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Show HN: Had That Beer - Many many weekends project

10 points by MPiccinato ↗ HN
It is a simple beer checklist site where you can keep track of the beers you have had and what you thought of them. I started this site around September of last year as I wasn't satisfied with any of the beer rating sites available for keeping track of what I have had.

It is still a little rough around the edges and is a continual work in progress, as I am the only one working on it. But please check it out and send on any feedback. Mat@hadthatbeer.com

http://www.hadthatbeer.com/signup

Code: showhn

If you don't want to sign up, and just want to browse around the site...

http://www.hadthatbeer.com/user/1

12 comments

[ 676 ms ] story [ 1291 ms ] thread
albertsun
Are you depending on users to input all the different types of beers? Would be nice if you could scrape together an extensive list that I could pick from. Was imagining a grid with pictures of bottles/logos and easy one click to select.

I searched for the last two beers I had, nothing terribly exotic, and didn't find either and so gave up at that point.

MPiccinato
To an extent I am relying on users input. I imported a beer database I had of around 3,500 beers...though it didn't have many common ones and I am continuing to fill them in.

The grid with pictures of bottles/logos is a feature I definitely want to add in :)

dholowiski
Coming from someone who's done almost the same thing, you need to remove the barrier to entry (signup) - for some reason beer drinkers won't fill in forms. Allow twitter/Facebook signin or even anonymous ratings- a signup form was the single biggest mistake I made with my site (and I made a lot of mistakes)
nickh
Going one step further, when a user goes to your site for the first time, create an account for them behind the scenes. This will enable them to track beers immediately.

Later on, you can prompt them for an email address or password. For example, if a new user adds X beers, open a lightbox that says "Mmmm, beer. To make sure you don't lose your list, type in your email address and a password."

This is beneficial because by the time they've added X beers, they have more of a connection with the site, and likely to not want to lose the info they've plugged in.

revorad
It took me a few minutes of wandering around to see the "Find beers, brewers and places" search box. You really need to make it more prominent. White text instead of ochre yellow might be a better choice. It's quite funny considering I'm in the middle of reading "Don't make me think" by Steve Krug and just 2 minutes ago, I was reading the bit where he wrote, use "Search" for your search box labels, not other words like Find.

As others have pointed out, please list some beers already. It's too much work to expect me to start typing in beer names randomly.

Why don't you present me with your own and other early users' profiles which already have a bunch of beers listed? Ask me if I like any of them or know one I like better.

Even Myspace didn't make me feel so lonely. At least, Tom was my friend. Be my friend, Mat.

Edit: Between the logo, top two nav links, search box, top right links, main page text, Search button text, you have too many text styles going on, which is confusing the visual heirarchy.

MPiccinato
This is great feedback, thanks for going through it. I will be adding more content to guide a new user, and will be updating the UI to make it more intuitive.
MattBearman
The url http://www.hadthatbeer.com/user/1 instantly worried me, so I tried http://www.hadthatbeer.com/user/2, http://www.hadthatbeer.com/user/3, etc and all were available.

Are user profiles meant to be public? If not that's a pretty serious security flaw.

Other than that, the site looks great.

MPiccinato
Thanks!

The profiles are public by default and there is a setting to make it private, which would show only limited information to the public just so that someone can identify you when they are looking to friend you.

dataduck
Couldn't get to the Beers section, assume you're in the middle of updating it? It would be really great to have a way of tagging or arbitrarily grouping beers together, e.g. "fruity" or "goes with Salmon" etc, as well as by obvious characteristics (e.g. brewer). When I'm thinking about a beer, I'm more interested in the sort of beer it is than ranking it by a number.
tnorthcutt
Great idea. My two biggest/immediate suggestions:

Allow Twitter signup (and FB, I suppose - I say Twitter b/c that's the one I care about.

Create a really, really, really good mobile experience. Seriously, if you want users to actually use the site, let them do it while they're drinking a beer, no matter where that is.

MPiccinato
I can't believe I forgot to mention this, there is a mobile web version available that I have been working on, check it out at http://www.hadthatbeer.com/mobile

Should auto redirect if I support your device.