Show HN: My first webapp - cheatsheets that help you prepare for job interviews

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4092151

by faisalkhalid • 14 years ago

17 11 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

http://www.littlechits.com<br> This is my first web app; I built this on my own, over the past 4 months, using the Ruby on Rails Tutorial, a few other e-books, and a lot of help from the Stack Overflow community!<br>Feedback would be greatly appreciated, in particular: how can I make this more social?<br>Thanks,<br>Faisal

faisalkhalid5• 14 years ago

Website link: http://www.littlechits.com

nqureshi• 14 years ago

Firstly, congrats on making a webapp - as someone who taught himself web development, I know how much work it takes. So well done.

A few comments, in the spirit of honest feedback:

(1) Your problem isn't making it more social right now. Your problem is the product itself.

How do people solve this problem right now? By writing stuff down on paper, or in Word Docs, or even making a Powerpoint deck. Your problem here is that the solution isn't much better than these alternatives - even if you offered me free 'chits', I'd still prefer to use a Word doc, just because I'm comfortable with it, and I don't see how the thing you're offering makes life any easier or better for me. Indeed, it just looks like a version of Powerpoint.

(2) The text isn't rendering correctly in Chrome. Specifically, the 'want to improve your interviewing skills' line is overlapping with itself, which means a bad first impression.

(3) The name isn't great. Little 'chits'? Everytime I say that, it feels like I'm saying 'little shits'.

(4) The 3 steps don't make sense. Place my order and then what? Is this a physical product? (It is, but I had to think about it - bad.) Decide whether I want a call with you guys? Why would I want a call? Is the product not easy enough to use on its own? I don't want to waste my time speaking to people... and so on.

Try and make the 'steps' thing compelling, and use images.

Again, congrats on deploying the app, and I'm sure you'll continue to iterate on the design etc - but I would strongly recommend reconsidering the product first. If you've spoken to many customers already and they REALLY WANT these things, and if you've already got orders (do you guys charge money? Again, not clear from the home page) then I'm probably wrong - but I doubt it.

faisalkhalid5• 14 years ago

thank you, very useful feedback. i need to change the name -- others have raised the same point as you about it sounding too much like little shits - and also add more details.

jasonz• 14 years ago

if you want to quickly fix number 2 (overlapping text)

add some line-height to your banner class (40-45px looked good to me)

Sambdala• 14 years ago

I like how clean the site is, but (imo) you have to change the name, especially if you want to get some consulting work or build a community out of this.

It's also really hard to tell what the product is (pdf sheets? Physical note cards?) unless you do some digging. If I'm evaluating a product page I've never been to before, I should be able to get a feel for the product within a few seconds.

faisalkhalid5• 14 years ago

thanks, this is great feedback. the product is physical note cards, i will clarify that on the website as well.

marcomassaro• 14 years ago

Nice work. Name definitely needs to be changed (sounds like little shits as someone else mentioned). I think the value prop needs to be better. I read the site and I'm still not sure what I'm getting or why I need it.

best of luck

faisalkhalid5• 14 years ago

thanks. i thought that having a 'benefits' section on the main page would answer the question as to why use the cheat sheets, but i guess i can try to push that message through in an even stronger way.

devoid• 14 years ago

Very interesting. I would work on your spelling throughout the site...

Peroni• 14 years ago

I don't get it.

We provide free and custom made cheatsheets...

Ok, great. Next page:

...and I'm willing to pay up to US$...

Clarify the concept for me. Am I meant to bring these into an interview as a reference point or are these to be used in advance to help me prepare? If it's the former then I can tell you, as someone who has interviewed hundreds of people over the years, someone glancing over these in an interview would leave a terrible impression.

Finally, on your about us page you have the following:

Faisal used to be terrible at interviewing, but over the past 3 years, and with over 500 interviews under his belt (on both sides of the table) he's gotten pretty good at it.

The instant impression I get from this is that Faisal is terrible at interviews. It's not the most convincing argument.

faisalkhalid5• 14 years ago

Hi - no you would not take these to an interview. You would use these to prepare before going in. Maybe it's not for everybody, but for people who are really bad at interviewing (and I've worked with a few of them) structuring their answers and thinking about them before the interview can help. There's nothing magical about cheat sheets other than the fact that using them forces you to think through and structure your answers beforehand. Maybe you already do that - in which case this product isn't for you.

Show HN: My first webapp - cheatsheets that help you prepare for job interviews

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