Ask HN: Feedback on my web app please (BuyersVote.com)

I can't point out a specific reason, but for me the front-page has a bit of a "sedo-parking" look to it. Maybe it's the top-menu and the logo, I'm not sure. Sorry for being so vague, but this was my first thought when I clicked the link.

Cool idea, I've always wished there was something like this when shopping in a category. My process always breaks down into cross-referencing several items on cnet, amazon, ign, etc and a vote would give me a quick top 3 to narrow down my choices and save me some time.

Feedback:

1) Is there a way to cross-post an item to multiple lists? There are many categories that are simply subsets of others, ie HP Pavilion 1234 might be in "Computers", "Desktop Computers", and "Gaming Machines." It would be nice to collate votes and comments from many sources too.

2) I agree with AlexMuir on the color scheme, and you already have an alternate color available on the home page in the orange. You've worked this color in on other pages but not on the homepage. I'd suggest using an orange-scheme for the list links since those are something you'd probably want to draw attention to anyway.

3) On the comments page, I tried to click the up/down arrows before realizing they were just symbols of how a user voted instead of a vote itself. To make it more clear, I'd suggest using a +1 or -1 icon there instead of a different colored arrow.

4) You may be able to fill in some blank lists and items by reading through Amazon metadata or the like. It takes alot less inertia to upvote something than it does to enter a list or item, so I think that makes it more likely to get user involvement.

1) on the actual reviews page you could probably save space by not displaying a whole row for an upvote with no text review

2) if users have the ability to add their own items to the list, you are going to need a way to monitor the lists for duplicates or items that are not specific enough - (example, iPhone) or items that are wrong (iPhone Blackberry). Since you are starting with a clean slate in terms of products, it will be most useful to you to ensure that the product names are kept as clean as possible, this will make it MUCH easier to integrate with a price service if you plan to monetize it that way in future.

3) I'm not sure what the 'revisions' button is supposed to do (not technically, I mean in terms of usefulness to the site). I was able to rollback someone else's review to a previous version.

4) Product lists can grow to be quite diverse and you will need a way to categorize the lists the same way that products are grouped into lists. For example, you may need an Electronics category where all PC's, cell phones and GPS's are listed. And futher on you may need to break the cell phone category into 'Smart Phones' and 'Cell Phones'. Advice for this is that if you do plan to monetize by connecting with a price service then map your categories to that of the price service because it will be easier to sync up your products later (unless they really don't match your categorization in which case you will need a way to match them up behind the scenes.)

5) Don't know how you would approach this one, but when I went to 'Blogs for Entrepeneurs' and clicked on 'Paul Grahams Blog' I could see that the response was positive so I would want to check out this blog. If I didn't know who Paul Graham was I would need to then google his name to find his blog. It would be nice for items like that if the person who creates the item could add some text or blurb about it. But I'm not sure how that would translate when adding an actual product that is not a blog.

Hope that was useful :) Good luck with it!

[edit: spelling]

Nice start to your app. I had a similar idea a few years ago which I never acted on. One thing you might want to do is categorize things by price. When I thought about this idea it was because whilst if I am going to buy an espresso machine I go out and research all the details and then make a decision based on many factors, most of my friends ask me "what is the best espresso machine under $500" etc. Whilst that doesn't apply to some things you have like banks, it does for most things people will buy.

Good luck, hope it works.

What exactly is the etiquette for posting a "Review my Startup/Webapp" as an ask or rather as an actual link? I've seen it both ways an I'm wondering if one is preferred over the other.