Mouthshut.COM is the only consumer review portal with an Indian focus. Consumer review sites are dime a dozen. But, there’s hardly another so focused on Indian netizens. Leave aside review sites,
how many really interactive Desi sites are there? So the popularity of MS among Indian netsurfers is self-explanatory. Of course, we have a few ardent International guests here, who happen to be die-hard fans. But primarly it’s a site focussed on Indian consumers with a global outlook.
Since the topic has already been beaten to death with mostly accolades, few isolated brickbats (understandable), and loads of suggestions; would like to jump directly to what worked for me and what didn’t.
THE WORKS
Load time - MS is very frugal in the usage of Images (gifs, jpegs). It loads like a breeze even on dial-up connections. The policy to limit formatting to Bold and Italics ensures that the page will be rendered correctly and fast , by even the most primitive Web browsers. It also keeps the page size small. Video Reviews are an exception! These invariably need a broadband connection. However MS does warn about the video content with a RED video camera icon. [ I love the idea!. My kisses, on the cheeks, to whoever came up with it]
Writing Reviews - On the usability front it’s very easy to do.. Even a novice can find his/her way around. The over-abundant hints and tips are quite useful. It’s also useful to be able to ’Preview’ before actually posting and be able save unfinished ones, to complete someother time.
Regarding robustness , it invariably fails if typed entirely in the MS review box. It’s a pain to lose everything after spending hours on it. If MS cannot fix the issue, it should at least put a warning in big Font and in RED color - ’Please save your review in Notepad or MS Word before posting’. That would save a lot of heartburn.
Formatting choices are very limited. Ads placed , bang, in the middle mess up the formatting badly. 7500 character limit includes unseen control characters (how do we count them?). ’Alert Me’ and ’write to support’ are misplaced at the bottom left hand corner. They ought to be right above the ’Submit Review’ button, to be intuitive
The broken spellcheck tool is an annoyance (to put it mildly). It keeps complaining about non-existent ’nbsp’ (what the heck!) repeatedly, till the frustrated writer closes it. It needs to be fixed ASAP. Not allowing the reviews with spelling mistakes to get posted, can be an option to improve the overall dwindling quality of reviews posted these days.
Home Page - This is an area with a LOT of scope for improvement. The way the screen real estate is wasted here is criminal. ’What is MS?’ block could have been just a link to ’more details’ page. ’High Ranked’/’Low Ranked’ doesn’t serve any practical purpose with a shelf life of few minutes. It’s also redundant - reviews are already featured down below. Categories are also repeated twice (unnecessary redundancy). ’3 Steps to Glory’ occupies an obscene amount of prime screen space, as does the Tagline in BIG FONTS and grey(!) color. Overall home page is overcrowded. Some of the stuff can be moved elsewhere.
Providing links to write reviews is a useful addition. But somebody please change the member with Pics colors. Pink for girls and Blue for boys are Internationally accepted gender identification colors. Green for guys is okay. But ’blue for girls’ (!!) is hard to digest.
Reading Reviews - Ads in the middle messes formatting and makes it hard to read. 7500 character limit which includes line breakes, paragraphs etc. motivate writers to stuff everything into fewer paragraphs (some even write an entire review in a sentence!). It makes reviews hard to read. Salient points like Recommendation (Yes/No), Pros and Cons are placed in an obscure way. It’s very easy for a casual reader to miss them. These decison-making factors deserve a eye-catching positioning or fonts/colors.
Mouthpad - 3-4 days to get a topic approved is unacceptable in the current Internet times. I haven’t used the option of posting reviews here, after reading Horror stories of others. Improvements badly overdue.
Community - On the positive side MS is the best site for reviews on Bollywood and Hollywood movies (desi perspective). If you care to dig, you’ll also discover a treasure trove of amazing Book reviews. On the negative, MS lags behind other International websites in categories such as Digital Camera, Handycams etc. For all the time I’ve spent here, I am yet to read a really useful review on iPod, Zune or PS3. There isn’t much action on non-movie categories until some contest gets announced. Then we see a deluge of reviews on Airtel, Hutch, bikes, cars etc. MS management needs to promote contributions in these neglected segments too.
Interactivity using Web 2.0 - MS does use newer interactive web techniques at places. A greater usage of AJAX and related technologies can go a long way in improving user experience. For e.g. Excerpts of reviews popping up in a bubble when mouse is positioned on Review Title, Product descriptions when focussed on Product, Reviewer profile (short) when focussed on Reviewer id etc. These improvements will take Usability and Interactiveness to a whole new level. It will be possible to place more reviews , say 10, on the first page. Reviews on 50 + 50 pages will also get a ’Preview’ feature.
Member Search - Good Feature. Please add member City, Country etc. Networking opportunities are lost as it doesn’t allow searches on ’Member Interests’. It would be great to be able to search and find like-minded members sharing common interests say ’Photography’ or ’Bird Watching’
I’m sure Jasmine will come up with a standard - your points are being considered - Corporate Blog reply. I would be surprised if she doesn’t :) . I am happy if they do. If they don’t, I’m least bothered as life will go on.