Ask HN: Review our app, Site Assistant | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Review our app, Site Assistant

site-assistant.com

8 pointsmiddayc23 comments

I would really appreciate any feedback on any angle of S-A.

Thanks!

Looks pretty cool. Lots of useful stats, though they are stats that are usually pretty easy to obtain elsewhere. I would have said I'm not sure I'd pay for it, but the plans are cheap enough. I just probably won't ever be actively managing more than 10 sites at once, so I don't think I'd ever need one of the pay plans.

I actually have a buddy developing a similar concept to this that does a little more in terms of utility, though his hasn't launched yet.

The design leaves a lot to be desired. I would consider a severe make-over. A lot of the interface just doesn't feel right.

Oh, and also, I couldn't do one of my sites, because it doesn't allow the .edu domain apparently. Is there a reason it whitelists the tld's that can be monitored?

edit I just realized this "review" came off with much more negative feedback than positive, which I don't think is appropriate, because I really do like this app. So, I'll just leave it at that.

Yes, those stats can be obtained by other means.

S-A helps webmasters that need to manage 30, 50, 100 websites and obtaining stats for that many websites (and making them easily viewable with views,filters, details) would take A LOT of time. S-A is made to start being useful after you add at least 10 websites.

==== I would really really appreciate if you give me some hints about the most painful parts of design/interface :) ====

.com .net .org .biz .info .us .eu .fr .si are allowed for now. The reason is that each TLD's whois returns differently formatted data that we then parse and extract the relevant bits from. They start repeating after a while and we will certainly be adding other TLD-s. We are still more focused at designing the core, what to show, how.. etc.

it's ok, and thanks a lot for your review :)

Just signed in. Feedback.

When I join something called "site assistant," I'm doing it because I want to add my site and start getting info about it.

But when I log in, the only call to action I see is "add group."

Where's my "add your site" button? I don't want to add a group. I'm at sitemanager.com not groupmanager.com

hm.. good point .. I will think how to make this clearer.

otherwise current situation is that you add sites into groups so you must first create a group.

Maybe simple solution is that we precreate group My websites for you so you have a basic group and "Add website" button.

Thanks for feedback :)

That'd be perfect. Just give me an obvious link that says "add your site" after I take the time to register.

Interesting idea, here is my feedback:

1) Whois information is basically worthless to me so I wouldn't lead with it. Lead with the SEO information as that seems the most interesting.

2) Emphasis the benefits of having the data, not just what the data is. How can I make more money or build a better site knowing this information?

3) Hire a designer, if your serious about the application spend $1,000 and get something that looks nicer (the buttons really need work).

4) Your pricing seems way off, how many people have more than 10 sites? I would give away 1 site for free and then charge for anything more. I feel like I have a large number of sites and I think I only have 11.

Thanks for your reply!

1) You are probably correct. By the feedback of beta testers Whois info is relatively interesting in two bits. Expiration date and registrar. I Agree SEO is much much more hotter topic. Will fix this.

2) Ok, thanks good point.

3) Will think about it.. I romantically think that content and message is more important at the end, but you are probably right. But I don't want yet another BaseCamp-ish front page.

4) The service is made for webmasters/webstudios with many websites. Most beta testers had 30 and more websites. I want to give a substantial / useful amount of cake for free too :). I rather have free users than less users :)

Really thanks for your 4 points. I need to digest them some more.. this is just the initial reaction reply :)

Though I like pretty graphics not less than other dude, in this case I advise to wait before hiring a designer. If you were doing an application whose use pattern is clear and firmly known, if everything is basically in there, then sure, add a layer of polish! But as far as I can see, this is not yet the case.

Maybe you'll have to redo your application several times before it takes its final form, and the buttons will change. It'll be better if sunken cost of design work not make you hesitate tweaking your app. After all, I think if your service will be of use, people will use it without any graphics. Look i.e. at tarsnap: it was launched and went to profit with very minimalistic, text-only, non-friendly website.

Whom is your site aimed at? SEO professionals? Nice graphics is not essential for them, I guess. So far it's not clear to me what value your site brings them. So far I see only that it displays whois and search engine info in one place. Nice, but probably not enough to pay for. Have I overlooked something?

Anyway, I'll show your app to my younger brother, who is SEO guy, tomorrow. It'll be interesting to know what he'll say.

Can I have your email, please, so we can better get in touch?

I am iterating the whole thing as you say and one benefit of me doing the graphics also is that I can redo it quickly without cost or complications. And I did it several times already, mostly trying to get the message across better.

No, S-A is not aimed specifically at SEO. As it says it's for webmasters and by that it's more general. I am aware that this is sort of a bad point because it doesn't specialize in anything, it doesn't focus on any hot topic, as SEO is for example.

I offers more than it can be seen from those two screen shots. It doesn't go into extreme depths, it is focused at helping webmasters with A LOT, for example at least 30 websites. If you add just one website in, the info you get is probably not that valuable.

I will be very happy to hear any feedback from your SEO brother :)

Looks nice but... I signed up and I get a 404 on the sign-in page. I tried to contact you but your email is an image. Why no contact form? So now I'm feeling frustrated.

I agree that 10 free websites is far too many. 1 for free then start paying after that. The pricing looks weird by being per 6 months. Make it yearly or monthly.

I'll look deeper when I can get in.

edit Got in, nice collection of information. I'm not frustrated any more :)

Re: 10 is too many

Hey, this in not meant for Everyday Normal Guy™. If you have 1 or 2 sites, you can do all that the service does by hand, no big deal. This is meant for some sort of professionals who have maybe tens of sites, or maybe many competitors whom they are supposed to watch too, and doing all this by hand is just too much work.

So to even get some taste of using the service I think you need several sites. Maybe you could give just 5 for free, but no less.

This is for now of course. If the service could do something special, i.e. pinging the servers at least, then maybe you could give away just 1.

yes, you said it better than I did.

2 out of 7 initial beta testers added more than 120 domains into the system each.

ops.. the sign in link at the header leads to 404.. it's fixed now. I usually used form on the left so I didn't test this link in a while. Thanks for finding it :)

As I explained few times .. S-A becomes really valuable for webmasters with >30 websites. And becomes mildly valuable at 10 so I think 10 is a good number. And I want to provide some concrete value for free users also.

Pricing options might change. Everbody can test S-A for how long they want with up to 10 websites. I used 6 months because 1 year seemed to much and 1 month would come to cca $1.80 for Plan 30 which is not worth the payment processing.

thanks for your reply. I am waiting for more when you will be able to sign-in :)

Is there a way for me to test drive the app without having to sign up? I do not want to give my email address then regret that this app is not something I am interested in.

So far there is not. Would a video of it's functionality help you at determining this.

Otherwise I was thinking of making a "get info for this webpage without signing up" functionality, but so far in my thoughts was that you would give an email and be notified on it after all bots collect the info (maybe a minute or two).

But this wouldn't solve the problem as you would still need to give me your email. I will think of making something in a way that you get info immediately. I think it's a good idea.

Thankfully, you can use http://www.mailinator.com/ for disposable email addresses

Can you please leave contact email, or better even, IM.

Can I IM you in icq or, failing that, Skype format?

You need to allow all TDLs. My websites mostly use .me and .mn, I cannot enter them.

Also, I find it inconvenient to switch between edit mode and non edit-mode.

When the user log in for the first time, it would be nice to have a wizard to easily add one site. it doesn't make sense to have to click on "Enable edit" because I cannot do any other action at this stage.

I didn't want edit controls to pollute the interface because after you initially enter your domains your edit vs viewing slice of time will be very minor.

Yes, this is very valid point. I will think about how to make it work as you describe. Thanks!

The plan is to slowly cover more and more TLD-s. Each TLD's whois has it's own formatting of data so we need to make parsers for each case. Well at some point they will start repeating. I am aware that adding more tld-s in necessary, now even more aware. :)

With allowing all TLD's comes the problem. Do you have to also show all search engines? It's a problem of usability and scope.

For example, being from Russia, I have hard time immediately using the service because most sites that I might input to the application end with .ru. But if the app allows .ru TLD, to be useful to me it should also show me Yandex and Rambler indexing stats, and then Google and Yahoo too. But not the Indian or Australian ones, please, or I'll be overwhelmed with the information. See, there's the problem.

Yes, this is a very good observation. If you have a local website, then you want to have local related information about it. For example I wanted to create a localized version for my country (Slovenia), with adding a local search engine and google.si stats to search engine stats, and local directories. But this is hard to scale and as you note the scope becomes a big problem.

If we will go covering local search engines at some point the scope problem could be solved by offering you to choose from list of (ever growing) supported resources which you want to see in addition to general google/yahoo/alexa.

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