Ask HN (+girlfriends): Review my site - RetailFans.com

[tower10]

I just launched RetailFans.com and would love to get some feedback from the HN community. The site is focused around fashion, clothes, beauty products etc. and works on a similar algorithm to news sites like HN (except that it's product-based) - the latest popular items rise to the top of the list. It's not exactly a hacker's paradise, so if you have someone nearby that more closely fits my target audience, it would be great if you could persuade them to have a play around and look over their shoulder.

Any feedback you can give is much appreciated. I really liked the stream of consciousness feedback that sam_in_nyc gave in this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=446638 - more of that would be fantastic.

As a side, HN has been a great source of inspiration during this project - thank you.

[thesethings]

(OK... I'll be the token girl who suggests you change your request to "+ friends" instead of "+ girlfriends" :D)

So... I checked out your site. Some early thoughts: the graphic assets and design could probably be improved a bit. There are a million aesthetics that could go here (urban sophisticate, funked up, modern Japanese a la MUJI), so I won't suggest any single one, but right now it's just a little too much like a YouTuber's personal channel. I think the YouTube channel look can work IF it's matched by a really personal editorial voice, but this site is kind of "crowdsourced," so the design should probably be adjusted for that.

Idea: Stackoverflow, but for retail.

As others have pointed out, you need to entice people to join in, and I will make a radical suggestion here that will kind of disrupt your entire model:

Make it problem-centric, rather than product-centric.

As many other other sites have proven, when the "social object" is a question, it invites participation.

People asking what they should wear to a party, how to get rid of acne... all the same items at play, but just a different paradigm. Kind of like Stackoverflow.com, but for retail stuff. (Yes, I went there.)

Going back to YouTube, there is an incredible YouTube community around retail reviews, reviewing what sucks, what's a rip-off, who's having a sale. Sometimes it's 14 year old girls, sometimes it's adult make-up artist guys. But they are REALLY enthusiastic and doing it "for free." (Proving people like this exist on the Internet.)

You might tap into that.

Example: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=xsparkage&view=video...

Also, as for the question-centric model, I think Yahoo! Answers also has a lot of questions about this stuff (and yeah, admittedly of varying quality.) You could mine that, too.

Back to design: here's a "digg but for shopping" site you might check out: http://www.stylehive.com/

[tower10]

Thanks for the feedback - really helpful. I've been thinking about adding a poll feature (e.g. "Which of these dresses should I wear for a party tonight?"). Making that the main focus of the site is an interesting idea.

[thesethings]

Maybe for now, you could more manually garden the landing page, using feed of recent comments, so even if they're infrequent, they can be emphasized.

[tower10]

I'm trying to keep the homepage as free of clutter as possible but I do think this would add a bit of personality to the site (as opposed to the sterile, crowdsourced feel that you mentioned before). I'll have a think about a creative way to put this in.

[thesethings]

Gotcha. How about this then: The users are putting in some nice personal words about each of their submissions. However, these extremely valuable words kind of appear as if they're coming from the vendor's site (watering them down, making them seem like catalog copy). Suggestion: Put the words and user's avatar closer together. Move the vendor-link farther way. This will emphasize the conversation. Perhaps even go crazy with a word bubble shape a la Twitter?

[tower10]

I'll have a play around with swapping the vendor link / avatar ...thanks for all the ideas!

[phr]

You're driving away new submissions by asking for a login or registration at that stage. At this point you can't afford any barriers between the submitter and getting their item up on the list.

I suppose you could include the login/registration info on the submission page, but I'd allow anonymous submission.

[arjunb]

You might also consider using Facebook Connect. Check out http://www.brightkite.com/ as one example of a pretty nice login flow, there are more on our wiki @ http://tinyurl.com/6ybl44.

[tower10]

Thanks for the feedback. I will have a careful think about anonymous submissions (obviously spam is a big issue). Anonymous voting is definitely on the cards.

[tower10]

Clicky link: http://retailfans.com

[phr]

Not the kind of stuff I'm interested in shopping for, but seems like it might appeal to some. I'd think it might work for a lot of product categories where people have strong views and like to exchange them. For shoppers on a quest for a particular item, your competition is probably the reviews on Amazon.

I'd recommend larger, higher-resolution pictures behind the thumbnails, or perhaps at the individual article level.

[ucdaz]

You should have some sort of contest to get more ppl to sign up and create content. For example, the user with the most votes of the day wins X.

[DanceNailsDance]

I'm a freelance fashion editor (boyfriend is the HN reader) and I'd be happy to help/make suggestions or just be a resource. My twitter is @DanceNailsDance.