Ask HN: Startup Critique Request for Qwanz.com - polling site with a twist

http://www.qwanz.com/

by byrneseyeview • 17 years ago

14 17 17 years ago

Hi HN,

I'm working with the founder and dev team of Qwanz.com, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the site. Qwanz is a polling site, with one key feature: once you've answered a poll, it gives you some next steps you can take -- including political / media / business figures who can actually use the information.

For example, someone who voted in this poll (http://www.qwanz.com/poll/245/) about Olympia Snowe could then forward the results to Snowe's press secretary (or call their office directly).

Qwanz is a startup with a thesis, and the thesis is simple: people fill out polls because they care about issues. If they really care, they'll welcome the chance to make a bigger difference.

Your feedback is appreciated! We're in the very early stages, so HN's comments will play an important role in what Qwanz does next.

Here are some Qwanz polls on what Qwanz should be doing:

http://www.qwanz.com/poll/248

http://www.qwanz.com/poll/247

frig• 17 years ago

You're smarter than this site looks. Good luck.

Allow anonymous poll response but keep separate results tables for anon / logged in / everyone.

How are the follow-up steps created? If it's just some googly thing it won't be that compelling.

Homepage is extremely cluttered in a bad way for first-timers; this isn't always a big deal but it's good to be aware of.

Consider organizing it s.t. eg Olympia Snowe could have an official "polls" channel for polling her constituents; impact of poll results is more credible that way.

Have a "clone this poll" feature and follow-up / "poll response"; if some user dislikes a poll's phrasing or options they ought to be easily able to clone a poll and tweak it....keeping around that metadata so that people taking either poll can see other related polls. Similarly with response polls -- some way to post a counter-poll. Good for user engagement.

Settle on if your sideboxes have rounded or square corners plz.

levirosol• 17 years ago

i second the comment about allow anonymous responses.

biohacker42• 17 years ago

I'm guessing you're going to get bit of traffic from people who meant to go to QwanTz.com

byrneseyeview3• 17 years ago

Well, that would be nice. Not exactly targeted traffic, unless we start to do dinosaur-related polls.

(I didn't pick the name / URL. I would have gone with something like "pollsthatwork.org" or "pollsbutbetter.com".)

chriseppstein• 17 years ago

I prefer http://gopollgo.com/ It has a super clean UI and tons of real-time features that kick ass.

byrneseyeview3• 17 years ago

That is a great-looking site. (Although if you happen to know the designer, you might suggest making the voting statistics chart more clear. You can't tell which choices correspond to which colors unless you vote.)

BenSchaechter2• 17 years ago

Hi there,

I'm the main developer for GoPollGo.com. Some pretty big changes are coming along in the next few weeks and we're definitely fixing up the voting statistics portion of the site.

maukdaddy• 17 years ago

Sounds a lot like Kwanzaa =)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwanzaa

aaronblohowiak• 17 years ago

or dinosaur comics

Tichy• 17 years ago

On the hp I don't see what makes it special.

The name sounds awful to me and combined with the design it inspires associations with unpleasant business products.

spokey• 17 years ago

One nit: you are missing a question mark following the first bullet under "Why Qwanz?", so "Feel powerless to influence matters that are of interest to you" reads like a benefit statement instead of a question. (I.e.: "It can make me feel powerless? Sign me up.") I assume you meant "Do you feel powerless...?".

Also, maybe it's just me, but that whole image is very fuzzy looking, while the rest of the text on the page is nice and crisp. Maybe it should be PNG instead of JPG?

nym2• 17 years ago

Make the twist more obvious.

apsurd• 17 years ago

"Ever wanted your opinion to actually matter? Qwanz groups your opinion with other passionate people and lets you take action, together."

I am a big fan of blatant one line descriptions of what a site does. You can follow this with your "why qwanz" graphic. I'm not saying this is the best line ever, but you have to think of what benefits you are trying to convey.

Polling sites are boring. I'm not going to get excited about a polling site. Seems like you are pushing more emotion though. People passionate for causes can group their opinion and actually "do something about it". Sell that passion to me, not the details and certainly not "polling".

First impressions:

Terrible enterprisey, hard to remember (how to spell) name.

I like the 3 top create, view, browse boxes. They were the first things I noticed and helped me understand the site a little better.

Usability impressions:

Right panel is too big. No need for that. Looks like ads. Encroaching on the content. Flash movie looks like an ad and could very well be thrown into a "learn more" page. Seems like you are trying to oversell your concept - dont add more, just be clear! Benefits, not features.

Take some organizational influence from stackoverflow. It's all about scope. You have 10 main categories. Each of those cats has filters and sorters. Then your categories apparently have sub-catories. I don't like how sub-cats are simply partitioned within the list. The Main category "home page" should have a sub-cat drilldown, and a global (relative to the category) list of all polls with sub-cat tags. (think stack overflow).

This logic should be true for the global list of all top level categories. I.e. like the stackoverflow homepage. A list of the top global polls with tags. Organization and scope imo is very important.

Using this logic, you don't even really need a right panel, maybe just a tag list or other popular filters, sorts.

Links:

http://www.qwanz.com/poll/248

could easily be : http://www.qwanz.com/poll/248/what-changes-should-qwanz-make

thats it for now.

adityakothadiya• 17 years ago

Nice UI and features, but I have basic problem - what does Qwanz mean? I'm not able to correlate to its idea. Its very hard to remember...so very unlikely to come back... Just my $0.02!

Ask HN: Startup Critique Request for Qwanz.com - polling site with a twist

Related Stories