star ratings, a user should be more motivated to create an idea that his coworkers respond strongly and positively to.

Definitely something to consider. The tendency to rate things higher is definitely apparent with the star-rating system, so this is something we've been considering.

You've done a good job summarizing the pros of using an upvote-only system... something to consider over the next while. Thanks

(Oh! Forgot to mention that Vetter looks like it's shaping up to be a really great enterprise product!)

And have you looked at any ways to gamify Vetter? I'd imagine that having your ideas socially validated by your peers by itself would drive great engagement, but is that something you've considered?

nice product I like the idea.

just fyi: your domain http://www.onbluedot.com/ is giving a folder listing atm. Probably not what you want.

A bit of feedback:

- Validation errors on the signup, such as pw too short are too small/hard to see. I submitted the form and then was puzzled because nothing happened. Only after closer inspection did I see the error.

- The site gives a mixed content SSL notice.

This is a nosy question so feel free to disregard: You mention that you're profitable at the moment. Does that mean 'Pay the hosting bills' profitable, or closer to 'Live off of this' profitable?

Thanks for the feedback, I'll tidy up the validations / make them more clear.

Strange about the SSL notice - I'll look into this one.

As for profitability, we're somewhere in between the two points you mentioned :)

Layout is a bit wide I think. My laptop has 1440x900 resolution and I have to scroll horizontally to see all of your screenshot.

How is it different from IdeaScale? http://ideascale.com/

IdeaScale doesn't specifically target internal ideas for companies, and there product is too complicated - they have way too many features.

Yeah we tried to keep things simple the whole way through, and our focus is solely on the enterprise, rather than an external-facing "consumer" suggestion box.

Are you looking for feedback on the execution or the idea as a viable and/or potentially large business?

Anything and everything! At this point we are definitely looking to build our customer base, as it is relatively small currently, but feedback from users has been quite good so far.

Looks great - congrats! Are you based on Twitter Bootstrap or does it just have a similar style/theme?

Yup it is based on Twitter bootstrap... this was added in about 4 months after we launched. Thanks!

Seems similar to SoapBox... are you familiar? http://soapboxhq.com/

Do you have paying customers?

I only ask because it really bugs me when an obviously brand new application has a "Most popular" distinction for one of their plans when it's clear that they really mean "Most profitable."

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