What a problem this idea solves if at all? 🤷
Last night I had an idea - a QA section for websites.
Those of you who are familiar with Udemy - I speaking about QA section such they have, I found it very useful and with great UX/UI.
The idea was developing a service that with a few lines of code any website could implement such a QA section where potential users can ask a question or see what else has been asking and what was they had been answered.
I found my self many times having a question about a service, or a course and I hate chatbots, I think such a service could be very useful for regular websites - and of course for much more complicated websites who need a comprehensive QA section (educational services, governments websites etc.)
What do you think?
Am I solving any existing problem, or am I just imagining there is such a problem?
Would love to hear your thoughts - did you liked the idea?
How would you improve it?
Is that just a waste of time?
I would love to hear anything!
Thanks for your time,
Naveh
One thing I've learned over the years (been into this since 2006) is that making your product 2x easier to use can result in 100x more adoption.
I remember back when Skype was "the thing". Mobile appeared, and Skype failed to adapt. Them Viber/WhatsApp came, with a better interface and adapted for mobile. People flocked to it.
So I don't think being "differentiated" is much of an advantage vs. making it easier to use vs. existing solutions.
I think whether this is a good idea depends on structure and distribution.
For example, if this has to go through a Chrome extension or a redirect service, this seems similar to the service that Genius runs where they allow any webpage to be annotated. Most people haven't heard of this, which really illuminates the challenge. It's unclear how to get people to use it, nobody would know about it when they're on a page, and it's unclear how to get people to pay for it.
Alternatively, a plug-and-play JAMstack component has a clearer path to monetization - people pay you to host the forums, and they pull your component in during initial load of the page. At this point, the challenge is getting in front of people who run these kinds of sites and want services for them. However, you'd need to find a way to get in front of people and differentiate yourself. People have built demos of this, so it's not like nobody wants this.
Good distribution idea.
Doesn't disqus (https://disqus.com/) provide this service? Their discussion box is integrated into all pluralsight courses.
I see such a Q & A option available in amazon's product page just before the ratings and reviews. I assumed that it is common across eCommerce sites. you think that's not common in many sites? of course, not sure if there is a service exists to easily build that feature and whether that will be useful. if that feature is common, I would guess a service to easily build it will be helpful.
Yeah. Almost every eCommerce have such a section =)
How would this be any better than a regular comments section that can be dropped into any blog?
I also think that lots of custom support tools have the option of building up a knowledge base of previously asked questions with answers.
The main difference between the comment section to a QA section is the Knowledgebase.
Such as google offers you questions based on what you wrote (the "people also asked" section)
same for here - any website would include such a section where you can see what everybody else asked regarding that service + all of these questions could be translated to the main website (similar to quora) but the categories are per website.
But I agree that the comment section is similar and could be a great reason why not building such a service.
regarding the second thing you wrote, Have you ever saw such a thing on any website? because I didn't 😅
I think that as you said, a comment section would still allow you to see all previously asked and answered questions. A quick search on the page would work to replace that.
And there’s a ton of sites with that, usually /help /support or the help or support sub domains.