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Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

work.io

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Re: Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

#31

Post by bravura »

Could you please explain how you will address:

* quality: How do I know the quality of the work will be good? What happens in the case of disputes?

* reputation: How will you keep track of reputation of the workers? Odesk, Vworker, Ebay are marketplaces that do a decent job at filtering out spammers and bad guys. Where they lack is determining the difference between good and great. Everyone gets FIVE STARS or close to it for every job, unless it's completely bungled. This also creates a perverse pressure on the contractor. If an employer complains about the contractor publicly, the contractor quickly lose all work. Workers are thus pressured to satisfy out-of-scope employer demands so they get a five star rating and maintain their sterling reputation.

Re: Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

#32

Post by slashedzero »

I think the design of the site and the product conflict. The design looks like you're selling the person, not their expertise, especially from the front page. I'm sure any of these people can do multiple things, but I don't care about that, if my goal is to set up shop in Asia, mention that. I am in no way able to know that just seeing Sophie Song's face on your front page.

Also, for sellers to solely use social media as a verification system just rubs me entirely the wrong way.

I really like the idea though, good luck!

Re: Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

#33

Post by lucahammer »

bravura wrote: post #31

Could you please explain how you will address: * quality: How do I know the quality of the work will be good? What happens in the case of disputes? * reputation: How will you keep track of reputation of the workers? Odesk, Vworker, Ebay are marketplaces that do a decent job at filtering out spammers and bad guys. Where they lack is determining the difference between good and great. Everyone gets FIVE STARS or close t…

* quality: Matching the task with the right providers is crucial. At the moment we do a lot of manual vetting, making sure each task gets to the right people and everyone is happy. Over time we will collect more data to improve matching. Disputes are handled by ourselves right now and we want to have humans in charge for these things in the future.

* reputation: We also have a rating system in place which is used to give the provider feedback on their work and also helps us with matching future tasks. Buyer will get rated too. At work.io the buyers don't have to choose the provider but only defines what results they want to have delivered. There is the option to buy services directly by someone but these deals are normally done because of the reputation someone has outside of work.io

Re: Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

#34

Post by lucahammer »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #27
lucahammer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask you to try the 5 seconds test with my profile? https://www.workio.com/u/MjA3ZD/luca-hammer Does that work for you?

I still found it every confusing, the main thing is: Why is it a document editor? It's just asking a question yet I can edit a whole bunch of stuff for no reason. Also, I don't think having the main navigation buttons in a small box in the top right works.

With the editor you define how the results should look like. The providers will input the results there.

Re: Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

#35

Post by jaggs »

lucahammer wrote: post #17
jaggs wrote: post #16

I'm sorry I found it all very confusing. For me personally it failed the 5 second test - what is the site primarily about, and how can I extract 80% of its functionality quickest? I clicked on the Buy button and was no further forward. The design is very slick, but there's too many words on the front page, no obvious action button/s and no immediate examples of how this could benefit me.

May I ask you to try the 5 seconds test with my profile? https://www.workio.com/u/MjA3ZD/luca-hammer Does that work for you?

It would work better if it was something like...

Welcome to work|i|o the one stop shop for...blah.

Or some form of one line and clear explanation of what the site is/does.

You're trying to get across 3 things very quickly here:

1. What the site is for. 2. How does it work (how can I use it?) 3. Why should I use it (what's the benefit for me?)

If there are alternatives, why should I use you instead of the alternatives? (e.g. too expensive, too clumsy, too rancid or whatever).

Re: Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

#36

Post by lucahammer »

Zak wrote: post #28
lucahammer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback. We wanted to make it harder for people to add topics and industries only to get certain jobs. We will look into ways for user who don't want to connect their profile to social networking sites.

A way might be to simply limit the number of topics and industries a person can list, though that has its own downsides. Just thinking of my own case, you won't get much of use from Facebook (I post pictures of kittens and cookie recipes), twitter (It's been nearly a year since I've tweeted anything) or Linkedin (I barely use it). You'd get more of use from HN, reddit or (especially) github, but it might be harder to…

We will definitely add more services in the future and you are right that these three were the easiest to start with and give ok results for many people.

You could still provide buyers with awesome cookie recipes!

Re: Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

#37

Post by jaggs »

lucahammer wrote: post #29
mengine wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. What problem are you trying to solve and what are the benefits to me? This is a much better splash page but the copy is still pretty bad - https://www.workio.com/about/

We want to streamline work processes. If you need something done you have to find someone who is able to do it and has time. work.io takes care of this. You define what you need, say how much you want to pay and get the results. You don't need to interact with the providers. Less overhead and better results are your benefits.

You see that there is a bit of your problem.

No-one really understands what 'streamline work processes' actually means.

Does that mean you can help me serve my Big Macs better in my day job?

Jargon kills (and I mean KILLS) marketing effectiveness.

Re: Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

#38

Post by brunooo »

cinbun8 wrote: post #30

This is what I understand 1 minute after perusing your website. 1 - This is some sort of a marketplace where you can buy and sell expertise. Kinda like a Air bnb for odd jobs. Reminds me of a similar startup that tried that, but I cannot remember their name. 2 - The landing page's layout is a little confusing. I clicked on a couple of links and landed on your about page[1]. When you have a 90 second video explaining…

Hey, thanks a ton for the detailed feedback!

1) Solvate and many others.

2) Went with the current one to see what appeals to people, but like mentioned the industry specific landing pages will be a lot like you suggest.

3) Sign-In is both Signup & Login, the redundant one is just as backup (just to explain the thoughts behind it).

4) Still fiddling with this, most sites like oDeks et al do it, but nt yet sure if it's more effective (considering that you only have to sign up in the very last moment, eg order a job or offer a service)

5) 2 of the people just had this ones in B&W, will switch once we have a broader pool.

6) Right, submit on \n is still no good practice.

7) Highlight whats happening on the platform, bit of a placeholder now, but think more lively statistics, stories, industries, rankings here in the future.

8) 15% cut, we take care of the whole payment, landing pages etc.

9) Right, not all callback messages there yet.

10) This only happen if you "made up your mind" eg clicked "order" on a product, but a nice generic tutorial video combined with 9 would be nice.

Thanks again for taking the time, all the feedback, and the chance to start thinking about it while typing this.

Re: Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

#39

Post by brunooo »

lucahammer wrote: post #33
bravura wrote: post #31

Could you please explain how you will address: * quality: How do I know the quality of the work will be good? What happens in the case of disputes? * reputation: How will you keep track of reputation of the workers? Odesk, Vworker, Ebay are marketplaces that do a decent job at filtering out spammers and bad guys. Where they lack is determining the difference between good and great. Everyone gets FIVE STARS or close t…

* quality: Matching the task with the right providers is crucial. At the moment we do a lot of manual vetting, making sure each task gets to the right people and everyone is happy. Over time we will collect more data to improve matching. Disputes are handled by ourselves right now and we want to have humans in charge for these things in the future. * reputation: We also have a rating system in place which is used to…

In addition to what luca said: We take a lot of pressure out of the marketplace by not having a biding mechanism in the first place, so better matches in terms of budget / skills etc are likely (happy to go into more depth on this) and we also collect tons of implicit data, so once we should get some traction, it should be easier to model the current manual work we do behind the scenes into corresponding algorithms (also happy to expand on this).

Re: Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

#40

Post by lucahammer »

slashedzero wrote: post #32

I think the design of the site and the product conflict. The design looks like you're selling the person, not their expertise, especially from the front page. I'm sure any of these people can do multiple things, but I don't care about that, if my goal is to set up shop in Asia, mention that. I am in no way able to know that just seeing Sophie Song's face on your front page. Also, for sellers to solely use social medi…

We had no faces on the homepage when we started. Usertests showed that people were unsure who will fulfill the tasks and therefore didn't want to give us their money. At the moment we show some faces and some tasks which may be even more confusing.

Sorry for the social media verification thingy. It works for most people and so we choose to start from there. We will look into alternatives in the future.

Thanks! If I can help you with anything let me know.

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