5 ms·

Since we are on the topic of experimenting with the FF new tab page, it would be great to get the feedback of the HN community on this add-on that we've been wo

by olegp 12y ago

Since we are on the topic of experimenting with the FF new tab page, it would be great to get the feedback of the HN community on this add-on that we've been working on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/starthq/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/starthq/ StartHQ replaces the new tab page with one that you can fully customize, giving you quick access to commonly used functionality using "deep links", as well as the ability to search inside your cloud services, like Greplin did back in the day. We also have an API so you can add search support to the services we don't support or internal apps used within your organization. More info here: https://starthq.com/features https://starthq.com/features

chmod775 12y ago
I think you guys sent me some mail when you added Volafile. It seemed very impersonal and automated to me, which is likely what you're doing. The other reason I pretty much ignored it was that the site didn't really appear 'curated' to me, just filled with stuff a crawler would've found out about me. Off the top of the head I have three ideas that might help: - Maybe make it possible for users (not webmasters) to edit information about pages or at least let them leave some feedback. - Send personalized mails to webmasters, to give them some incentive to actually help you pad the little information you have about their sites. Or even better let me just reply to your mail with a short description of my site and directly put that on Volafile's/Whatever's profile. That would basically take away all of the friction I'd have to endure while 'claiming' my profile. Replying to a mail isn't hard and you could be pretty sure it belongs to the rightful owner. - Just pull some reviews off other sites, like Google does with reviews for restaurants (only the first few lines with a link to full review) Use these suggestions however you like, they're just my few cents but they might help to pad the little content you have on each page with something more useful to the user. Currently stuff like this: https://starthq.com/apps/volafile-io https://starthq.com/apps/volafile-io looks empty and cheap to me, like something created by a machine. Not many people will be intent to discover more stuff on your page if the information they'll get is so little with each click. Even I, who wanted to discover 'alternatives' to my own service got bored after a few clicks. I didn't feel like I was finding out anything useful about the suggested alternatives and related services. Plus you don't seem to refresh the 'stars' very often. Volafile doesn't have a lot WoT ratings, but they don't seem to warrant 1 star. Why don't you let your users rate service by clicking on the stars? It works well for most other online 'market places'. I actually thought the stars would be clickable at first. Looking at some other services I don't think the 'stars' they have make sense at all. Most have 1 star throughout the bank and others have 4 times 1 star and one 5 star 'gauge'. They look pretty random and only confuse. Maybe you should try to work out better conditions on when to display them. Services with not enough data points available seem to get 1 star by default, maybe just gray them all out? Okay that's all I noticed. Maybe you should take my opinions with a grain of salt as I'm not really your average user, but I know how valuable feedback can be to small websites (running one myself, unsurprisingly) Edit: I can't seem to claim Volafile's profile. Just takes me to some launcher.
- olegp 12y ago
  Thanks, really appreciate the detailed feedback. There's an automated tweet sent out when an app is added to the directory. I presume you got notified of that via email. I've intentionally not emailed app owners directly as I thought that would be pretty spammy. Perhaps it may be worth doing, especially if the benefits of having a full listing would be explained in more detail. I like the idea about letting users update info on webapps, much like what Lanyrd is doing for events. Not entirely sure how to go about implementing it though, but will probably start by letting users review apps and go from there. The stars are refreshed once a day, but the rating you see on StartHQ is relative to other apps in the directory, not all the sites on WoT. I've sent an email about claiming your profile. You've actually claimed it by signing up, however updating the profile is still a manual process. Did you try out the launcher and search? Would be great to get your input on that.

by olegp 12y ago

chmod775 12y ago

I think you guys sent me some mail when you added Volafile. It seemed very impersonal and automated to me, which is likely what you're doing. The other reason I pretty much ignored it was that the site didn't really appear 'curated' to me, just filled with stuff a crawler would've found out about me. Off the top of the head I have three ideas that might help: - Maybe make it possible for users (not webmasters) to edit information about pages or at least let them leave some feedback. - Send personalized mails to webmasters, to give them some incentive to actually help you pad the little information you have about their sites. Or even better let me just reply to your mail with a short description of my site and directly put that on Volafile's/Whatever's profile. That would basically take away all of the friction I'd have to endure while 'claiming' my profile. Replying to a mail isn't hard and you could be pretty sure it belongs to the rightful owner. - Just pull some reviews off other sites, like Google does with reviews for restaurants (only the first few lines with a link to full review) Use these suggestions however you like, they're just my few cents but they might help to pad the little content you have on each page with something more useful to the user. Currently stuff like this: https://starthq.com/apps/volafile-io https://starthq.com/apps/volafile-io looks empty and cheap to me, like something created by a machine. Not many people will be intent to discover more stuff on your page if the information they'll get is so little with each click. Even I, who wanted to discover 'alternatives' to my own service got bored after a few clicks. I didn't feel like I was finding out anything useful about the suggested alternatives and related services. Plus you don't seem to refresh the 'stars' very often. Volafile doesn't have a lot WoT ratings, but they don't seem to warrant 1 star. Why don't you let your users rate service by clicking on the stars? It works well for most other online 'market places'. I actually thought the stars would be clickable at first. Looking at some other services I don't think the 'stars' they have make sense at all. Most have 1 star throughout the bank and others have 4 times 1 star and one 5 star 'gauge'. They look pretty random and only confuse. Maybe you should try to work out better conditions on when to display them. Services with not enough data points available seem to get 1 star by default, maybe just gray them all out? Okay that's all I noticed. Maybe you should take my opinions with a grain of salt as I'm not really your average user, but I know how valuable feedback can be to small websites (running one myself, unsurprisingly) Edit: I can't seem to claim Volafile's profile. Just takes me to some launcher.

olegp 12y ago
Thanks, really appreciate the detailed feedback. There's an automated tweet sent out when an app is added to the directory. I presume you got notified of that via email. I've intentionally not emailed app owners directly as I thought that would be pretty spammy. Perhaps it may be worth doing, especially if the benefits of having a full listing would be explained in more detail. I like the idea about letting users update info on webapps, much like what Lanyrd is doing for events. Not entirely sure how to go about implementing it though, but will probably start by letting users review apps and go from there. The stars are refreshed once a day, but the rating you see on StartHQ is relative to other apps in the directory, not all the sites on WoT. I've sent an email about claiming your profile. You've actually claimed it by signing up, however updating the profile is still a manual process. Did you try out the launcher and search? Would be great to get your input on that.