I need honest reviews about the my startup http://rivals4ever.com. I would be glad if you can provide your valuable inputs to make my site better and more exciting for users. Thanks.
I think so. It's a whole lot easier to tell someone to check out "rivals forever dot com" than "rivals forever, that's the number four, dot com", plus the ensuing clarification.
I noticed you refer to your company as r4e in the about link at the bottom... Maybe you should consider buying r4e.com sometime in the future from the squatters?
I don't think I am one of your targeted users, since I don't care too much about any of these rivalries and hence don't find it particularly useful, so take this feedback with a large grain of salt.
It takes a while to load from Bangalore, India. ~300 ms of latency. I guess you are hosted out of the US and most of your end-users would be from the US, in which case it doesn't matter.
hi prakash, thanks for your review. the site is hosted on media temple which is in US. i guess site is little slow to load because of lots of images on homepage. we need to optimize that.
target audience is any user in the world who is passionate about their idol. people can fight for their idol and discuss strengths, weaknesses, share images/videos with like minded people. its a great platform to meet like minded people and unlike minded people!!
Instead of trying to create content from scratch, wouldn't it be better if you could aggregate all this from various artist, sports team websites, using a bad analogy, sort of like gmane for idols
we can do that but there will be limit to what we can generate from handful of people. right now 2 developers are working on and it and I am the one who is driving the site. we want people to participate in this and get their passion out and show it to the world. ofcourse we need lot of things to be done for that.
It is like kittenwar.com, but with more information about more disparate topics.
you could re-engineer your site to be about pros and cons, and have topical news items/products. i see that you have some of that right now with weaknesses/weapons.
structured topical news item analysis would be something i might spend time on, depending how good the community was.
well yeah we can work on that. we plan to make money on targeted advertisements, sponsored rivalries, gaming integration once we get the sufficient amount of traffic. how do you find the idea ?
If possible, don't delay monetization to traffic, especially if the plan is further delayed by indirect monetization (i.e., ads and sponsors are very different than customers).
ok but do you think people will be ready to sponsor the site whose traffic is not sufficient ?? we already have google ads in place but that is ofcourse not helping right now
Well, I just wrote a bunch of detailed thoughts and accidently lost them all, so here it is again.
1. The navigation links (all, entertainment, etc) should be the same width as the main content of the site to give it a cleaner look.
2. The site doesn't seem to work at a width of less than 1024 pixels, although I was only resizing the window so that number might be a bit off. I didn't get a horizontal scroll bar in either Firefox 3 or Opera 9.5.
3. What is the difference between the default selection, "recently popular rivals" on the left, and "featured rivals" on the right? Why isn't the "featured rivals" section just another nav link with the rest of the rivalry links on the top bar?
4. I think the "Sports" section should be more prominently displayed towards the left of the nav links as sports is a decidedly hot topic for rivalries. On that note, you might want to add subsections for various sports such as College Football, Soccer, Baseball, etc. I'm not sure if tags are the right answer, but I'm sure you'll think of something if you go that route. If you end up doing that, you might want to consider looking at the incoming IP address's country of origin in order to have it say "soccer" for America and "football" for the rest of the world, and "football" for America and "American football" for everyone else, although I'm definitely offtopic now.
great points :)
i am definitely going to work on these points. sorry to hear that you had to write them again. just out of curiosity want to ask whether you liked the overall idea ??
All that aside - interesting site.. One brief comment is that the "JOIN RIVALRY" link (in the featurd rivalries on the front page) is in the wrong spot.. I was looking for one to join the left hand side of the box.. perhaps either a link on both sides/teams or just move the link to the centre (or center if you have to use CSS)
Cool, will check this out. JOIN RIVALRY point is noted. Thanks for your time for reviewing this. Please feel free to criticize anything we are doing wrong. We have lot to learn.
It seems like a cool idea for a lot of people out there, although it's not for me as I don't get quite that involved with rivalries.
I noticed the instant chat at the bottom of any given rivalry, but is there a more asynchronous form of communication between the two sides of a given rivalry?
For that we do have "Passion Talk" where people can express their thoughts and let other people comment on that. Do you think we should make it more prominent ?
Very slow, I would have closed the site before the front page would have loaded.
Also the front page is not self explaining, you really need a short "what this is" and a slogan. In fact after I have browsed for couple of minutes I still don't exactly understand the point.
I think it's a nice curiosity but you have to think how to get people to come back - you might want to create top lists based on multiple rivalries for example, like top list of cell phones etc.
yes for that we have all time favorite rivalries. and yes for getting people come back we need to implement some serious sticky features to our site. we are working on that, few of the features can be chat room, email notifications about their side losing, compare people feature where you can meet like minded people etc.
no problem. that is why i wanted feedback from you guys. i know i can get really honest feedback here. well thinking of redesigning the whole stuff now!
I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but what's the "start-up" part of this. This looks and feels like another comparator, this time with micro-communities built around it. A neat spin on an old idea maybe, but I'm not sure what benefit I get from joining. I hail from a big time "rival" area - Boston. I do not like the Yankees. Seriously, I think it's coded in my being to not like them. But, what's in it for me? Is there a pain that your soothing? I'm not seeing the point. And yes, the inconsistent margins bother me. I'd fix that no matter what. Your menu, header and body should be a consistent width.
Thanks Tom for really honest review. I see your point here. I need to see if a person from Boston can not see anything worthwhile in my concept then there is something seriously wrong.
Would you like to discuss your hatred for Yankees with other people ? If yes in which format would you like to do that ?
Would you like to share some good stuff about red sox with people like you ?
Would you like to meet like minded people like you ?
Hmm, well I wouldn't call it hatred ... at least not out loud. The thing is, for these fans, for Sports fans in the US there generally are places to do this sort of thing. Most of it happens via blogs or blog-like sites (http://joyofsox.blogspot.com/, http://www.bostondirtdogs.com/). I think that sort of format works well for this (threaded comments or not). Most of the Red Sox / Yankees stuff is "around the water cooler" talk. There's no challenge finding discussion (save maybe finding a Yankees fan around here, but I'm not sure I want to talk to Yankees fans about this rivalry). Also, you really need to clean up your navigation. There are 5 horizontal levels of navigation and that's a lot of work to try to find what I'm looking for. You might be trying to do too much. Also, the "passion room" might have different connotations here than you expect...
hmm well taken. number of horizontal level can be a problem to find right type of information user is looking for. what we have tried to do is instead of having communication in all the blogs users can have at one place. may be we are doing mistake in putting all those stuff together. need to rethink the strategy of putting all the information together.
But i did not get your point about "Passion room" ?
I asked a friend who is crazy about sports and fairly tech savvy. Here is what he said:
Not sure I understand what it is. An “A” vs “B” in different sectors (sports, tech, etc)? Just to be a comparison site where you can shit talk and or compare products?
One of your target markets has no idea what the is for.
Kind of stupid, there’s nothing differentiating. If he could come up with some way of getting discounts or a way to affect the entities that he’s matching one another against, then great, otherwise, it’s just a sounding board, of which there are plenty in existence.
Thats a sure sign of bad design or implementation. Points are well taken. Thanks. You guys are great. I am getting exactly what i expected from this community. YCombinator rocks!
From a concept persepective, this type of site gets stickier the more upset people get. Which is a good thing, it can be a great place to explore differing opinions and think through your own beliefs, but you have to get people fired up... and Red Sox vs. Yankees is not going to do it. People disagree over which one is better, but there is nothing to talk about. Politics, religion, race, philosophy, Ruby vs. Python, basically everything that ought to make you uncomfortable as a webmaster... and it should, because if you're successful the debates will get ugly in a hurry. But you'll also get that cartoon where the guy doesn't want to go to bed because "someone is wrong on the internet". No one is going to stay up using your site because they've discovered someone prefers the Red Sox.
From a business perspective, in my opinion it's tight. Your CPM is going to be pretty low because you aren't that kind of niche. Probably a few cents. My gut says there isn't much opportunity for acquisition unless it truly takes off. RWW did a roundup I'm sure you saw (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/online_debate_sites.php) - you have direct competition from several sides. In my opinion you're competing with more than just those guys... the big poll sites are also indirect competetion, especially for your edge use case settling arguments. Poll Daddy may be your largest, least obvious competition. Data Portability is another... a lot of those types of conversations are happening in Friendfeed and Disqus now, and that trend will only gain momentum.
Routes to success... you have a built in attention base with bloggers - controversy is a major eyeball driver to their sites, and the "blog 2.0" trend - the concept that the blogger doesn't "own" the debate, they just contribute to it, could be leveraged - they will still be inclined to move the discussion over to wordpress, but less snarky about it. If you can find a way to give them what they're looking for (material to write about) you'll get some traction. Otherwise you can try to convince Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg to debate pink vs. white grapefruit on your site. Good luck :)
First load was extremely slow, later pages loaded at a correct speed.
The menus at the top are very confusing. The first impression I had was "oh gee so many stuff at the top. What a load of crap, I feel like closing the tab immediatly".
At the top, there are 4 differents rows containing lists of links. I'm lost!
At the top of the page there are too many different styles (different sizes, form, color, gaps, ...)
I have not a clue what IPL/ICL means
On the home/My stuff/ My... bar the effect to display the submenu is annoying (slows navigation down).
The fact that on that bar some elements have no submenu and must be clicked on directly while some other have submenu and can't be clicked on directly is disturbing.
What's the difference between "R4E Spy" in the top and the one below?
My stuff, My friends, My page. Why so many "My ..." What's the difference between them?
I MUST click on one of the two option to access the details of a rivalry. Being forced to click on one of the two options when I just want to look at the details of the rivalry without voting is unpleasant. Why can't I click on the vs image?
The name of the two options are in the middle above and below the vs instead of being above each image. It's hard to understand what name correspond to what text.
The pages for each rivalry comparison is overly confusing. There are too many different styles. It's not obvious what is a link and what is not. The separations between the different parts of the page is not very clear making the whole thing hard to read.
Energy Meter bars are too small. (What the hell is it anyway).
"Top 3 Fans of ..." Why are those three the top fans??? Why them and not other?
In the Featured Rivalries box (and other places), It looks like the circled 1 is crossed. That's odd.
On the registration page the password and confirm password fields have extra spaced. If there's two fields that should NOT be kept separated in a form it's those two!
I have to "Join this Rivalry first!" before being able to add a comment on the Passion Talk? What a hassle.
When I click on the Join this Rivalry link I'm harassed by even more crap! No I don't want to get updates, I just want to leave a comment! ( If I want to get updates on that rivalry I'll opt-in by clicking on the relevent link on the rivalry page).
Wait it's not over yet!! Why ain't I brought back on the rivalry main page? Now I have to click on the "XXX" highlighted in red in Congratulations !! You have joined ''XXX''. Damn! It's not a link... Why is it in red then? (By the way only one of the two apostrophe is in red)
Now what? There are three choices but the icons are all but explicit about what they do (especially the Add talk one). I have to read the text to understand.
well well well...one of best review i can get.thanks a ton for taking time to review my site in such a detail. all of your points are well taken and will definitely help me to rethink the whole strategy again. Thanks again.
40 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 84.8 ms ] threadNot to shabby so far.
It takes a while to load from Bangalore, India. ~300 ms of latency. I guess you are hosted out of the US and most of your end-users would be from the US, in which case it doesn't matter.
You could probably clean up the UI a bit, take a look at newscred (http://www.newscred.com/article/list), those guys have a nice clean UI.
What kind of users are you targeting? Why would one want to use your site? What value would your site add to the browsing experience?
target audience is any user in the world who is passionate about their idol. people can fight for their idol and discuss strengths, weaknesses, share images/videos with like minded people. its a great platform to meet like minded people and unlike minded people!!
your point about analogy is noted down. thanks.
you could re-engineer your site to be about pros and cons, and have topical news items/products. i see that you have some of that right now with weaknesses/weapons.
structured topical news item analysis would be something i might spend time on, depending how good the community was.
how do you plan on making money?
1. The navigation links (all, entertainment, etc) should be the same width as the main content of the site to give it a cleaner look.
2. The site doesn't seem to work at a width of less than 1024 pixels, although I was only resizing the window so that number might be a bit off. I didn't get a horizontal scroll bar in either Firefox 3 or Opera 9.5.
3. What is the difference between the default selection, "recently popular rivals" on the left, and "featured rivals" on the right? Why isn't the "featured rivals" section just another nav link with the rest of the rivalry links on the top bar?
4. I think the "Sports" section should be more prominently displayed towards the left of the nav links as sports is a decidedly hot topic for rivalries. On that note, you might want to add subsections for various sports such as College Football, Soccer, Baseball, etc. I'm not sure if tags are the right answer, but I'm sure you'll think of something if you go that route. If you end up doing that, you might want to consider looking at the incoming IP address's country of origin in order to have it say "soccer" for America and "football" for the rest of the world, and "football" for America and "American football" for everyone else, although I'm definitely offtopic now.
All that aside - interesting site.. One brief comment is that the "JOIN RIVALRY" link (in the featurd rivalries on the front page) is in the wrong spot.. I was looking for one to join the left hand side of the box.. perhaps either a link on both sides/teams or just move the link to the centre (or center if you have to use CSS)
I noticed the instant chat at the bottom of any given rivalry, but is there a more asynchronous form of communication between the two sides of a given rivalry?
Also the front page is not self explaining, you really need a short "what this is" and a slogan. In fact after I have browsed for couple of minutes I still don't exactly understand the point.
anything else comes to your mind ?/
I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but what's the "start-up" part of this. This looks and feels like another comparator, this time with micro-communities built around it. A neat spin on an old idea maybe, but I'm not sure what benefit I get from joining. I hail from a big time "rival" area - Boston. I do not like the Yankees. Seriously, I think it's coded in my being to not like them. But, what's in it for me? Is there a pain that your soothing? I'm not seeing the point. And yes, the inconsistent margins bother me. I'd fix that no matter what. Your menu, header and body should be a consistent width.
Would you like to discuss your hatred for Yankees with other people ? If yes in which format would you like to do that ?
Would you like to share some good stuff about red sox with people like you ?
Would you like to meet like minded people like you ?
Is there any feature which looks ok to you ?
But i did not get your point about "Passion room" ?
Not sure I understand what it is. An “A” vs “B” in different sectors (sports, tech, etc)? Just to be a comparison site where you can shit talk and or compare products?
One of your target markets has no idea what the is for.
Kind of stupid, there’s nothing differentiating. If he could come up with some way of getting discounts or a way to affect the entities that he’s matching one another against, then great, otherwise, it’s just a sounding board, of which there are plenty in existence.
From a business perspective, in my opinion it's tight. Your CPM is going to be pretty low because you aren't that kind of niche. Probably a few cents. My gut says there isn't much opportunity for acquisition unless it truly takes off. RWW did a roundup I'm sure you saw (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/online_debate_sites.php) - you have direct competition from several sides. In my opinion you're competing with more than just those guys... the big poll sites are also indirect competetion, especially for your edge use case settling arguments. Poll Daddy may be your largest, least obvious competition. Data Portability is another... a lot of those types of conversations are happening in Friendfeed and Disqus now, and that trend will only gain momentum.
Routes to success... you have a built in attention base with bloggers - controversy is a major eyeball driver to their sites, and the "blog 2.0" trend - the concept that the blogger doesn't "own" the debate, they just contribute to it, could be leveraged - they will still be inclined to move the discussion over to wordpress, but less snarky about it. If you can find a way to give them what they're looking for (material to write about) you'll get some traction. Otherwise you can try to convince Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg to debate pink vs. white grapefruit on your site. Good luck :)
First load was extremely slow, later pages loaded at a correct speed.
The menus at the top are very confusing. The first impression I had was "oh gee so many stuff at the top. What a load of crap, I feel like closing the tab immediatly".
At the top, there are 4 differents rows containing lists of links. I'm lost!
At the top of the page there are too many different styles (different sizes, form, color, gaps, ...)
I have not a clue what IPL/ICL means
On the home/My stuff/ My... bar the effect to display the submenu is annoying (slows navigation down). The fact that on that bar some elements have no submenu and must be clicked on directly while some other have submenu and can't be clicked on directly is disturbing.
What's the difference between "R4E Spy" in the top and the one below?
My stuff, My friends, My page. Why so many "My ..." What's the difference between them?
I MUST click on one of the two option to access the details of a rivalry. Being forced to click on one of the two options when I just want to look at the details of the rivalry without voting is unpleasant. Why can't I click on the vs image?
The name of the two options are in the middle above and below the vs instead of being above each image. It's hard to understand what name correspond to what text.
The pages for each rivalry comparison is overly confusing. There are too many different styles. It's not obvious what is a link and what is not. The separations between the different parts of the page is not very clear making the whole thing hard to read.
Energy Meter bars are too small. (What the hell is it anyway).
"Top 3 Fans of ..." Why are those three the top fans??? Why them and not other?
In the Featured Rivalries box (and other places), It looks like the circled 1 is crossed. That's odd.
On the registration page the password and confirm password fields have extra spaced. If there's two fields that should NOT be kept separated in a form it's those two!
I have to "Join this Rivalry first!" before being able to add a comment on the Passion Talk? What a hassle.
When I click on the Join this Rivalry link I'm harassed by even more crap! No I don't want to get updates, I just want to leave a comment! ( If I want to get updates on that rivalry I'll opt-in by clicking on the relevent link on the rivalry page).
Wait it's not over yet!! Why ain't I brought back on the rivalry main page? Now I have to click on the "XXX" highlighted in red in Congratulations !! You have joined ''XXX''. Damn! It's not a link... Why is it in red then? (By the way only one of the two apostrophe is in red)
Now what? There are three choices but the icons are all but explicit about what they do (especially the Add talk one). I have to read the text to understand.
How I am supposed to edit/add my picture?