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Show HN: Weekdone, weekly status reporting for teams

7 points by jkaljundi ↗ HN
Hey HN friends,

This week we launched in public Weekdone (http://weekdone.com/), a really easy and simple to use weekly team status reporting tool. We already have a lot of startups using us, even in small teams of 4-5 people.

Many use us in addition and in parallel to Basecamp, Asana, Jira, Trello, Pivotal etc. While there is a lot of data in those systems, nobody has time to read what others are up to. So each team member posting their key plans, progress and problems weekly is something everyone has time to read. We'll add import of headlines from the systems above in the future as well.

Any feedback? Would you use this at your startup?

14 comments

[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 42.4 ms ] thread
ScottWhigham
Hmmmm. The only clickable links on that page, without scrolling twice on my 1680x1050 desktop monitor, seems to be the "Register free" button, home, and Sign in. Immediately my "annoy" meter is high. So I scrolled - nada. The graphics on the home page are so small that I can't really see anything useful. So I scroll again. Aha - there's a link: "Read in more detail". Not a particularly inspiring choice of words. I don't want "details" yet - I want a basic overview of WTH you do. I haven't gotten that from the home page really.

Anyway, I clicked the link. And then I see 10 - ten! - links that I have to click through.

Sorry - I'm out. My thinking on stuff like this (SaaS) is that, if the website design goes against how I like to consume/work, then the software itself will be the same way.

Best of luck to you. I like the concept, I think, but the implementation at this stage is just a bit too white-spacey and designer-y for my tastes.

Peroni
Are we looking at the same site? There's an obvious walkthrough link sitting at the bottom of the page, no scroll required.
ScottWhigham
I don't know if we are or not. I clicked the link OP provided. Are you looking at a different page than that one? For me, on my desktop screen, I have to scroll twice to get to the "bottom of the page".
Peroni
I went to http://weekdone.com/. My screen resolution is 1440 x 900. Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/oPLMUq0.png
ScottWhigham
Yeah, my screen is very different: http://i.imgur.com/4qEJZOF.png

Must be something javascript then as NoScript has blocked something.

That said, your screenshot doesn't really change much for me. If OP is expecting visitors who don't want to click the "Register free" button to visually scroll, scroll with their eyes until they finally locate the Walkthrough link in the footer, I think he'll find that they don't.

jkaljundi
Interestingly the walkthrough or some other service description being visible right away has lowered the conversion, both into registered users (you might argue they register because they don't understand what the service is about) as well as engaged (and later paid) users. But your criticism is valid and I agree with a lot of what you said.
jkaljundi
Thanks for the comments! We are currently running many experiments with vastly different homepage variations, so it might be a bad time to comment on that. Some are short, some long. Some have "more information" links visible right away, some only in the footer. Happy to share our findings later on.
shail
I hate weekly status reports. Anyone else? or is it just me.

I am not saying anything negative about weekdone in specific.

Its just that I hate weekly reports or meetings where weekly reports are being collected.

jkaljundi
I've seen status reports that people hate and ones that everybody loves. The main difference is is there something valuable in it for the person who needs to fill them in? Do you get feedback? Do you value the information provided by others?

Quite often managers or other team members never read them, so you're spending valuable time to write into black hole. One key is for managers to always provide feedback on your report. Even just knowing someone has read it makes it more positive. In Weekdone we have 5-point scale review ratings and managerial comments for that.

Another thing is the reports being too long. We've found anything more than 5-7 achievements or plans per week is the maximum anyone will read.

dlf
I think this is another one of those apps where it would be killer to be able to play around with a demo before registering. "Sign up to save your data" sort of thing.
jkaljundi
Good idea, will look into offering that. Have discussed that with our team before, but have lacked resources to do that really well. Definitely in the future.
DistortedRhymes
I'll look it using this in my dreary day job. You would be suprised how hard it is to keep track of 12 staff that report to you and know what they are actually up to when you are extremly busy yourself. It would add a lot of pressure to their working weeks to commit to what they are doing and have to report against it.

Great tool I say!

jkaljundi
Thank you! Let me know if I can be of any assistance.