7 Days since Launch. Even Faster Website Reviews. | Hacker News Reader

7 Days since Launch. Even Faster Website Reviews.

golbolib.blogspot.com

25 pointsbilus34 comments

I actually used this and got an interesting review. When I signed up though I didn't set a password, I think it doesn't give that option. I have to access my account via an email the website sends. Weird.

I just used the forgot password feature so now I can set it, I guess.

Edit: turns out I got a few more reviews, these were a little more vague and unhelpful though.

Thank you very much for your feedback. I'll add a way to up/downvote reviews soon. This should increase the quality. This is actually surprising how good most of the reviews are without this feature.

While moderating it's not always obvious _what_ could be useful to the site's author.

Happy so far with the amount of users? I liked your site, it has a clear concept and some of the feedback is indeed helpful (in my case, having my site not in english seems to be a big hurdle for that helpfulness sometimes though, which is understandable. Wrong target-group.).

Small suggestion: You already greatly improved the workflow of actually submitting the review. One thing still bothering me is that the link to the page is not a normal link. You probably wanted it to open it in its own tab and therefore made it a javascript-link? Perfect usecase for target=_blank, which would also work with a middle-mouseclick (currently it just opens the review-page again).

PS: Are you moderating the reviews by yourself? If you add votes and have a report-system, it could be interesting whether an algorithm could do that work for you, maybe combined with the data-corpus of the reviews already in the system.

Thank you so much for the feedback! The traffic really isn't too bad considering it's only a week old.

I'm thinking about creating localized versions of the site with a way to choose the preferred review language. Does it sound like a good idea?

About the link... What browser do you use?

Moderating... Yes. I'll add a voting system sometime soon plus a way to flag reviews as spam. I'm too thinking about using a bayesian filter but for now, I'll stick to manual work to make sure there are no glitches. :)

>I'm thinking about creating localized versions of the site with a way to choose the preferred review language. Does it sound like a good idea?

Indeed, sounds good, it could debunk my wrong-target-group defence ;) Maybe enough to just give users the option to choose the languages they want to review in and submitters the (advanced?) option to ask for users who speak one of the languages existing in the system.

>About the link... What browser do you use?

Chrome 23.0.1271.64 under Ubuntu 12.04.

Will be interesting for me how you design the vote-system and how good it works, as the current situation is "one review for a review" adding votes to that could be kind of tricky.

Thanks! It would make it easier if it was an 'n for 1' system but would it would make it more like the various post 10 reviews for 1 review web designer forums.

I have been using this for several days and have received quite a few useful reviews. The main thing that bothers me is the emphasis on a single screenshot. I always open each site into a new window to test the responsive design and browse the site a bit.

Do you think there's a way to strike a better balance?

I wouldn't want it to turn into usability testing because it would sort of defeat the purpose (i.e. quick reviews, get first impressions, improve, repeat).

Maybe you can leave that up to the site owner. You can give us a few options pertaining to what we'd like reviewed, ie: first impression, clarity of copy, design, concept. Then list these on the review page so the reviewer knows what to pay attention to.

Thank you for the suggestion! It sounds great! I'll definitely think about how this could be done without making the process too complicated.

Could you show multiple screenshots? EG if I want a mobile and tablet screenshot to show the reviewers of my site.

Right now I have no support for mobile screenshots but this is definitely a great idea!

Signed up, submitted a few reviews, received a few. So far so good.

It would be great if I could:

- see the history of the reviews I submitted;

- contact reviewers of my site;

Time spent on a review isn't very helpful. I got distracted by kids at least twice, which resulted in two of my reviews taking very long. On the other hand, another two reviews took equally long, but it was actual writing and editing.

Are you going to let reviewers and submitters communicate directly or are you going to profit from not letting them do it?

Seeing history of reviews would be good - as well as building some kind of feedback as to whether a review was helpful or not. I think providing some kind of positive feedback to reviewers is just as important.

Absolutely! One of the next things to add.

I'm finding a lot of screenshots are generated not capturing the full page, or in some cases triggering non-desktop stylesheets to apply (ie: tablet ones). Perhaps more control needs to be made upon submission about screenshot size? and/or picking mobile vs desktop?

Thank you for the suggestion! It uses 1024x1030 if I recall correctly as a viewport.

What I was thinking about is showing the generated screenshot after "Start" and then giving an option to upload your own screenshot instead if the current one doesn't work well. What do you think about it?

I like how simple and easy it is, perhaps if you just load the website in an iFrame below for "desktop" loading, and then show images for the smaller view ports? IE: I see a lot of value in doing iPhone/mobile based viewports and providing a qrcode so we can load quickly on our own devices if wanting to test further.

Also - I've found that in some cases it's hard to tell if they want just an individual page critiqued or an entire website - perhaps something needs to be done to clarify this?

_Excellent_ suggestions, thank you!

It would be cool if this somehow hooked into Amazon's Mechanical Turk and made it easy to request a larger number of reviews.

Maybe I want 20 to 50 reviews right away, and I don't have time to get credits? They could also let me buy credits for the same purpose.

Thank you for the suggestion! I'm not sure about AMT though. Do you think the quality would be sufficient?

I payed reviews from http://www.feedbackarmy.com/ which uses AMT. I prefer your website criticue, the quality of the comments I received is better.

Now that you mention it, AMT is very hit and miss. However, It would be nice to be able to buy credits instead of having to suit a bunch of reviews.

What would you pay for 50 credits? :)

> It would be cool if this somehow hooked into Amazon's Mechanical Turk and made it easy to request a larger number of reviews.

yeah, because someone who will do thousands of it for 10c is a reliable source of opinion.

I've been using this a lot. I must have gotten over 40 reviews. One thing someone mentioned is the screenshot. I for one barely look at the screenshot but always click the link to the website instead. Maybe add focus to the link?

Love the site.

Thank you for the positive feedback and for the idea. I think clicking the image should open it in a new window, do you?

This is what some people do anyway because they think this is the real thing.

I've found that writing critiques of other people's sites has helped me clarify my thinking about my own. Coupled with good feedback the site has been very helpful! A low friction way to get outside feedback.

An interesting angle, thank you!

I've been using this since it launched, it's invaluable in helping answer the question of "I wonder what people's knee-jerk reaction is to this change..."

Thank you! Can I use this quote? :)

Thank you. Yes sir, you may.

This is very useful, many comments that I received are directly actionable. The website greatly improved during the last week.

I'm very very happy you've found it useful!

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