Looking for beta testers for new Chinese learning web app

[webmagnets]

I have developed a new Chinese learning web app. It has some of the characteristics of Lingq.com, but aims to be better of course.

It is a public beta, so anyone can sign up for free. I really want unshy people who are willing to voice their opinions and give suggestions for improvements. But just know that it isn't perfect yet.

Sign up if you are willing:

BaconLanguageTomato.com

[Silent]

Maybe it's handy to provide some (more) info on how it works. You refer to lingq in your posting, I'm not sure how widely known that site is. The website is even worse. No real info on how it works unless the clickable graphic is meant to be the explanation (in a way it is). The reference to the book isn't going to cut it for me. A page with a short description how it works and what the benefits are compared to other sites/methods is imho the least. After an introduction of the method and it's merits a reference to the book for more info is of course ok.

And then, sign up for a paid subscription without any info what it will provide ......? Who or what is behind the website....? You really expect people to sign up for a paid subscription? Am I not better off to send the money to that Nigerian guy that want to secure his inheritence?

[webmagnets]

Thank you. When you work on an idea for so long it is hard to look at it as an outsider.

The only difference between free and paid is the advertising. Paid has no ads.

[Hro]

Hey man, I'll be happy to check it out and give you some feedback

[imron]

There is no warning if users have cookies disabled. Login and signup just fail silently.

You might also want to have some sort of indicator if there are more definitions available. It's not immediately obvious that clicking the meaning will cycle through various definitions.

Personally I'd also try to somehow emphasise the meaning of the full word over the meaning of the individual characters. For example, if you try the sample lesson, and I click on the green layer for 什么, I get told the meaning is "ten used in fractions, writing checks etc exclamatory final particle". This is next to useless in my opinion, firstly because the meaning of 什 is not the meaning here (see above about having an indicator for multiple definitions), but also because it's not immediately obvious that I should really be clicking on the top bun in order to get the actual useful meaning of the word.

Finally, I'm not sure where you are getting your recordings from, but they are a bit all over the place. Sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes clear, sometimes crackly. It would be nice (though obviously more difficult/costly) if these could be unified somehow.

[webmagnets]

Thanks for the great feedback so far.

Question: On the homepage there is an arrow labeled "click here" that points to the red part of the sandwich. Did you click on that arrow and follow the tutorial?

If not, then I need to make it more obvious. If you did, then I need to redo that tutorial.

@imron Thanks for that info about the cookies and the rest of the feedback.

[roddy]

I also missed that. Even now, I think you need a lot more publicly-available info on what this actually does.

I'd drop the ads for non-paying users and make it a time / level-limited free trial. You're not going to make any money off those ads (if I'm wrong, congratulations), you'd be better off without the distractions.

[webmagnets]

In your opinion, would a video or a written tutorial be preferred?

Also, thanks for the insight with regard to the google ads.

p.s. Just so further readers know, I increased the size of the "click here" wording and animated the arrow. maybe it will be more noticeable now.

[imron]

Perhaps also changing the wording to something like 'click here to see how it works' or 'click here for a quick tutorial' might help in this regard.

[OldDuck]

webmagnets, may I join? I would also like to test it.