Sidescope: Compare anything side by side

[Diggol]

We are private-testing a site for compiling side by side comparisons of anything or anyone at Sidescope.com and would like to have your feedback on whether this is useful, design, usability.

The idea of Sidescope is that business or life decisions often come down to picking one out a few choices, but one often does not have all the information or know all the evaluation criteria to compare the choices. In an organization, inputs from all stakeholders are often desired to build a consensus.

With Sidescope, you can create a comparison to compare anything or anyone side by side and invite other users to help you compare them. You can invite people you trust or whose opinion you depend on to help you compare the choices. Users can help you compare products, services, companies, colleges, celebrities, politicians, etc., on criteria you choose, or you can have them help you pick what criteria to compare. Users can vote, add comments, pictures or videos to help you compile a comparison. You can also assign an importance level to each criterion and a final score calculated by summing votes in each criterion weighted by the importance level of each evaluation criterion. Comparisons can be private or public.

The site is invitation only at this time. Here is an invitation code: 4427f3d1-b49a-471c-95af-2fb2ccfacf06 (copy and paste into the Invitation Code box in the Sign Up screen Side by side comparisons: Sign up). The code is good for 20 free Premium Accounts. If the code runs out, please let me know and I can generate another code for you in a couple of days.

Thanks

Linda Young
Compare Anything Side by Side

[Clicken]

Hi Linda,

I wanted to look around before I sign up.

[Diggol]

Clicken, good point. Here is a test account you can use:

username: review
password: test123

Thanks

Linda
Compare anything side by side

[Clicken]

I have not seen a site like this before, and I certainly wouldn’t sign up without being able to browse through it first. Why do we need to sign up just to look? Browsing and watching others will encourage membership to build quickly I would think.

The ‘Popular’ page seems to be the Home page which should have more content, an opening statement at least. The “What is Sidescope?” from the FAQ page might work as an opening… Something.

Now about the code,… There is a title but not a description or keyword meta tag. Is there a special reason for not having these? I was lost in the rest of your code. J

Great idea btw!

[Diggol]

Clicken,
Thanks for the comments. Your point of telling people what it is about on the front page is very valid. We will add something there.

Also, we will add the keyword and description meta when we launch. Now we just want to test it and get some feedback.

Linda
Side by side comparisons powered by wisdom of crowd

[davebarnes]

The homepage makes me register!
No!
I am gone!

Why do you think your website/content is so great that I should register before I get to see any of it?
Oh, I know; you are the Wall Street Journal. Oh, you are not.
Oh, I know; you are the New York Times. Oh, you are not.

What planet do you live on?

[Diggol]

Hi Dave,
Valid point. That is why we provided a test account:

username: review
password: test123

We did not open the site because it is still being tested.

Thanks

[Keimos]

Hi Linda,

How about telling people how to use the site

I can see the potential but the way it works seems rather complicated

Keimos

[Diggol]

Hi Keimos,
Thanks for the comments. Could you please expand on what are the problem areas?

You start a comparison by clicking "Start a new comparison" and follows the steps. When you view a comparison, you can vote by clicking the stars, add comments by clicking "Comments".

Do you think we should add a "How to use Sidescope?" in the FAQ?

Thanks again

Linda

[Dcrux]

First, check out a site like Koders. See how they have 1) a nice section of example searches. 2) The ad is placed on the bottom and out of the way.

Your results page is a little under informative. (I chekced out the South Beach / Zone comparison). Clicking on the expanded section, there are hosts of problems. Let's take a look.

What's being compared. This is cut off, with no ability to see the full description. This is trivial functionality available in most blog software, where clicking leads the user to the full post.

Picture video thing could be improved, but is okay.

There's a definite sense that, with all the sponsor message sections real site purpose is to have a scaffold for advertising. The features sections don't thrill me with their scintillating information value, and this is a fairly popular comparison item.

Visually the page layout fights the user instead of assisting them. And I don't even want to get into posting a new comparison page.

Check out the articles:
Rah-Rah Ratings Online. Ratings widgets are easy to add, hard to get right. In other words, the have the information value of horoscopes. Can they be done right? Sure. Are they? Nope.

Magic Ink - Information Software and the Graphical Interface. Just a little of the way down the page you'll see a redesign the search results page from "a popular online bookstore." Take a look at the before and after.

You're definitely in the before category. In other words, you need to hook up with an information designer to give you specific help at multiple points in the interface. ...That's what people mean when they're saying "too complex."

And that's why you don't go fishing for casual comments in a forum review when you should be doing user testing with someone who knows interaction design methodology. In other words, the site has a lot of untapped potential. You're going to need some professional design help -- information design -- to realize even a small fraction of that potential.