After having been a regular visitor here for over 2 months, I have noticed some things that I feel should be done to make Mouthshut a more user-friendly site. This will of course have the spin off that more people will visit the site, making it more marketable, and hence, more profitable.
The homepage should have a login box, so that you dont have to click on the login button, navigate to another page, and then login. Check out the rediff.com website for an example.
Writing comments should be rewarded. After all, it takes more effort to write a comment, than to click on a Very Useful button (which can be done without even reading the review). So why give points for rating, but none for commenting?
The site should be redesigned for ease of navigation. For example, the buttons on top can be replaced by a drop down DHTML menu (eg: microsoft.com) with submenu items, to reduce the number of pages that a person has to navigate through to reach a particular item.
Just as every negative rating requires a comment, every addition to the Distrust this person list should also require a comment, which can be passed on by M2M to the person concerned.
Features such as M2M, Mouthpad, Alert Me etc should be more prominently displayed on the webpages, preferably with easily noticeable icons, so that newbies can figure out things fast.
A list of Star Writers should be created as a webpage, with a link on the homepage. This will let visitors see who the best writers are, and sample their writing. This should be in addition to the current practice of displaying a single writer with his photo on the homepage. Before naming someone as a Star Writer, Mouthshut should look at the quality of the writings, and not just the number of hits or comments generated. If you look through the current crop of writers, it is like the Clint Eastwood movie-The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. The only thing that is common to all the groups is that they have generated a large number of comments/hits.
The box that appears when you click on Add my Comment on this review is very small. This should be made larger. Maybe, instead of having it on the left hand side of the page, it can be moved to the bottom of the page, so that it can be as wide as the page!
Advice on topics by those who are experts in that field (at least according to what they have said about themselves while joining Mouthshut) should be given higher ratings when someone searches for that topic, or goes to that page. After all, it makes more sense to hear what a counsellor has to say about divorce, than to read what an IT professional feels about it.
A lot of entries at Mouthshut need to be re-categorized, and enhanced. For example, the Software section comes under Computers, and contains a few subsections. However, if you really want to find a particular software, you have to search for it, because a lot of categories are missing (compare it with the sections in a site map of Snapfiles.com or Download.com)
When criticisms are raised about the way Mouthshut does things, someone from the Company should post a rebuttal, at least as a comment, so that readers (and reviewers) know that someone is listening.
Hoping to see a comment on this article by the Mouthshut spokesperson.