Hi

During my kanji learning using "Les kanjis dans la tête" (french translation of "remember the kanji"), I have made me a site for helping me to review what I learned.

The site allows to make kanji list and put mnemonic phrases on kanji, and passed a review test for the lists you want.

The site was advanced and someone propose to me to make a online version.
So I've add some community features (make public your phrases and lists etc...).

Now the site is online and I espect some opinions to see if it can interest and help people or not.
it is a bit simple for the moment but it was made for just myself, so I waiting some users proposition to improve it.


Thank by advanced and I hope some feedbacks

ps : I've removed the site link for not disturb koohii community

[ファブリス]

Adding comments to every page doesn't make a meaningful or valuable community.

What I ask myself when seeing the website is: what is the added value compared to the other hundreds of websites out there that already reprint EDICT/KANJIDIC data?

As far as I can see (without registering) the website reprints KANJIDIC/EDICT data without making it more user friendy than WWWJDIC.

It looks like a good effort, but I wonder about the motivation when seeing the asinine domain name, slogan "Learn japanese kanji online!" and Google Ads. Not that there is anything wrong with getting paid for your work, but the way it is put together it looks like a web app equivalent of a content farm. I just frankly wouldn't feel like using this at all, because I see no value to it.

PS: it's my fairly blunt feedback to a fairly blunt 1st post. I reckon it is a bit negative but I think I raised valid concerns/questions, and so it qualifies as constructive feedback. :/

Fabrice's (slightly harsh) comments stand on their own. Other than those bits...

The site has a lot of spelling/grammar mistakes in English. At least, on almost every page I went to.

I found the site easy to navigate and visually appealing.

The test is annoying because it makes you click something to go to the next item. It should show you the results of the previous one while asking the next one.

The font for the kanji is ugly. It's probably because I don't have the first few listed and it's using a rather poor substitute. You should probably add some more common (pretty) fonts to the list.

Search doesn't recognize romaji. (I'm too lazy to switch to kana when searching. Computers are much easier to navigate in English.)

Some things (names of lists, at least) didn't get translated into English.

i like the kanji test idea. it seems like a good way to find holes in your memory & concentrate on the ones that need something extra without going through all of them in anki...

Moi aussi j’ai visité ton site, et ça me semble plutôt bien organisé. Le seul commentaire que je puisse faire, c’est que, comme Fabrice l’a dit, il existe déjà pas mal de sites qui offrent le genre d’informations qui se trouvent sur ton site (un bel example serait ce site même – Remembering the Kanji – particulièrement en ce qui concerne les histoires mnémotechniques). Donc en regardant ton site, je me demandais: qu’est-ce qu’il y a sur ce site que je ne peux pas trouver ailleurs? Les sites que j’utilise le plus sont ceux qui offrent quelque chose d’unique ou d’une qualité exceptionnelle.

En plus, je viens de regarder la version anglophone du site. Moi, en tant qu'américaine qui adore la langue française (et les langues en general), je comprends combien c’est difficile de s’exprimer dans une langue étrangère. Cela dit, nous les anglophones sommes plutôt gâtés et moins susceptibles de fréquenter un site avec trop de fautes d’orthographes/de grammaire. J’aime bien l’idée d’avoir une version française et anglaise du site, mais ce serait peut-être une bonne idée de faire corriger la version anglophone par… un anglophone pour mieux attirer… les anglophones.

Sorry, just wanted to practice some French. To summarize: the site looks well organized. I guess my only thought is that because there is so much information out there and there are so many sites to choose from, having something that makes your site stand out is important. Even if your site is well organized, if it doesn’t pique people’s interest with unique content, it’s less likely to become a site that people go back to on a regular basis, if only because there are only so many sites people can regularly devote their time to. The sites I continuously go back to tend to have something unique or something that is of higher quality than what I’ve seen elsewhere (this site/forum here is a perfect example!). To put it another way, when I went to your site my first thought was: it seems like I can already get most of this information from the Remembering the Kanji site. I wonder what’s here that would make me want to come back?

Hope that didn’t sound too harsh. The site is well put together, easy to navigate, and I can see how it could be of use to those studying kanji. For those of us who are familiar with sites such as Fabrice’s though, being able to easily identify how it differs from other sites out there would be a plus.

mgbp7 Wrote:Sorry, just wanted to practice some French.

As a native french speaking english, I just had to say your french is on the spot, and much better than some of my friends

As for the website, it definitely needs to be more special or interesting to bookmark it. There are tons of kanji websites out there, with a slightly better interface. The kanji test feature is interesting, I think you have an idea there that could be developed.

thank for all this feedback, it's realy more clear for me.

I made the program for two reasons during my kanji studies
- To have a custom review program, in french
- Learn a new framework language (Symfony, but this point have nothing to do with Japanese )

But i realize it's probably not realy useful for other people than me...
There is a lot a similar program and mine don't have nothing new.

The good point for me was to have a french tool to learn. For example, koohii looks realy nice, but I definitely can't learn japanese using english.

For the Google Ads etc... it's just a habit on all the sites I do. A basic server is cheap but if I can avoid paying myself for a service a make for free for other people, it's just normal no?


So, i will see if I have ideas to make my site more unteresting for other people, and if I don't , I will just clear it and continue to use it offline

Thanks everybody!

[ファブリス]

I did register on your site. One problem was that you have lots of actions tied to icons, but there is little explanation as to what the icons do or how it is connected together. Many icons didn't have labels, for example.

There seemed to be quite a bit of useful functionality, but it was difficult to tell where to start or where to click next. I created a list, if I remember well, but couldn't find how to review it.

It seemed to me most of the text was a very tiny font. Overall look at the design in terms of information. When you pick a font for example, how big the font size is, tells the user how important the information is. What should the users first notice on the page? Make that big. If something is not very important, if it is secondary information, make it smaller. Likewise, if it's important, use contrasting colours, if it's secondary, use subdued colours. Etc.

You have a point with the French language. I don't know about the availability of kanji study web apps in French. In English though you have a lot of competition.

ファブリス is being very kind I think considering your first post is essentially an advertisement. I hope you have a donation coming his way.

Yes, it's totally right, my post can be see like advertisement... was not realy my goal, just wanted some qualities feedback, because I did not know if my program was interesting or not.
Put google ads was probably a error because the site can appear like something it's not. I have removed them and the link too.

thank for yours advises! was be usefull for me. Meaby I will try to redirect more on french audience or someting like that.

[ファブリス]

Manest Wrote:Put google ads was probably a error because the site can appear like something it's not. I have removed them and the link too.

It's not that it's bad per se. Now I'm not an expert on Google Ads but having tried it on this forum before, I am making a wild guess; assuming your site is fairly new and the traffic is below 100000 page views per month; that the revenue is... say... 15$ or so a month?

When I had Google Ads on here, they were not even properly targeted. 8 out of 10 ads were not relevant to the Japanese context. You're certainly more practical than I am. I know you can get a very good shared hosting for less than 15$ a month so it can definitely pay the bills.

I've seen forums that had like 100 posts in it, barely any activity, and had a large Google ad banner on top and bottom of the page. For the users I think it sends the wrong message. If you can't pay 15$ a month for the web hosting (which can usually host multiple websites) the users might justifiably wonder if you are really committed to develop the site or forum in question.