Ask HN: Rate my site. | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Rate my site.

bulldogbyte.com

8 pointseam26 comments

I can't even tell what the site is for without looking at the top of my window and then I still don't really get it.

It's suppose to help college students find textbooks within their own school. For example at my campus I see many times on bulletin boards students selling their textbooks. It's a great thing, but visibility is limited. By posting on the site, other students can search and get in touch. They can just meet up on campus and exchange the textbook.

Wouldn't it make more sense to list those items rather than making a user search for something to find its not there? I'm not talking about listing everything, but like bugs said it's hard to figure out what the point of the site is. Anyway, this is meant only as an observation. Carry on!

I don't want you to have to explain that to me though I want the site to explain that to me when I visit it.

Great point. I'm going to have to brain storm. I might do a video or something along those lines.

Or how about just a few words on the home page along the lines of "Buy and sell used text books on your local college campus"

I like the idea a whole lot. I heart markets and marketplaces.

- The point of the system should be crystal on first view.

- I don't get the name at all.

- I'd pick a specific uni or set of universities to bootstrap and learn from before going big across all schools.

- I'd scrape the universities for required books somehow so I could know about books, even if I didn't have them available.

- I'd allow searching by class (details in the previous step)

- Facebook login?

Thanks Josh, it's an honor to know that you like the site idea. I named it after my school's mascot, the Bulldogs. You see, initially it was only intended for my school, but then one day I decided to go nationwide in order to grow faster. Of course, that didn't happen, at least not yet. Right now I'm hoping to implement many of your suggestions, but being the only person working and having little time in my hands is tough. I wish I could find some help!

Georgia bulldogs?

I can't search unless I log in? Sorry but I'm not the type of person to sign up for a site just to do a search. I would use Google instead.

Try to go login free if you can.

(Edit: This was a misunderstanding due to the way Bulldog Byte handles search terms for which there are no results.)

In addition, just looking over the site I'm noticing numerous small glitches like buttons being cut off (up at the top of the "Learn More" page "Get in Touch" is cut off short in the latest version of Safari), and lack of space between a period at the end of a sentence and the first word of the next sentence. (Also on the same page.)

These are small things but they make a huge difference in the presentation and overall feel of your site.

I'd say that you have a little bit more work to do. Keep up the good work though.

You can search while not logged in, you just can't see the students contact information. Try doing a search for "math." And Thanks!

Ah, I see the source of my confusion. I searched for a specific book:

"Blink Malcolm Gladwell"

Bulldog Byte didn't find any results, yet it didn't tell me that there were no results. Instead it just showed the "You're Not Logged In" message, so I assumed that meant that I had to login to view the search results.

You might want to add a message such as "No results found! Want to try again?"

Hmmm... it should have said "Found 0 Results" right above where you see "You're Not Logged In." I'll try adding more emphasis on the next release.

I see it now that you mentioned it. The problem is that it is so small compared with that big yellow "Not Logged In" box. The yellow color grabs all the attention such that at first glance I don't even see that small text above.

I would suggest that you make the text at least 20-30 pixels high and put the message below the "Not Logged In" box. That will make it much more obvious.

1) When I clicked in the 'Title, author or ISBN' box the text didn't go away. That's annoying. I'm using FF 3.5 by the way.

2) I didn't know what the site was for at first glance. The banner with the University logos... is it an ad? Are those logos special for some reason? I didn't really know.

3) I typed 'Artificial Intelligence' into the search box and clicked Find. It told me I wasn't logged in. On second glance it looks like it found 0 results and the 'not logged in' thing was tangential. If that's the case you should emphasize one over the other.

Work on your word choice.

This sounds pretty blah: "We're a college based community networking together for a common goal."

Also you might want to reread the rest of the text on your about page and elsewhere; try to make it more concise and clear. Also make the column of text less wide (and thus more readable).

Also, don't dilute your purpose too soon; focus on one major thing, books for example. Your about page suggested you are going in multiple directions at once. Do one thing and do it well.

You're completely right, I'm jut not the best writer. I am hoping to rewrite that section soon as a lot has change since the launch of the site.

Do one thing and do it well.

I agree, I had all these ideas (and continue to have) and thought it would be great to have them on the site. However, after reading an article, I believe it was from 37signals, I realized that I was doing too much and that I should keep it simple and focus on one thing for now. Since then I have stop rolling out any other features, other than the ones that are currently available.

I need something cool or useful on the first page or I am gone. (Still not sure what it does)

Fellow HN readers, please review my college-based website. I've been working on it in my spare time. Forgive me if it doesn't look that great, but I am the sole programmer/designer for the site so I can't just focus in one thing. For the most part the basic functionality is there. All feedback is appreciated, thanks in advance!

As a designer I tried to ask myself the first few thoughts I had when I land on the page. The bar on the top that has all the logos initially feels like advertising space. Perhaps you might consider putting that underneath the search bar. Also add a little more emphasis to the search bar itself would help draw the eye. Perhaps something as simple as a border around it.

Those are just my initial thoughts. Your choice in graphics is very sleek, and the over feel is very clean. I feel with a few simple changes you can push your bounce rate lower though practical design.

Quick recommendation on a way to make money, with this. If your site doesn't return a result for a book, why not query amazon or half.com and link to a listing on their site getting the potential affiliate fee.

I actually been contemplating this idea with Chegg, but I just don't have that much time to work on it at this point.

Remove the radio buttons. Just focus on textbooks or cluster results and let user drill down if he's interested. Learn from Google.

It didn't have any math textbooks I would want. Also in Safari the search field "ISBN..etc" text didn't go away upon clicking.

Right now there are only 41 books posted, so it is most likely that the book you're searching will not be found. This will hopefully change once more people start using the site.

This was Chegg's original business model, and they hit on the right solution, IMO: textbook rentals.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com