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Rate my web app: 360 Voltage is in Alpha (see comments) (360voltage.com)

17 points by wmeredith ↗ HN
Good morning, HN. We've been slaving for months and we're finally launch-ready.

This community was so amazing last time we launched a web site that we're taking our own advice (http://blog.200nipples.com/2008/07/launch-the-first-24-hours/) and doing a Hacker News launch. We're basically in Alpha right now, we'll be in Beta next week with all initial features online by 4th quarter 2009.

Anyway, this site was built with guys like you in mind, so let us know what you think.

36 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 39.4 ms ] thread
wmeredith
Good morning, HN. We've been slaving for months and we're finally launch-ready.

This community was so amazing last time we launched a web site, that we're taking our own advice (http://blog.200nipples.com/2008/07/launch-the-first-24-hours...) and doing a Hacker News launch. We're basically in Alpha right now, we'll be in Beta next week with all initial features online by 4th quarter 2009.

Anyway, this site was built with guys like you in mind, so let us know what you think.

DirtyAndy
My thoughts: 1. Like most people here I didn't really like to have to login to see anything, especially with the bait-and-switch approach. I think you either need to show a random result for people to see, or let them do a single search and log an IP address to something (difficult as I guess multiple people from one company can have same IP). Another option would be to show a reduced set of information maybe show 1 or 2 of the test results in full and all the rest just have the % without clarifying what is good and bad?

2. Site looks really nice. I like the blurb and the site makes me want to put a URL in and find out more

3. Personally I think it is pricey. I would have thought perhaps a per domain model or the like might work better - $10 to track a domain for a year - with alerts when it goes down or up in score etc? $20 a month might work for some design/development agencies because they can test loads of sites, but I think you are limiting to your target market majorly if you do that.

I've never heard of Amazon payments before so I'm pleased I took a look at your site - I learnt something! I think a lot of business people will prefer that over google and paypal etc.

Good luck!

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bdmac97
Great idea for a site and I love the look of it right now. Simple to see what the site does and visually appealing.

You should add your site to my startup launchly (http://www.launchly.com). I started launchly (with a HN launch as well) to try to help other startups get the feedback and exposure they need to succeed. It also comes with some powerful analytics to track how your launch is performing. Oh and it's free too so that helps!

*Edit. ROFL... "it seems like this is taking awhile... maybe you should grab a sammich"?? Ok that's the first time I think I've had a webapp suggest I go eat while it spins. Awesome.

Also you have a typo here "Upgrade to PRO now to lock in current pricing (over 50% off) for as along you have your subscription." Should be "for as long" not "along".

wmeredith
Typo is fixed. We'll be on launchly next week.
edw519
Try it right now by clicking "Run Voltmeter" forces me to join. No thanks.
bdmac97
I noticed that too but in their defense the signup was ridiculously painless. Only required a login and password. Email was optional. No confirmation required.
MicahWedemeyer
I agree that it's not too hard, but if I weren't an HN member I would have bounced at that point.

I think having the search bar on the homepage is a great idea since it tells me exactly what to do right when I get there. Maybe put a URL in there explicitly (like http://www.mysite.com ) that auto-clears onfocus so it's ridiculously obvious.

Some quick thoughts:

* Provide a "top tip" that is the #1 thing someone should do to improve their page. The tips offered are good, but aren't ranked, even though some are obviously more important than others. * Give the option to have the report emailed to you. I'd like to pass mine off to my business partners. * Possible premium upgrade: Live chat/advice on how to improve your site. People pay for SEO, right?

Final verdict: I liked it, but I don't think I'll come back a lot. There's already a lot of DIY SEO advice out there and I didn't find anything here I didn't already know. I'm a wannabe expert, though, so maybe it's vitally helpful for others.

wmeredith
Awesome feature suggestions. Thanks. I really like the live/chat deal. The email a report feature is already on our list. For the time being you can just export it as CSV or PDF.
brfox
People reuse usernames and passwords, so even though it is painless, now they will have a database of usernames and passwords which can probably be used in a lot of places. Thus, I only sign up for new things rarely and only for things in which I suspect I will need to use frequently.
bdmac97
Hmm... I guess you have a point there. It's frustrating a bit as a developer because in all likelihood if they've done their jobs as developers they DON'T have access to your password at all. The problem is how do you trust a new site when there are obviously some (many?) out there that still use plaintext for passwords? Anyone have a solution for that? Some type of security audit w/a badge that your site can display saying "Hey, we DON'T store your password or have access to it!"

What would you say if they instead used some form of OpenID system (RPX Now or something) so you didn't have to give them your password? Would that help?

mildweed
We PHP CRYPT() those passwords and never see them. I am disappointed you think we'd store passwords in plaintext.
icey
Well, they are trying to charge for the application. If they allowed anonymous use, who would ever pay for it?

You don't have to give them your email address to try it out - you could easily make a throwaway username and password.

lonestar
As you just noted, the account is still anonymous, so there doesn't seem to be a point in requiring it.
icey
Hmmm... Okay, you're right.

It's just funny that if they said "please tell us a name you'd like to use to come back to these results later" then it probably wouldn't have been a big deal at all.

ckinnan
They could offer a free one time snapshot and then require registration/fees to see changes over time or to get recommendations or something.
nkohari
Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the bait-and-switch input box there. It'd be better to put the signup form on the front page and be up-front about it, than have someone put their site's address in and get their wrist slapped.
ckinnan
Agreed. The problem isn't requiring registration, it is that the requirement isn't disclosed until after someone submits a link. Since link submit sites are common (HTML validators, etc) the resulting error page/requirement on this site is pretty jarring to the user.
Derrek
I closed the window as soon as I saw that. I don't feel the need to give out my info to an unknown service.
wmeredith
The feedback on this has been great. We'll figure something out so that it doesn't feel like a bait-and-switch. Maybe we'll change the button to say "log in and run report" or something for logged out users.
pubb
One idea would be to give some preliminary/basic info for free so the customer "gets" something. Then a "login or create an account to see more".

I suppose the tricky part about doing that would be giving the customer something that they would value while leaving them compelled to want more.

philfreo
Minor but helpful in UI: put <label>s on your checkbox text, like "Remember Me", so I can click the words.

Also, it'd be awesome if you could show me which pages were 400/404. A number on it's own isn't too useful in improvement.

allenp
I just tried it and it works great - I like that it produces real suggestions/actionable items.
aw3c2
The "You must be logged in to do that. Log in (or create an account real fast) and we'll send you on your way." text is almost unreadable for me (Opera?). Thin red monospace font on big fat red background.

Good job on making your frontpage usable without Javascript (probably a SEO thing, heh). It is not very beautiful but all information is accessable.

Maybe show some examples of what one gets from the Voltmeter? Why would I give away my mail address for something I don't know much about. I too find the "Run Voltmeter" -> "Oh nonono, you have to signup!" questionable.

wmeredith
Changed the styling on that message. You don't need ot provide an email address to sign up. We've tried to point that out more clearly.
nkohari
Sort of unrelated to the app, but your blog is very difficult to read on Windows. ClearType combined with the small size of Adobe Garamond Pro makes it very difficult to read. Maybe try a web-safe font like Georgia?
wmeredith
I went ahead and changed it all to the sans-serif. This was a point we were back and forth on anyway. Thanks for a push in the right direction.
Banzai10
Instead of blocking the search you should let the search happens and show in some place, please create a user for have access to the features X, Y and Z, but stopping the user when they click in "run voltmeter" doesn't do a good impression.
nkohari
After the initial bait-and-switch annoyance, the app looks great, and it generated some very useful information. Now I need to look into improving my site's rating. :)

I'm definitely going to consider signing up for a pro account as you roll out additional features. I think if you fix that one minor UX problem this could be a very useful tool.

thenduks
Errored for me on my first try (just a simple 500 in an alert box, that's it)... So I tried a different URL and it yelled at me about upgrading to get 'more reports per day' -- I haven't even got one yet!

:/

wmeredith
Ugh, sorry- that's a crap use-case. It's on the bug list.
alexsolo
I noticed for my site that we are getting slightly different scores based on whether we submit pagerduty.com or www.pagerduty.com. We have it set up so that pagerduty.com does a 302 redirect to the www. The Voltmeter app should see both of these as a single domain.

The problems I have noticed:

* For pagerduty.com, the "Keyword Targeting" section shows: 1) moved, 2) permanently, 3) nginx. Looks like it does not follow the redirect.

* For the "Incoming Links" section, I get different results for pagerduty.com and for the www. Again, you should combine the 2 resultsets, as some people might link to the www and others to pagerduty.com.

* In the "Search Engine Index Inclusion" section, it says Pages Indexed by Bing: 68. We don't actually have 68 pages, so I don't see how this is possible.

streety
Why are you doing a temporary redirect rather than a permanent (301) redirect?
Lukeas14
I love the actual product and results, very clear and concise (although it'd be nice to allow users to probe for more information if they want). However, the process to get there was not as simple. I definitely almost bounced a few times. The homepage did not make it clear what the product was about in the first few seconds (for most users that's all the time you get. Maybe some screenshots would clear that up) The first thing the user should probably see on the sign up page is that an email address is NOT required (maybe not include it in that form but after the test is run allow the user to get weekly tests sent to this email which he then has to input). Overall, a very promising site that I would use again. As for the sign up funnel its nothing that website optimizer can't fix