One 5 star rating is worse than 1000 4.5 average ratings. There's a few ways to deal with this, Bayesian average is one.
I think for most aggregate ratings, thumbs up/down is all the useful signal you can get. If you're reading a review, it can be useful to see someone say "I gave this 3.5 stars instead of 4 because the last time I went there the fries were cold." However, on aggregate, that distinction becomes almost entirely lost given 1) peoples varying rating schemes (my 4 could be your 3 stars) and 2) often lovers/haters will just give 5/0 stars, drowning out any nuance. That's why Steam and Netflix switched to thumbs up/down.
The categories are wonky--under TV shows I found Netflix, a video game franchise, running shoes (!)... Maybe have user generated tags?
But generally: good luck! I've thought something like this was needed for a while. I've considered building similar things in the past, and always couldn't figure out how to get a critical mass of users. Here's hoping you succeed where I didn't even try.
tapping on the muesli vs corn flakes comparison gave me no visual feedback to indicate it was ever going to do anything.
then it died.
when it came back I tried tapping on Visual Studio Code, expecting a page to come up but nothing happened. after enough time to flip back to hn and tap that sentence out (on my phone) and there was a page load happening. another 5s after that, a page with a lot of things on it but very little content appeared.
so a couple thoughts:
if you're going to manage page loads and nav with javascript, visual feedback is not optional. (better yet, don't do it with js at all. you don't have to go full SSR, just let your web server handle more of the effort)
every example you have there is going to boil down to personal preference or context dependence. like corn flakes vs museli, no one is going to make buying decisions based on that. there is no "better" only in that comparison, only "better for my situation". same goes for local businesses, IDEs, and whatever else. these scores don't tell me if it will work for me, only that it's popular. this is why the best review sites these days compare and present the results as "if you prefer X, then consider A. if you're on a budget but want Y, then B is a good choice." people want to know what's best for them. if you've got the data then frame a new users experience around "what are you looking for and what do you care about" rather than this zillionth hot-or-not-with-a-twist clone.
A better AI model could achieve the same result in a few days.
Perhaps you should look at how similar projects do it. Platforms like Hupu and Coolapk have public rating features, and users find them easier to understand and use, rather than staring at the current UI unsure how to rate.
When I go on the main page, the things displayed in "Rate These" are all things I've never heard of, and it seems like random noname companies might just be using this as an SEO mill. It might be good to show like, the things with the most ratings or even hard code things you know people actually care about, because when the 6 things I see as the representative sample are "Hoka One One Bondi" and "Secondary School No.2", it kind of makes it seem like I'm going to have to wade through shit to find value.
Or like the "vote now" thing, what's better in Home Services, a webapp I've never heard of or a vacuum cleaner. These aren't like, meaningful things to compare. I would have thought it would be like, what's the best camera under $1K, what's the best bottled water, etc. It seems like the categories might be too broad to be useful.
If I'm understanding this correctly, you're going to need a LOT of user ratings before the rating content is worthwhile to most people.
Maybe focus the site on capturing ratings to start instead of sharing ratings for products that don't have many ratings (visual studio appears to be highest rated product with 2 ratings).
If you just showed me two related products and had me click on my favorite, I'd probably do that 10 times for no good reason.
> visual studio appears to be highest rated product with 2 ratings
That's why Bayesian average is superior; if you don't have enough ratings you basically get assigned the average for all products (or, likely, all similar products in this case).
Looks done to me, no need to lose more time. Just needs a business model.
Best business model for you is "managed content", allow companies to disguise their own ads as ads for your site. I.E. car company pays you to generate a "which is better" between two of their car models and embed it into an ad.
A few thoughts:
One 5 star rating is worse than 1000 4.5 average ratings. There's a few ways to deal with this, Bayesian average is one.
I think for most aggregate ratings, thumbs up/down is all the useful signal you can get. If you're reading a review, it can be useful to see someone say "I gave this 3.5 stars instead of 4 because the last time I went there the fries were cold." However, on aggregate, that distinction becomes almost entirely lost given 1) peoples varying rating schemes (my 4 could be your 3 stars) and 2) often lovers/haters will just give 5/0 stars, drowning out any nuance. That's why Steam and Netflix switched to thumbs up/down.
The categories are wonky--under TV shows I found Netflix, a video game franchise, running shoes (!)... Maybe have user generated tags?
But generally: good luck! I've thought something like this was needed for a while. I've considered building similar things in the past, and always couldn't figure out how to get a critical mass of users. Here's hoping you succeed where I didn't even try.
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well it took 10s of second to load very little.
tapping on the muesli vs corn flakes comparison gave me no visual feedback to indicate it was ever going to do anything.
then it died.
when it came back I tried tapping on Visual Studio Code, expecting a page to come up but nothing happened. after enough time to flip back to hn and tap that sentence out (on my phone) and there was a page load happening. another 5s after that, a page with a lot of things on it but very little content appeared.
so a couple thoughts:
if you're going to manage page loads and nav with javascript, visual feedback is not optional. (better yet, don't do it with js at all. you don't have to go full SSR, just let your web server handle more of the effort)
every example you have there is going to boil down to personal preference or context dependence. like corn flakes vs museli, no one is going to make buying decisions based on that. there is no "better" only in that comparison, only "better for my situation". same goes for local businesses, IDEs, and whatever else. these scores don't tell me if it will work for me, only that it's popular. this is why the best review sites these days compare and present the results as "if you prefer X, then consider A. if you're on a budget but want Y, then B is a good choice." people want to know what's best for them. if you've got the data then frame a new users experience around "what are you looking for and what do you care about" rather than this zillionth hot-or-not-with-a-twist clone.
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A better AI model could achieve the same result in a few days.
Perhaps you should look at how similar projects do it. Platforms like Hupu and Coolapk have public rating features, and users find them easier to understand and use, rather than staring at the current UI unsure how to rate.
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When I go on the main page, the things displayed in "Rate These" are all things I've never heard of, and it seems like random noname companies might just be using this as an SEO mill. It might be good to show like, the things with the most ratings or even hard code things you know people actually care about, because when the 6 things I see as the representative sample are "Hoka One One Bondi" and "Secondary School No.2", it kind of makes it seem like I'm going to have to wade through shit to find value.
Or like the "vote now" thing, what's better in Home Services, a webapp I've never heard of or a vacuum cleaner. These aren't like, meaningful things to compare. I would have thought it would be like, what's the best camera under $1K, what's the best bottled water, etc. It seems like the categories might be too broad to be useful.
If I'm understanding this correctly, you're going to need a LOT of user ratings before the rating content is worthwhile to most people.
Maybe focus the site on capturing ratings to start instead of sharing ratings for products that don't have many ratings (visual studio appears to be highest rated product with 2 ratings).
If you just showed me two related products and had me click on my favorite, I'd probably do that 10 times for no good reason.
> visual studio appears to be highest rated product with 2 ratings
That's why Bayesian average is superior; if you don't have enough ratings you basically get assigned the average for all products (or, likely, all similar products in this case).
Good point — implementing Bayesian averaging so low vote entities don't dominate the leaderboard. Cheers
Bayesian averaging is live
ood point — we're in the early cold-start phase. Working on a quick-vote mechanic (pick A vs B) to drive volume fast. Appreciate the feedback.
do what reddit did and just fake a ton of content and try and egg the fanbois into a ratings war
Wow, how convenient that the "community" ranked your own site the "best service"...
Ha, fair catch. That's from testing during development and shouldn't be ranking. Removing it now.
I hit the back button before the page finished loading
Thanks for the feedback. We had a caching issue that's now fixed. Should be fast now if you want to give it another try.
The page does not need a cookie popup.
Already working on it.
Looks done to me, no need to lose more time. Just needs a business model.
Best business model for you is "managed content", allow companies to disguise their own ads as ads for your site. I.E. car company pays you to generate a "which is better" between two of their car models and embed it into an ad.
Clever. And since its subtle its not like the usual amped up noise blurb of many ads.
But what if your product loses? Fake votes to make your Ford F-150 win vs a Rivian?
Clicked on a random link and was pleasantly surprised with what I found. Not sure I would do it again though. Caught me at a good time.
Peaked my interest. And bam. Gone again.
Remove the emdash from the front page
Good eye — done!
I like corn flakes
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