We wanted it, so we built it...feedback?

http://www.analystsedge.com

by rwebb • 19 years ago

17 64 19 years ago

analystsedge.com

thoughts?

davidw• 19 years ago

The colors/layout give me a headache.

bvttf• 19 years ago

Yeah, I was considering signing up for an account to see if there was a preference for that. Brilliant!

rwebb23• 19 years ago

good idea...

rwebb23• 19 years ago

yeah the black background was a topic of debate. we went for black because all finance guys think bloomberg is the best thing since sliced bread.

corentin• 19 years ago

Do you know what is the reason behind this color scheme? Maybe it's easier to read in crowded trading rooms?

pg• 19 years ago

Not being physically painful is more important than vague associations with Bloomberg.

Also, use lighter fonts or more interline spacing.

dfranke• 19 years ago

I don't like the color scheme but it's bearable. Do take Paul's advice, though, and at least double the interline spacing. Maybe also increase the font size by a point or two. People are going to want to skim through the category names, so underline them or put them in a different color than the surrounding text.

aquateen• 19 years ago

I think the color scheme is great, although when I try to read the links, my eyes do a magic-eye thing.

Try spacing the items out, and put the vote/category/domain below the headline.

ph0rque2• 19 years ago

I actually like the background; I would maybe make all the other colors a bit subdued. My suggestion is to make the text font size a bit bigger.

rwebb23• 19 years ago

thanks! you probably have a nice monitor? we tried making things more mellow, but a lot of our readers have crappy monitors so the dark stuff ends up being black on black...which is tough to see...

chengmi2• 19 years ago

I'd like to see the numeric rank next to the link.

rwebb23• 19 years ago

we opted for a letter based ranking system (derived from moody's debt ranking system) because it relays relative value like a numeric ranking does, but avoids the issue of the user "let down" when they see everything has 0 - 20 votes. there are no +1000 point posts on anything other than digg and reddit...no need to use their system...

chengmi2• 19 years ago

The reason I say to enumerate the links is not so much for ranking purposes, but to reinforce the visual aspect of the page. For me at least, it's much easier to parse the page if there's some kind of visual cue to help me keep track of where I am on a page.

Also, I've been on the web long enough to have learned to scan over and ignore ads (image and text ads), and a list/block of text without bullets or numbers screams "avert your eyes... ads!!" For example, the main content of the page looks very similar to the Google ads on the right column (with the exception of underlines), while the RSS feeds with the bright orange icons screams "look at me on this page of monotony!!"

I hope this helps. Keep up the great work!

mynameishere2• 19 years ago

Drop the google ads until you get serious traffic.

rwebb23• 19 years ago

why?

mynameishere2• 19 years ago

Money derived from ads = traffic * click-thru rate.

Web page quality reduction caused by ads = (Some constant)

So, you plot that out and find out when the money derived exceeds the damage. Requires guesswork, of course.

rrival2• 19 years ago

Nice site. Going to pass it on to a few friends in the industry to see if they have any comments I might pass along.

SEO theory suggests dropping ads until you have lots of traffic b/c with AdSense you provide random relevant exit points and they're not hooked on you yet. It's also distracting, takes away from the experience, etc.

In your case I think it's subtle enough not to detract.

DougBTX• 19 years ago

The line spacing for the list of links is quite small, it makes the page feel quite cramped for me. Notice how the links on bloomberg.com are about twice as far apart. You could also put more space around your logo, again like bloomberg.com. Not sure about the serif font.

rwebb23• 19 years ago

yeah - there is tons of content every day that we want on the site, so we tried to get as much on as we could :) not great from a design perspective, but our users like it way more so far.

whyleyc• 19 years ago

Looks like the jobs page is not picking up your stylesheet ? I see borders round the logo and the major links have default HTML formatting.

rwebb23• 19 years ago

ha - yeah that's jacked up! we weren't going for the purple borders...

rwebb23• 19 years ago

fixed now...

mattculbreth• 19 years ago

I think you've got something nice here. I personally don't care for the color scheme or the letter-based voting, but as you mentioned your likely user base will be comfortable with that. Probably a good move.

I'd actually use more line spacing between news stories though. It feels a bit too cramped to me. I agree with other comments about the ads too--lose them for now.

rwebb23• 19 years ago

thanks very much for the feedback! it has been an interesting exercise for us: balancing what users what, what users actually DO on the site, and "good" design all at the same time. We've ended up going after the first two more aggressively at the cost of the third...simply because good design alone in a forest is worthless :)

donna• 19 years ago

I'd use this but the color scheme is too hard on my eyes as well; doesn't allow me to spend a lot of time reading. I'd also like to have the ability to make comments on the story and hear the chatter of others. It would be nice to be able to look-up stock quotes. Thanks, nice start.

pistoriusp2• 19 years ago

The small speech bubble icon seems to be used for commenting.

rwebb23• 19 years ago

yup...

nreece• 19 years ago

My one suggestion: invert the color scheme to black on white. It will make the site look more professional.

kyro2• 19 years ago

I think it'd be handy to have tool where users can type in or mark certain companies they'd like to follow, and then get a feed of all the recent news pertaining to said company.

rwebb23• 19 years ago

that's an interesting idea, but we're really focusing on "industry" news for the private finance world. specific company news is a huge box we don't want to get even remotely close to. the only reason there are specific companies mentioned in our news is because there is some sort of private finance move going on in relation to them. the goal is for the site to be a place where pe, m&a, hedge, and vc folks can keep track on the buzz in their industries.

kyro2• 19 years ago

I still think a feature like the one I stated would fit in perfectly. With a feature like that, I would most definitely be inclined to register with your website and check it on a daily basis.

cstejerean• 19 years ago

well specific company news sounds hard, but you can have something like a saved search filter that scans a full text index for specific words so you can essentially view all company specific news (at least all articles that mention that company).

vegashacker• 19 years ago

I don't know much about this world, but it seems like the idea could be a good one. I found it pretty hard to read though. Might have been the color scheme, or that everything was too close together, or both.

I also don't see the username of the person who submitted the story. This might not actually be important, but I did catch myself scanning for who submitted each story. In this case, it was to see if it was all one or two submitters (i.e., you guys), or if you already had a real community going.

pistoriusp2• 19 years ago

It might make it look more uniform, and less chaotic, if you move the voting, commenting and other elements that have static widths to the left side of the link.

rwebb23• 19 years ago

that's an interesting idea. the one line + variying lengths + static lengths produces some issues for sure.

euccastro5• 19 years ago

I think it would be better to align the vote arrows vertically, like in reddit and here, rather than putting the down arrow at the right of the up one.

comatose_kid• 19 years ago

A few thoughts:

What about searching? I might want to see all articles with Citigroup in the headline for example...

Why not add regular news as well - news that affects the finance world? Actually, on a totally different topic, it would be really neat to create a site which somehow reads the news and correlates it with stocks that could be affected. For example, Apple's ipod news caused shares in SNDK to get whacked (the ipod nano's didn't use as much flash as SNDK investors hoped).

rwebb23• 19 years ago

search feature is linked to on the right side in the "this site" box...

someone above wants stock news too...not something we want to get even close to though :) toooooo much info!

byrneseyeview3• 19 years ago

I like this a lot. It's much more professional than http://digstock.com/ , which never really took off.

rwebb23• 19 years ago

thanks! digstock really is focusing on stock specific news though. our focus is on private finance news.

byrneseyeview3• 19 years ago

I see no indication of how many comments a story already has.

byrneseyeview3• 19 years ago

Also, there doesn't appear to be any indication of who submitted a story.

qvtqht• 19 years ago

I like the color scheme.

You should allow logging in with the user name as well as the e-mail address.

The upgrade/downgrade links give me no feedback, but that may be because I'm using Opera.

I'll be checking up over the next week or two. The news is good from what I've seen so far.

blored• 19 years ago

Looking good !!!

menloparkbum• 19 years ago

Now that all that information is aggregated into one convenient place, it doesn't really provide an edge, does it? ;-)

ulvund• 19 years ago

Loads slowly

kingnothing• 19 years ago

Black on white text > white on black text.

I won't even look at it long enough to find out what it is supposed to do with that color scheme.

We wanted it, so we built it...feedback?

Related Stories