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Ask HN: Review my app HelloBar.com

12 points by dtelepathy ↗ HN
We just released Hello Bar in private beta. http://www.hellobar.com

We wanted to create a fun, unobtrusive, yet highly visible bar that engages users to take action on your site.

It's purposely MVP right now. I'd love to get your feedback on the site.

-What other features would you like to see?

-What do you think of the interaction/UI design?

-Would you use this for your site? If not, why not?

Use the beta key "hn" to create an account. Thanks!

18 comments

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rushabh
Looks neat, but would like to see some functionality on the demo bar in your home page.

Right now I won't use it as there is no way to see what it can offer. Also how are you different from the others out there?

dtelepathy
Thanks for your comments. We are in private beta, so we are not trying to elicit too many signups at this point with an engaging homepage. We'll be adding that shortly.
r11t
I would recommend adding a slide-show or short screencast on the homepage to give users an overview of the features.
dtelepathy
Will do. Ironically, we also created SlideDeck.com. So we will be building one as our product tour.
sahillavingia
The navigation (Register and Login) should be AJAXed. I really didn't expect to have to wait a few seconds to log in (especially with the tabs the way they look, I think most people expected what I did).
dtelepathy
I agree, however, we'd have to compromise a bit of security allowing people to submit their u/p on an regular http page. Any suggestions on how to avoid this?
kylebragger
Looks neat but I'd love for it to just let me set a password from the get-go vs. emailing me a temporary one I'll have to change later.
dtelepathy
Thanks, we wanted to minimize the sign up fields, but will be adding this once the private beta is over.
mhill
Looks neat. Can you make it a translucent overlay bar instead of moving the whole page down? Moving the whole page can be annoying visually.
dtelepathy
Thanks! In the settings you can specify pushing the page down or covering the top 33 pixels.
stephencelis
The site itself is very attractive. A suggestion for the implementation, though: login/signup tab full page turns are jarring (especially with the bar dropping down again after each loads)...maybe just use JavaScript/CSS to swap div visibility?

In general it looks like it's a nice library, but how about some more information before the required registration? Why do I want to use this over a freely available JS library? Does it cost money? Etc.

coryl
Probably needs a bit more functionality and an actual problem to solve.

I've also previously used that space for notification bars that hover over where your product would go (for errors, successful actions, etc.) So your product wouldn't fit on my site because that real estate is taken.

The main thing is finding something useful for this. This isn't a solution to anything, its just a piece of javascript. IMO having one of those floating around gets in the way of my user's experience.

dtelepathy
Thanks for your thoughts. The goal of this product is not as a developer tool (yet). We are trying to solve a user engagement issue. Here'a bit more on the thinking behind it.

Website owners typically have one important message or call to action that they would like each visitor to process. Since we don't have consistent design standards, the user has a inconsistent visual experience ingesting web content and messaging.

This happened with digital display ads. Services like The Deck have provided solid improvement with engagement through conformed ads in a single dosage per page.

We want to bring simplicity and consistency to the web experience. We hope that a thoughtful design, one well-crafted sentence and a call to action is what we need to increase engagement on your website.

aquark
The app is well executed, looks create and has a good UI (well, except for the alert box when you update your profile).

However, I agree it is a little to MVP. To be useful I need more control over what is displayed in the bar ... and I probably want to host all the scripts on my own server too.

I want to be able to set the content in the Javascript code that instantiates the bar so the message is relevant to a user action.

photon_off
I would suggest checking out http://www.wibiya.com , and similar websites http://www.moreofit.com/similar-to/www.wibiya.com/Top_10_Sit...

Wibiya seem to have done a very good job with their toolbar, and I've been seeing their toolbar more and more across the web. The market is seemingly large enough for more competitors.

I might be entirely wrong here, I really have no idea what your product does as I didn't actually fill out the form on your website to try out hellobar. Why not include a demo right on the homepage, and why not allow me to try it without having me fill out an obnoxious form? I'm sorry to sound harsh, but it really bothers me when sites force me to sign up to try something out, especially when I could easily be shown a live demonstration.

jeffepp
This is great! I think the UI & interaction is perfect.

The only feature(s) I would use would be conditional messages.. (if logged in, if paying customer, etc..)

I will use this as-is and plan to implement asap.

Well done.