Show HN: StartHQ - a web app directory | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: StartHQ - a web app directory

arcticstartup.com

42 pointsolegp30 comments

I checked my app, Tomatoes [1], it's listed: https://starthq.com/apps/tomatoes but it has very poor ratings

Google 2/5 but from https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights#url=t... I see it has 81/100

Trust, reliability and privacy are 1/5 and are taken from http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/tomato.es but they don't apply because there are "Not enough ratings for this site yet" so they should be listed as "n/a" probably.

[1] http://tomato.es

Good point about the WOT ratings, will fix that! When it comes to PageSpeed, 81 is pretty low as most other apps are 95+ and the rating is calculated relative to other entries in the directory. It should be easy enough to fix by following the instructions that Google provides though. The scores are updated daily btw.

Edit: It will have the nice side effect of improving performance for your users and your Google search rank as well.

Great idea - any chance of getting our HR web app http://www.staffsquared.com listed with you guys?

Done! https://starthq.com/apps/staff-squared

You rockstar :) Thank you so much

No problem! Actually apps get added automatically to my verification queue if you sign up and add it to your launcher as a link. If the link hasn't been seen before, I verify whether it's an app or not. People have already added a bunch new cool apps since this post went up, you can see them on the last page of the search results: https://starthq.com/apps/?page=60

Delighted we jumped in just ahead of blimp, which I'm a huge fan of :)

A bit of a shameless plug here, but I launched a similar site a few weeks ago: http://applist.io

applist.io is mainly focused on B2B SaaS apps for freelancers and small businesses.

Nice! Are you based in Norway? We are practically neighbors then. Would be great to chat to see if we can do something together.

Find a way to escape the big old directory listing trap. Categories and such and you have a killer page. The focus of the UX should be "what do I want to achieve" find me an app that does X. currently it's too similar to lots of other directories, last I checked most of them were zombies after a while.

Great advice! We started out with "the launcher" which is what you see when you sign up, but few people found it useful. The response to the directory though, which I agree has been done to death, has been very positive, so maybe there's some truth to the Helsinki Bus Station theory (http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/feb/23/change-li...) when applied to product.

Alongside the rankings (Speed, Trust, Reliability, Privacy) there should be user ranking/rating. For me, curation is the biggest problem (yes, there are hundreds of startups attacking collaboration, but which is the best for my need?)

Will add that later this week, see my other comments below. I intentionally want to keep reviews out for now though, since from talking to people it's become apparent that most people find reviews by strangers somewhat useless and would prefer recommendations from people they know & who understand them.

Nice idea.

There should also be some more tags or things that would help someone narrow down results to less apps. Currently all categories seem to have 3-5 pages with 10 apps each, with just a line of description and URL.

If you click through, there's more info on the app. A popularity rating made up of the site's Compete.com rank and number of likes+tweets on StartHQ will be added this week. I'll also need to merge some categories and create new ones, e.g. "Office" is really empty despite there being 600 apps in the directory, since most are better classified as "Collaboration" tools.

Agreed. Too many choices make it really difficult to choose.

On one level I want people to browse around a bit and discover new, niche apps that they wouldn't find otherwise. What actually happened though is that we have a bug in our ranking code at the moment. The search results should be sorted by popularity based on Compete score and number of tweets & likes of the app profile pages within StartHQ itself.

So, all I can say is: come back in a few days and you will find better apps faster - at the moment I don't want to rock the boat by redeploying the server wth 60+ users online at the same time due to the HN effect.

That sounds like a great solution. I'll be back!

Direct link: https://starthq.com

Is this site supposed to be for B2B or general purpose? I'm a bit confused since the article doesn't specifically mention this as such, but the homepage invites me to enter my work email.

B2B

Not possible to add a web-app? How will the directory grow? I was planning to list my app http://makeplans.net

See my comments below. The way to add web apps at the moment is by signing up and adding the URL to the launcher. I'll add a proper app submission page soon though.

PS. MakePlans added: https://starthq.com/apps/makeplans

Love the idea! For some reason I totally missed the sign-up button, I was just blind to it. You might wanna look at making it more obvious somehow.

Thanks, I'll experiment with making it more prominent.

You're listing Hacker News as a productivity app :)

A bit of an inside joke. The rest of the reviews and categorizations are serious, honest! ;)

Nice! But when logged in I only get the search bar. When logged in it would be nice to see the categories as well.

Already on it! Should be live later this week.

looks great;checkout my webapp directory which has apps that are mobile optimized.

http://webappvault.com

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