6 ms·

Please review my Startup, AppUseful. Submit and rate your favorite apps.

29 points by utsmokingaces 17y ago

utsmokingaces 17y ago
The HN community is very important to us. We would love to hear your feedback. If you are a web entrepreneur, feel free to submit and write a review promote your web app. Thanks.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
chanux 17y ago
Neat. OpenID please.
minalecs 17y ago
overall, good idea, and good execution. I can see myself coming back to use this. My only concern would be right now the list is small, but as it grows in size it will get harder to filter through the sites. example would be go2web20 . They have a lot of good sites, just difficult to go through them all and find good ones.
- utsmokingaces 17y ago
  That is definitely something we would spend a lot of time on. We are starting to see some categories that don't fit. The tag approach of go2web20 is confusing for the average users, we will add subcategories in the future. Our rating system will display the higher quality apps to the users first.
nathanburke 17y ago
I like it. Reminds me a little bit of go2web20.net and usefultools.com but it's different enough. I've been looking for sites like this so I can add a listing for my company when we officially launch.
anigbrowl 17y ago
Kinda neat. Name/star ratings overlap logo box border in FF 3.0.1. App category link is well placed but maybe too small, ditto under the toolbar; my first impression was 'bunch of random apps, how do I sort these?' Too many featured/recent/popular; how about only 4 in each, and rotate/fade them in and out, let me then go to the relevant page to see all recent or whatever. Logo/tag cloud section is a bit too big IMHO. It takes up 1/3 of the window on my work monitor.
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- deleted 17y ago
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- utsmokingaces 17y ago
  we will ajax the featured/recent/popular so users can scroll from left to right.
sant0sk1 17y ago
A site I use and love is http://iusethis.com http://iusethis.com. They have versions for Mac, Windows and iPhone. Looks like your site is for web apps. You might be a good fit into their product line...
jack7890 17y ago
I'm currently running a review-driven startup, so a couple questions related to things we deal with: 1) Are you planning on making money with this? How? Ads probably aren't the answer. 2) How do you keep users coming back? Once someone finds the app they're looking for, are they likely to visit your site with any regularity? 3) What percentage of users write reviews? If you're like other review sites, the number will be shockingly small. How can you incentivize users to review?
- utsmokingaces 17y ago
  sure i can help with these question. Whoever interested can msg me on http://twitter.com/rebelvc http://twitter.com/rebelvc.
smokinn 17y ago
I see a few sites like threadless that, to me at least, don't even come close to fitting any sort of definition of "app". Is this meant to be an open index of web apps/services? While useful now, like minalecs pointed out, I see it quickly devolving into an index of the internet in general if it gains traction.
mkyc 17y ago
First impression, the site has a spammy feel. I think it's the light-blue color, especially of that tag cloud on top, or perhaps it's that your logo seems to yield too easily to the content. (See perhaps movil .be/?s=delicious.p and www.mobi .tv/tag/m/m for comparison.) Short of messing with it, it's hard to identify what gives this impression, but when I scroll all the way to the bottom the contrast seems to fix things...
callmeed 17y ago
Decent concept and it looks good. Here is my main concern: How do you draw the line between Web App and Website? For example, I consider Weebly and Evernote to be web apps. I do not consider Digg or Wolfram Alpha to be ... furthermore, some of your listings only partly qualify as Web [Anything]. Dropbox and RescueTime both have desktop components and Skype is truly not a web app/site in my opinion. I'm not sure how to define it or where to draw the line–I just think you might have more success by focusing your site on true web apps (i.e. browser-based apps or SaaS that replace/compete with desktop apps and solve a personal/business pain point). It will solve minalecs's point of having too many sites to filter through. As the site is now, I probably wouldn't use it. But if it was truly an app directory where I could say "Hey, I need to do X ... I wonder if there's a web app" then go and find such an app ... then, yes.
- utsmokingaces 17y ago
  Ya I agree is hard to define a webapp. If the site is useful and have functionality other than just displaying images and content, we would consider it. Our goal is to make AppUseful straightforward enough to market to the mainstream users. There are already a lot of resources that target the geek community. About half of my friends still don't know about popular sites such as Yelp.
mkyc 17y ago
Good idea overall. Get rid of the black application names. The are, and will always be, a poor and often incorrect duplicate of the logo itself. Given your content, clearly separate your ads, or use text ads only. The change-background-on-hover effect is annoying. Use a white background since many logos are not transparent, and white. Remove that thin gray border, it makes the dark-background logos look messy. Your headings are not sufficiently distinct from your website titles (just remove the site titles, which will also keep the site from looking ugly when you have long titles). Put the little (3) vote counter to the left of the stars. Get rid of the dropdowns for sorting, and the buttons for pages. When I click the logo, I expect to go to the site. I don't really care about your detailed info - that's what (more) is for. I don't want the company's often useless and spammy tagline, enforce a brief and useful description of the site. I don't want to dig around in subpages for information, and I don't want to see a screenshot of the site when I could have been looking at the site itself.
- utsmokingaces 17y ago
  We will get rid of the background hover effect. It was something we were just playing with. Will consider getting the getting rid of website title suggestion.
mighty 17y ago
I like it, but my biggest recommendation would be to have columns (rows, boxes, whichever) dedicated to specific categories of apps on the front page. Right now it's a random assortment of apps and it's impossible to tell what they do just by glancing at them--you're forced to do some hard parsing as the app logo/name alone typically doesn't tell you anything. If you represent categories by column, users instantly know that a whole set of apps share something in common, and will have an easier time comparing. First-time visitors will also get a more concrete sense of what's available on your site. Consider Google News' front page: they divide stories into sections (World, Business, Health, etc.) which gives users a high level overview of the content at a glance, a domain context for headlines in a given section, and allows them to easily ignore whole sets of stories they might not be interested in. The iTunes App Store is the same way. I'm also not sure how useful the Recently Added section is going to be in the long run. The date at which an app was added to the database is less important for users than the date at which an app launched, went out of private beta, etc.
coopr 17y ago
Get rid of the ads - you'll make the majority of your money from affiliate fees when your site visitors sign-up for the apps you review, so why clutter the site with ads too?
drp 17y ago
You shouldn't include www. in the submission form. A person who is submitting a web application probably knows what a URL should look like, and it's possible (likely) that the app doesn't start with www. (see the URL you're currently visiting)
greengirl512 17y ago
I like the concept (unsurprising, since I write for a similar site), but I think the site needs to be redesigned to make it more user-friendly-as other commenters mentioned, it would be nice to be able to tell at a glance what the app in question does.Also, the "join" button is not working on my computer (not sure if that's intentional or not). I would also consider redefining some of your categories and adding a little bit of written content to the main page so that your visitors can immediately understand the benefit of visiting your site. Also, grammar nerd alert from the "About Us" page: "User can submit, rate, and write reviews for web applications that they like." User should be "users."

29 points by utsmokingaces 17y ago

The HN community is very important to us. We would love to hear your feedback. If you are a web entrepreneur, feel free to submit and write a review promote your web app. Thanks.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

chanux 17y ago

Neat. OpenID please.

minalecs 17y ago

overall, good idea, and good execution. I can see myself coming back to use this. My only concern would be right now the list is small, but as it grows in size it will get harder to filter through the sites. example would be go2web20 . They have a lot of good sites, just difficult to go through them all and find good ones.

utsmokingaces 17y ago
That is definitely something we would spend a lot of time on. We are starting to see some categories that don't fit. The tag approach of go2web20 is confusing for the average users, we will add subcategories in the future. Our rating system will display the higher quality apps to the users first.

nathanburke 17y ago

I like it. Reminds me a little bit of go2web20.net and usefultools.com but it's different enough. I've been looking for sites like this so I can add a listing for my company when we officially launch.

anigbrowl 17y ago

Kinda neat. Name/star ratings overlap logo box border in FF 3.0.1. App category link is well placed but maybe too small, ditto under the toolbar; my first impression was 'bunch of random apps, how do I sort these?' Too many featured/recent/popular; how about only 4 in each, and rotate/fade them in and out, let me then go to the relevant page to see all recent or whatever. Logo/tag cloud section is a bit too big IMHO. It takes up 1/3 of the window on my work monitor.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
utsmokingaces 17y ago
we will ajax the featured/recent/popular so users can scroll from left to right.

sant0sk1 17y ago

A site I use and love is http://iusethis.com http://iusethis.com. They have versions for Mac, Windows and iPhone. Looks like your site is for web apps. You might be a good fit into their product line...

jack7890 17y ago

I'm currently running a review-driven startup, so a couple questions related to things we deal with: 1) Are you planning on making money with this? How? Ads probably aren't the answer. 2) How do you keep users coming back? Once someone finds the app they're looking for, are they likely to visit your site with any regularity? 3) What percentage of users write reviews? If you're like other review sites, the number will be shockingly small. How can you incentivize users to review?

utsmokingaces 17y ago
sure i can help with these question. Whoever interested can msg me on http://twitter.com/rebelvc http://twitter.com/rebelvc.

smokinn 17y ago

I see a few sites like threadless that, to me at least, don't even come close to fitting any sort of definition of "app". Is this meant to be an open index of web apps/services? While useful now, like minalecs pointed out, I see it quickly devolving into an index of the internet in general if it gains traction.

mkyc 17y ago

First impression, the site has a spammy feel. I think it's the light-blue color, especially of that tag cloud on top, or perhaps it's that your logo seems to yield too easily to the content. (See perhaps movil .be/?s=delicious.p and www.mobi .tv/tag/m/m for comparison.) Short of messing with it, it's hard to identify what gives this impression, but when I scroll all the way to the bottom the contrast seems to fix things...

callmeed 17y ago

Decent concept and it looks good. Here is my main concern: How do you draw the line between Web App and Website? For example, I consider Weebly and Evernote to be web apps. I do not consider Digg or Wolfram Alpha to be ... furthermore, some of your listings only partly qualify as Web [Anything]. Dropbox and RescueTime both have desktop components and Skype is truly not a web app/site in my opinion. I'm not sure how to define it or where to draw the line–I just think you might have more success by focusing your site on true web apps (i.e. browser-based apps or SaaS that replace/compete with desktop apps and solve a personal/business pain point). It will solve minalecs's point of having too many sites to filter through. As the site is now, I probably wouldn't use it. But if it was truly an app directory where I could say "Hey, I need to do X ... I wonder if there's a web app" then go and find such an app ... then, yes.

utsmokingaces 17y ago
Ya I agree is hard to define a webapp. If the site is useful and have functionality other than just displaying images and content, we would consider it. Our goal is to make AppUseful straightforward enough to market to the mainstream users. There are already a lot of resources that target the geek community. About half of my friends still don't know about popular sites such as Yelp.

mkyc 17y ago

Good idea overall. Get rid of the black application names. The are, and will always be, a poor and often incorrect duplicate of the logo itself. Given your content, clearly separate your ads, or use text ads only. The change-background-on-hover effect is annoying. Use a white background since many logos are not transparent, and white. Remove that thin gray border, it makes the dark-background logos look messy. Your headings are not sufficiently distinct from your website titles (just remove the site titles, which will also keep the site from looking ugly when you have long titles). Put the little (3) vote counter to the left of the stars. Get rid of the dropdowns for sorting, and the buttons for pages. When I click the logo, I expect to go to the site. I don't really care about your detailed info - that's what (more) is for. I don't want the company's often useless and spammy tagline, enforce a brief and useful description of the site. I don't want to dig around in subpages for information, and I don't want to see a screenshot of the site when I could have been looking at the site itself.

utsmokingaces 17y ago
We will get rid of the background hover effect. It was something we were just playing with. Will consider getting the getting rid of website title suggestion.

mighty 17y ago

I like it, but my biggest recommendation would be to have columns (rows, boxes, whichever) dedicated to specific categories of apps on the front page. Right now it's a random assortment of apps and it's impossible to tell what they do just by glancing at them--you're forced to do some hard parsing as the app logo/name alone typically doesn't tell you anything. If you represent categories by column, users instantly know that a whole set of apps share something in common, and will have an easier time comparing. First-time visitors will also get a more concrete sense of what's available on your site. Consider Google News' front page: they divide stories into sections (World, Business, Health, etc.) which gives users a high level overview of the content at a glance, a domain context for headlines in a given section, and allows them to easily ignore whole sets of stories they might not be interested in. The iTunes App Store is the same way. I'm also not sure how useful the Recently Added section is going to be in the long run. The date at which an app was added to the database is less important for users than the date at which an app launched, went out of private beta, etc.

coopr 17y ago

Get rid of the ads - you'll make the majority of your money from affiliate fees when your site visitors sign-up for the apps you review, so why clutter the site with ads too?

drp 17y ago

You shouldn't include www. in the submission form. A person who is submitting a web application probably knows what a URL should look like, and it's possible (likely) that the app doesn't start with www. (see the URL you're currently visiting)

greengirl512 17y ago

I like the concept (unsurprising, since I write for a similar site), but I think the site needs to be redesigned to make it more user-friendly-as other commenters mentioned, it would be nice to be able to tell at a glance what the app in question does.Also, the "join" button is not working on my computer (not sure if that's intentional or not). I would also consider redefining some of your categories and adding a little bit of written content to the main page so that your visitors can immediately understand the benefit of visiting your site. Also, grammar nerd alert from the "About Us" page: "User can submit, rate, and write reviews for web applications that they like." User should be "users."