Ask HN: Please review my webapp: Sit4.Us | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Please review my webapp: Sit4.Us

5 pointsmegamark168 comments

Hey everyone, I created a little webapp to make scheduling a babysitter easier and I'd love your input.

You can find it here: http://sit4.us

I got sick of calling around to a bunch of teenaged girls trying to find someone to babysit our kids so that I could take my wife out on Friday nights. I thought it would be much easier if I could just shoot an email out to all the people in our pool of babysitters and the first one to reply back that they can do it gets the job (and everyone else is notified that the gig has been taken). So that's basically what this app does, it's just a way to manage requesting a babysitter from within your personal network of babysitters.

Please let me know what you think, both about the site and about the idea in general. I don't really care that much if it doesn't become the next big thing (which I'm sure it won't), because it's already making my life easier just in the last week that I've been using it. Even if I'm the only one who ever uses it it's totally worth the $9 domain registration and 2 or so days of work it took to throw it together using Django.

Thanks in advance!

Mark

Disclaimer: I just finished reading "Don't Make Me Think" so I'm probably just being arrogant when I list all of these possible changes. I know it's hard to hear so much criticism so let me add this: I like it

Here are three things I would do right away:

1. Usability testing

2. Usability testing

3. Usability testing

The site is pretty good for usability but there were a few things that I didn't get right away. My list of possible changes:

1. Feedback link: I thought this would take me to a page of testimonials or maybe to a UserVoice page. I think "Contact Us" would be more appropriate.

2. About link: I thought this would be a page about the developers and who they are and where they're from. I'd probably change this link to "How It Works"

3. Too much text: as the maxim goes "Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what's left"

4. Add request page: If you have no contacts it just displays nothing. You should probably put a little field in there that allows you to add contacts directly from that page.

5. Contacts: Change it to "Babysitters". Contacts is kind of ambiguous.

6. Contacts page: I would show the "Add Contact" field above the list of contacts instead of having a link to it on another page. It's such a small form that it won't matter that much.

7. Editing contact: add a "Cancel" link

8. Editing icon links: I'd move them to right instead of the left just because I'm more used to seeing them there.

9. Home page: I'd change "Welcome to Sit4us" to something that tells people what the site does. Like "Organize your babysitters" or "Contacting babysitters made easy".

10. Tagline: Add a tagline below your logo

11. Make logo clickable. Should send you to the homepage.

Anyway I'll stop now. So far I quite like it despite my list of nitpicks.

What is your monetization strategy, if you have one?

Wow, thank you for the amazingly helpful feedback! I fixed most of the issues you raised, and I really appreciate your invaluable feedback. It can be really difficult for me to cut back on text, I'm such a longwinded person by nature, but I definitely see the need for it.

Thanks again!

I have no need for babysitters, so I can't comment too much on the idea. However, I think you could make it more general (usable for types of jobs other than babysitting) fairly easily too and then it might be more useful to a larger number of people--although I know that's not necessarily what you're going for.

One minor UI nitpick: the hover effect on the navigation links is very difficult to see on some monitors. I'd make it less subtle.

A couple of things: if you own sit4us.com you may want to redirect to your site (judging from what you've said, I'm not sure that you do).

I was working on a project awhile back, and we used the name "bets4.us". People would try to go to our site in about this order:

  bets4.us
  betsforus.com
  bets4us.com
  betsfor.us

Also, it would be nice to have a demo up so that I don't have to give up my email address just to see if I want to register.

Unfortunately I don't own sit4us.com, but sitfor.us is available, so I might grab that one too.

Do you think a video demo (similar to the short clip Thymer.com uses) would be helpful?

Thanks!

A video demo, or even screenshots would be nice. Just... something so I have an idea if the service you're offering meets my needs. (The theoretical "my", that is - I don't have kids so I'm not your target market.)

A video demo would be excellent.

Clickable link: http://sit4.us

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