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Ask HN: Review my new single service website

17 points by lennysan ↗ HN
http://www.simplecountrycodes.com/

The idea is to offer a completely painless way to find the country codes you need when dialing internationally.

What I'm looking for is ideas to make the process potentially simpler, easier to use, or more useful. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

51 comments

[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 153 ms ] thread
lennysan
One thing I'm finding that I didn't plan for is that I'm getting a lot of visitors from outside the US. Any advice on internationalizing the site?
eru
Just put up a some simple text: "If you'd like to help translate this site into your language, please feel free to drop me a line at [email]. Thank you!"
lennysan
I like it! Crowdsource it. I'd probably want to have at least two people do it independently per country to make sure they aren't saying naughty things.
eru
You can also check their translation by putting it back into English with an automated translator. (Google has one for example.)
RossM
You don't seem to have a lot of content actually on the site. My suggestion would be to build a phrase table for country names, and set a cookie after the user has entered their home country for use later on.
pclark
You should make the cursor snap to the first text box upon loading of the page

Can you make it not autocomplete text in the text field? Eg, type UK and it fills in UKraine ... nicer if it only auto completes when I click a result / select with arrows and press enter/tab.

Make the error page (select 1 country and click submit) much nicer, ideally inline javascript.

I'd make the results auto generate above the text fields, this way I can easily enter another two countries to calculate simply by pressing tab a few times.

It's also too hard to return back to the home page (assuming you don't do the above suggestion) -- how about a little image at the end of the sentence which when clicked takes you back to the homepage?

thats all I can think of right now - cool app!

ahlatimer
Personally, I hate it when my cursor snaps to the first open text box. Maybe I'm the only one annoyed by it, but I'd suggest against it.
eru
I tend to like it. So you'd better do an A/B-test before committing either way.
RossM
I agree, it's much preferable than to tabbing to it (since most sites don't use tabindexes).
trevelyan
You can focus the text box without moving the person's cursor. That's a much better approach imho.
eru
I'd thought that was what was meant originally.

But --- so websites can not only move focus around but also the (mouse) cursor?

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Jakob
Sure. Search for "Windows.Forms.Cursor.Position"
lennysan
Great discussion. Will try some A/B testing here and test bounce rates.
JeremyChase
You could also think about using geolocation to pre-populate the first box. They have a free database and API that would work for this application: http://www.maxmind.com/app/support
cabalamat
And use cookies so that the value in the first box is the same as it was last time.

While you're at it, why not expand the site so it contains more information about countries, e.g. include internet country codes. Include currencies for the from and to countries and currency conversions.

lennysan
Like the idea of keeping the previous values, though I'll try to see if I can do this without cookies.

In regards to the second idea, I'm trying to keep the site as simple as possible, and adding anything else will only hurt (imho).

eru
I agree. Of course you can add a link to another single service site of you (or Wikipedia etc), that include that information.
Jakob
One important point is missing: If I want to phone to Germany, I have to omit the first zero of the area code. Phoning to Italy I mustn’t omit it.

Make the result inline javascript. One page load less.

Additionally, wouldn’t it make sense to add some "dial this number now with Skype" or some related service?

Good service.

jgrahamc
Ideally there'd be a third box where I can enter the number I'm trying to call and the service would tell me exactly what to dial.
lennysan
Love the idea. That's Phase III :)
sounddust
Same thing with France; you have to omit the first zero. Furthermore, there really isn't an "area code". You should just say to omit the first zero of the number.
staunch
Same with Japan...

If you want to call 080 7653 9523 you dial 011 81 80 7653 9523

jlees
On this Mac laptop, screen at full brightness in daylight, I can hardly see the grey text.

Although it says 'country' I can see a lot of people typing in cities. Any way to resolve those as well?

Also: trim whitespace. I typed in UK, hit space to remove Ukraine as a match, and it said no matches for "UK ".

lennysan
Good point. Will think about this one.
mshafrir
Allow a user to specify a country's name by its common abbreviation. For example, UAE for United Arab Emirates.
lennysan
Any ideas where I could find all of the common abbreviations?
amjith
You can take it one step further and add the area codes to your database.

So I can choose to call munich from US, and it'll autofill the area code and the country code.

lennysan
I'm doing my best to avoid that (for now) :)

But I agree, could be really useful.

sachmanb
Like it, bookmarked it. You could try and make it simpler (be careful....) but it does exactly what it's supposed to really well. I like the combobox usage as opposed to a dropdown.
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lennysan
Thanks! Any ideas how to make it simpler?
tracy
Bad gray and make the info text disappear when one clicks in the field.
lennysan
Not sure what you mean, but I presume the gray auto-replaced text isn't great?
resdirector
Perhaps include current time in the from-country and to-country? Perhaps, also let the user set when they plan to call, e.g., 5pm to-country time, and it gives the from-country time...and vice versa.
lennysan
I really like the idea of showing the country times. I've been looking into ways to do this, but it isn't trivial. I will definitely keep keep thinking about this. I personally would find it really useful.
resdirector
Is it getting-the-data which isn't trivial? You can write a crawler for wikipedia. Each country has their time zones in their entry (nicely formatted which makes it easy for parser to find), with daylight saving information too. Many countries, are, of course spanned across a few time zones, but that shouldn't matter.

The root page for your crawler could be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population, for instance.

mattmcknight
Are single service websites the same as single serving websites?
lennysan
Never differentiated the two myself
tezza
Hi there lennysan. Nice idea.

My (minor) comment is:

Work on the keystrokes when the type ahead box appears.

For instance GR selects

Greece ... Great Britain.

In this mode the UP arrow should select Great Britain. Currently it is not bound.

Just my usability 2p.

lennysan
Awesome tip, will investigate.
tezza
Another comment.

Looking at Great Britain -> Australia, you say ::

... 00 + 61 + area code + phone number

There are only 7 such area codes. These correspond to an Australian State. Probably it would be worth listing some _example_ phone numbers in each State, with a label to each State. Often I have a local person give the phone number in an email, presuming I'm in the same State.

----

e.g

Victoria :: 00 + 61 + 3 + 9651 8911 (Vic Parliament)

New South Wales :: 00 + 61 + 2 + 9230 2111 (NSW parliament)

lennysan
Trying my best to stay away from all that manutia for now, at least until I can justify the amount of work necessary to do that. But agreed, could be really useuful.
psranga
Very nice. How about if the result appeared inline below the "Lookup" button instead of on a new page?
HeyLaughingBoy
Couldn't you just call directory assistance? Usually free the first few usages and most people aren't calling different countries enough that they won't remember the codes for the most recently called ones.
resdirector
Is it possible to try and default to the country the person is actually in? That is, look at their IP address?
areaMan
Your (barely visible) footer "We hope all of the data here is accurate, but if you find that it is not please send comments/suggestions/bugs to @countrycodes."

what's the email ID again?

I'm sure you would've already seen it, but incase if not, try getting in as many features (OR NOT) from http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/dialing.html

It already supports abbreviations like USA and UK, but not UAE. Also auto-completion should come in only if I press the arrow or down keys. If I enter UK, it should not automatically assume UKraine.