Just launched ReactLibraries.com
I would live some UX feedback on reactlibraries.com. We are hoping to make the process for finding new React libraries as seems and easy as possible.
Trending on Indie Hackers
I would live some UX feedback on reactlibraries.com. We are hoping to make the process for finding new React libraries as seems and easy as possible.
I think the site looks great! I was hoping for some way to click a library and see all the alternatives (like alternativeto.net). I think this would be a killer feature. You've probably thought of this, but there's also a lot of SEO potential if you give each library its own landing page with extra metadata.
Adding alternative is a good idea, lets say I am looking at Redux, it will also show me mobX as alternative. For Material-UI it shows Semantic-UI, Ant, etc as alternatives.
Thanks for the feedback! That's definitely a feature we've considered and want to implement soon :) this gives us some good validation that others would want it tho!
Awesome, best of luck! If you start getting some traffic I'd love to chat about doing some kind of affiliate partnership with https://divjoy.com (I imagine there could be a pretty decent conversion rate).
That would be great actually! I'll be in touch when we get more traffic :) had a pretty decent first day. About 1000 pageviews and we hit #1 on the reactjs subreddit
Oh nice, that’s a great start. Congrats!
The link alternative.to doesn't work. Were you talking about https://alternative.me/?
Sorry meant https://alternativeto.net
I like it overall, looks great. Only real piece of feedback I might have is that the newsletter email input field feels a little out of place on desktop, at least IMO.
I would agree. Couldn't think of a better place to put it. Any suggestions?
That's the tricky part, I'm having a hard time envisioning a better spot to be honest.
Could try stacking it beneath the Subscription text and allowing both the Subscription text and input field be the same width as the two buttons above it. This would require reducing the space between the buttons and the subscription elements to keep it balanced.
Could also see what it looks like if you give it its own full width row with an offset colored background between the Hero section and the Recently Updated Libraries section. Might bring more attention to it though I'm not sure if that's what you're going for.
These might be things you've already tried or they might not be improvements at all once implemented but I figured I'd throw them out there.
The first option looked kind of funny. It made things feel too cluttered still. I really like giving it it's own row. We actually do want to bring some attention to it, but obviously having people sign up is more important. Anyways, really appreciate the thoughtful feedback! Thank you!!
That is a good website to have. Will definitely be looking at it!
I would really like to see a place where I can go and check the most popular libraries required to make an app, like a list of useful stuff that a developer might need (e.g. Most popular UI libraries: Material UI, AntDesign, ...; Most popular i18n libraries: ...; Most popular React frameworks: Gatsby, NextJS, MeteorJS, ...)
Wish you all the best!
We used to have a "Popular Libraries" section, but we weren't sure if that was something that would be interesting enough for repeat visitors. You can currently get a list of the most popular libraries overall by searching for nothing and sorting by stars (I know that's not a good UX :)) -> https://reactlibraries.com/results?query=&pageSize=25&page=1&hideCategories=true&sortByStars=true
We currently don't have sorting inside of categories, but that is something we are working on adding soon!
Nice :-)
Do you accept submission for non-open source, paid libs?
Hmm interesting question! Do you mind elaborating? What would be an example of this? Would this be a library that is hosted on a private repository rather than github?
Yes, exactly. I have a paid React & Node.js lib: https://usegravity.app and I know there's definitely other commercial kits and libs out there.
That's a great site and also I like the landing page - not much I want to criticize here.
There's another question I have though: Do you really think many and frequent updates are an indicator for good software? I know, it may certainly feel like this from user perspective, when you wait for the next cool update for your most loved app. But actually a lot of software builds on top of stable code that hasn't been touched for years, and that's not bad (nor is it good). It's just not an indicator at all, IMHO.
Looks great.
Few questions:
You did very smart for first iteration :) .
But not all packages on Github, would recommend to take a look on npmjs.com, wider packages choice and they also have keywords.
In general categorization it's complex task, if you don't want to go deep in rabbit hole, than categorize packages based on keywords and allow to manual edit for moderator would be sensible and flexible solution on my opinion.
Looks great and very handy
Further to @Gabe suggestion of showing alternatives I see functionality this in a site I use called https://bundlephobia.com/ to check the size of Packages i.e Redux shows Mobx. Looks like site is open source as well so might be worth looking in there if you look to add in the future.
Thanks for the link! I haven't seen bundlephobia.com before.
Congrats on the launch Geoff, the site looks great.
It's great that the first thing you see is "A community-curated database of the most popular and frequently updated React libraries."
I feel like the "View Popular Categories" could be removed, since it's the same as the Categories button on Nav Bar.
"Submit A Library" button should also not be the first thing someone sees. It's obiously a very important feature, but I feel like it might be better placed at the bottom of "Recently Updated Libaries" or "Newest Libraries".
I would also suggest moving the email signup to the botton of the home page.
In my opinion the first thing you want a new user to do is to:
a) know what your site is about - which you've done so well with the tag line and great domain name,
b) you want them to scroll down and start exploring the site / libraries you're displaying.
In my opinion, while the buttons and email signup are small things, they take away from the primary experience.
Again, the site looks great and congrats on the Launch!
This is awesome feedback! Thanks for giving good reasoning behind your suggestions too :)
What would you put as the main CTA instead of the current buttons?
Well right now you have:
I imagine that you want to get more React users to your site, and you want to show introduce them to new and cool libraries.
For example, the first thing I did was scroll down, I clicked on one of the libraries (https://github.com/pupudu/window-table) - I saw it opened the github page (and I was disappointed), but then I clicked on the demo button (https://window-table.netlify.com/) and I thought - "Oh, that's cool".
Now, I'm not a React expert, so I might not be your target audience (although I know a bit about it), but I would personally want to see a lot more of the libraries "demo'd", so I could look for something interesting that I would want to add to my project.
I'm not entirely sure who you're targeting, but my suggestion is to get your users (new/returning) scrolling down as soon as possible, and get them clicking on the "demo" buttons. Or if you think most of your users want to read through documentation on the github pages, make that a priority.
I personally wouldn't sign up, because I don't want to receive updates - but that's just my POV, I would want to check in from time-to-time to see what's out there, what's available, maybe I can discover something new or cool that I would want to use in my work.
I recommend trying to remove anything that could distract your users from exploring the libraries / content on your site. That would be my main CTA.
We are definitely targeting React developers and our goal is to get them using our site to find the right library for their project needs. We are currently working on a comparison tool to increase user engagement with the content. I think you are right, deprioritizing the CTA and trying to find ways to get people interacting and using the content is more important.
You could have a look at js.coach also
awesome
The website is pretty amazing but you should look some features of other websites like topbestalternative.com and use those in your own website.
This comment was deleted 6 years ago.