Is the hype justified? (u-rate-it.com)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	u-rate-it.com
Date:	05/05/03 (118 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quick loading, Excellent customer services, Capable of being a great site

Disadvantages: Buggy, navigation and layout issues, Guiding system is flawed, Too many features and not enough site traffic

Many people in the opinionating world have their site of choice. For a long time, it was split between the so-called "big two" of Ciao and Dooyoo, and even when other sites came along, or gained more exposure here in the UK (Bigrag, Epinions etc.) the big two managed to keep their member numbers fairly steady. Why did these other sites fail? I cannot say as I've never really dipped my toes outside Dooyoo or Ciao until a few months ago.

» In the beginning?
I heard about u-rate-it (URI) originally from various whisperings on ChuckleWeb board, and from another opinionator. The whisperings were that URI was a new opinion site which quite different to what we were used to at Ciao or Dooyoo, and have the potential to go far.

After a while, a URI forum was added to the CWeb board and it was only really then that I began to pay closer attention to the site. I'd had a brief browse through it on a couple of occasions, but it didn't grab me and pull me in. I ended up posting on the URI forum, and I asked why someone should join URI rather than Ciao or Dooyoo. The responses were varied, and unanimously positive.

URI has been around for over a year, but as I understand it, the current version of it has only really been in existence for a short while.

» First Impressions.
When you first visit the site, at first glance all the elements that you expect to be on an opinion website are there: log in facility, list of recent opinions, search facility and more options are open to you once you register and log in. The site design is clear and uncluttered, and the pages load quickly most of the time.

» Registering.
You supply some details (not as many as the other opinions sites, which is a good thing) and post. When you get your confirmation email, you click the link and that's you! The whole process took me less than 5 minutes and that included waiting for the email to arrive.

» Wh
at now?
Now that you've registered and logged in, you'll find you're presented with a bewildering array of options and features on the site. Luckily, there's a guide for new members which is linked to from the home page, and on the left hand side navigation bar, there's a link to a comprehensive FAQ (frequently asked questions) which should answer most of the questions you have. If you're still having trouble, you can contact one of the site guides or even James himself (links available on the front page).

» Opinions.
There are two types of opinion on URI: long and short opinions. Short opinions are less than 200 words long and are to be used by James in his e-zine. As I understand it, these short opinions are to be used as adverts for the long opinions, so if you receive the e-zine, you'd get some short opinions which are like "here's a brief overview, if you want to know more, come to the site". However, we've yet to see the first e-zine, so it?s hard to predict how well this idea will take off. There are people posting short opinions on the site though.

Long opinions are pretty much the same as on any other opinion site, except the minimum word count on URI (as you might guess) is 200 words. One feature not seen yet on the other two big sites is the ability to slightly spruce up the presentation of your opinions with the ability to make some text bold or italic with the help of simple tags and if this was posted on URI [BOLD]This sentence would be displayed in bold type.[/BOLD]. I think these help with presentation a great deal. You can also add emoticons (smilies) to your opinions if that is your cup of tea, but I don't feel they add that much. URI offers somewhere around 20 emoticons for use in your opinions.

One feature that I think is excellent is the use of the update notification. What this does is sends out a notification to those members who have already rat
ed an opinion of yours. If you update it, you are given the choice of sending out the notification, so if you are only fixing the layout or some spelling of your opinion, you can choose not to inform anyone, but if you add extra or updated information, you can choose to let people know. There is an option in your profile settings not to accept update notifications, for those who are worried you'd be inundated with all sorts of notifications.

» Rating opinions.
Unlike the Big Two, URI has gone with a 5 tier rating system which includes a "middle" option for those fence sitters amongst you! This hasn't really changed anyone's rating habits as far as I can see, but it does mean that for those occasions where you are undecided, you can leave the middle rating. For short opinions, you are restricted to either Useful or Not Useful.

Ratings on URI are anonymous. Your name is listed on the opinion if you rate, but you are not aware of who rated what. This was introduced to counteract the moaning about ratings which is done primarily on Ciao, but sometimes on Dooyoo too. So far, this system on URI has not encountered too many problems, although I suspect that this is primarily due to two factors: URI is not a busy site in terms of site traffic, and that most active URI members are established opinionators who are already capable of writing good quality opinions and are using opinions they have already written.

The problem of people accusing you of abuse because they haven't had a top tier rating from you has been reduced, but not eliminated. I dislike this anonymous method of rating because it seems to me that if you don't rate as the top tier, you are almost obliged to leave a comment explaining why.

For "outstanding" opinions, you have the capability for nominating opinions for Bulbs or Quills which are given out fortnightly.

» Rewards for members
Here's the crux of
the whole thing! You want to know what's in it for you, don't you? Well, URI gives out at least 8 prizes per month. There are 6 prizes of a £15 Amazon voucher for the six "best" opinions each month, plus two prizes from the token draw.

"A token draw?" I hear you ask. Yes. At the start of each month, everyone's token count is reset to zero. From then on, you gain tokens for rating, writing and other activity around the site. You get 5 tokens for A Very Useful rating on one of your long opinions, 4 for a Useful rating all the way down to 0 for Useless rating. You also gain tokens for referring friends, and it is claimed that tokens may be given for "great" suggestions. Seeing as your monthly token count is a single number with no breakdown of what your points are for, it's hard to say whether many members get from referrals or "great" ideas.

The prize from the tokens is usually something quite decent like a £50 Amazon voucher or an mp3 player, so accruing tokens to improve your chances in the draw is usually worthwhile!

At the moment, URI automatically adds the equivalent of £1.00 to your account to get your start, although you cannot cash in your account until you have reached the £10.00 mark. You can also gain cash by getting your opinions rated. The list is added to all the time, but depending on which topic your opinion is about, you could get up to 3p per Very Useful rating and 1p per useful rating (no payment for reads like Ciao or Dooyoo or rates of OK or less.)

If you have an opinion which is lucky enough to have been nominated and accepted as a Quill or Bulb and also falls into the category as being "exclusive" to URI (more on this later), then you will also get 50p added to your account. At the end of the month, each opinion which has been given a quill or a bulb gets reconsidered for a further prize of an Amazon voucher.

Recently ther
e has also been a prize of a month's membership of DVDoptions, but I cannot tell if this is simply 2nd prize in the token draw, or a separate draw based on tokens earned in the DVD category.

At the minute, I think there's some confusion about the criteria for awarding the quills and bulbs. It's unclear if it's based purely on number of nominations that you receive, or if 1 nomination is enough for you to be considered. It would be nice if there was something more concrete on the site regarding the awarding of quills and bulbs to opinions, especially seeing as one of the main problems with the Premium Fund on Ciao is the mystery surrounding it. Also, at the moment, opinions are only eligible for prizes/quills etc. within the particular month in which they are posted, rather similar to the way Ciao operates.

» Content
At the moment, there are three different types of submission to URI: exclusive, updated or previously submitted. An updated or previously submitted opinion means that you've already posted the opinion elsewhere, and it has been submitted to URI with little or no change to the original content. An exclusive opinion means that you have no posted it elsewhere, and by submitting it as an "exclusive" to URI, you're entering into an agreement where you can't offer it to other sites before each monthly award which means your opinion can be restricted to URI only for anything up to one month.

The bulb awards are for the content that URI is looking to attract and can use best. This, according to the current FAQ, is mostly consumer electronics stuff, computer games, books, CDs and DVDs. It is within these categories that you will be paid. Quills are offered to the rest of the categories.

» Community
I know that so-called community is important to a lot of people on these kinds of sites. It's hard to say ? there are tools there to enable a community to thrive, I suppo
se, but the lack of traffic onsite means it's hard to gauge if there is actually any community.

There are small indicators that it could take off ? URI members submit questions for the fortnightly quiz, for example. Newer members could be welcomed a bit more warmly, I think.

» Guides
Just like on the other two main opinion sites, a Guide system operates on URI. There are two tiers of Guide, it seems. Site guides (those whose names are displayed on the main page) and category guides who look after categories that they (hopefully) are interested and knowledgeable in.

Their main responsibilities include (duties quoted from current URI FAQ):
Checking reviews submitted in the category at least weekly to ensure they are not abusive or in the wrong category.
Informing URI of reviews needing to be deleted or moved
Suggesting a 'top review' to Support each week from the category to recommend it for an award of 20 tokens.
Checking the sub-categories added to ensure no duplication and inform support if any need to be moved or deleted.
Offering help or advice to members on the category, the site, writing reviews etc. when asked (via PM links).
Helping to promote the site wherever possible.
Adding new relevant products to the category.

The guide's duties are pretty much in the same way as you would expect and are similar to those from Ciao or Dooyoo. I do recall reading somewhere that Guides were also involved in the early Quill/Bulb award process.

However, my recent experiences have shown that not all guides are doing their jobs. From the categories that I've been writing in, I can say that at least two guides haven't been online in months. Other guides don't seem to be reading the reviews within their own categories, or if they are, they're not rating them. How URI can expect guides to nominate a 'top review' or suggest Quills or Bulbs if they don
9;t read every single opinion in their category? Also, until recently, the site navigation was atrocious due to the layout and placement of items and sub-categories within categories, although over the last two weeks, there seems to have been a massive tidy up in some categories. This also suggests that Guides aren't keeping their categories in order.

I would also question the thinking behind having five site guides (including a staff member as a site guide) when there are only about 20 active members at most. This number was recently upgraded from four.

» Site Features
There are plenty of added features on the site to make URI more than simply an opinionating experience. As well as the usual guestbooks, there is also a message box (for those of you who are Tooyoo members, it's almost like an automatically refreshing GMA) where you can have "conversations" with other URI members. This is where people will meet after quizzes to offer their congratulations to the winner.

There's the quiz box, where the quiz is held fortnightly, and can be good fun sometimes, although there have been issues with some of the questions and answers in the past. There's also a problem where members come out of the woodwork to try and earn some quick "cash" (there's a £10 Amazon voucher for the winner of the quiz) and then disappear again until the next quiz.

Each member also has a weblog (think of it as an online diary that only you can post to, but everyone can read) for you to use as you please.

There's a marketplace where members can offer things to sell. If you look in there now, you'll see URI members selling all sorts of stuff ? broadband modems, books, videos DVDs etc. If URI were to get busier, this could be an incredible feature of URI!

The shop is a link to URI's affiliates where you can buy stuff and "donate" to URI at the same time to help fund fur
ther initiatives.

You can send other members messages via the private messaging system. This can be quite cool to use to contact other members, but I think it's a pain in the arse to have to receive notifications from the site via PM; I'd rather deal with the site via email although that option isn't available as yet. The closest you can get is to be emailed with notification of PMs.

There are also several polls peppered around the site. The one currently getting exposure on the front page is "Would you be interested in being paid to review websites?" and recent ones have been "Should members be searchable to non-members?" and "Which method do you prefer for your notifications?" These are great because it's nice to know that your opinion on some things is being asked for. It would be nice if there were a page of results from these polls though.

» Site Issues
As URI is a relatively young site, there are going to be hiccups. So far, since I've been looking in on the site over the last three months or so, there have been issues which have affected both Internet Explorer and Opera internet browsers. There are some issues which are ongoing and don't seem to be fixed, like how hard it is to read reviews at higher resolutions (1280 * 1024 on a 19 inch monitor) due to opinions spanning nearly the whole screen, or named anchor links not working in Opera. James is aware of these sorts of problems and actively encourages people to contact him with bugs, design issues etc.

If I were to have one problem with this attitude, it seems to me that James is more interested in adding new features to the site than fixing the current problems. As I have already stated, URI is a site without a great deal of traffic, and a rough guess puts the number of active members at around the twenty mark. By adding more and more features when the embers aren't there to make use of them, he&#
39;s effectively making the site seem emptier. I'm not saying that these features are bad, because some of them are very good, but it's my opinion that it would be best having these features in reserve to add to the site once there's enough traffic to be able to support them and show them off to their fullest capabilities.

The navigation of the site needs tidied up. Most of the problems are related with the database, and this is easily fixed with some hard work rather than having to recode the site. There are some minor issues regarding the amount of clicks during the nomination process, and the pages you are directed to afterwards, but URI are aware of these problems and hopefully they should be ironed out before too long.

Some new members have signed up recently, but only a small percentage of them have stayed around long enough to write something. This should be investigated, and the URI hierarchy should figure out why people join up and don't participate in the site. My suspicions are that the site is intimidating, with so many features on the site, it's hard to know where to start. The navigation could well put many people off and if people can't find the subjects they're interested in easily, they're not going to hang around when there are other sites offering similar information with a more intuitive database layout. There's also the current members who, despite claims of community spirit, are more interested in maintaining their own status and are not particularly welcoming.

» Overall
URI is a good site with great potential; however the lack of traffic and active members is a serious concern. I feel there's a bias towards adding new features to the site rather than addressing the current problems which have been highlighted, and this makes the situation look worse as the many features already on the site are underused.

The site is in desperate need of an injection of
new, active members to be able to show off the site to its fullest, but is unlikely to get these members without getting itself in shape first. It's a chicken and egg scenario.

Sorting out the navigation is a must, and I feel that getting some Guides in place who are prepared to fulfil their duties is also necessary for the site to function correctly. Add to this the problems with being more open to newer members; there are three of the larger problems which need to be sorted out before the site can move forward.

On a positive note, the site does live up to its two main claims. Firstly, there are no pop ups around the site, and there haven't been any in the time I've spend around the site. Secondly James welcomes all contact, especially if you have suggestions and encounter problems around the site and these are always considered.

My verdict? A good site with potential, but perhaps doesn't live up to the current hype.

Summary: