Roast my idea: Visual reviews for websites

[maylanhtrieuan1]

Hello r/roastmystartup!

I've been working on validating the following idea for the last few weeks. I'm curious about your feedback. Here we go

Idea​

Visual feedback tool for live websites (tentatively called ReviewLayer)

The Problem​

Getting feedback from designers on websites you’ve implemented is cumbersome.

You receive a design in Figma or Sketch, and then go on to implement it in the browser. Once you’re done, you create a new PR and request a code review from another developer, who quickly gives you feedback on your code.

But getting feedback on the visuals is not as straight-forward. You might already have a staging environment or deploy previews (e.g. with Netlify/Vercel), which you can share with others. You send the preview link to the designer or design team on Slack, and ask for feedback.

Once the designer has time for it, they visit the URL, scroll around a bit, and take screenshots of different sizes. They then paste them into Figma and add annotations in the form of red arrows and comments. They can’t preview their suggestions (it’s only comments) and can’t leave feedback on interactive elements. They might also just record a Loom video (which is a pain to extract feedback from as a developer ).

When they are done, they send the Figma/Loom back to you. You try to understand what exactly they mean (the context isn’t always clear), you make new changes, and the cycle repeats. Approval from the designer or other stakeholders is only possible through Slack (“looks good to me”), and it’s not always clear what has already been implemented and what is still unresolved.

This works reasonably well for getting simple feedback (I tried this at my last company), but costs everyone a lot of time and effort. I think this overhead is unnecessary.

Benefits​

For a monthly fee, ReviewLayer integrates with a typical website stack (think GitHub, GitLab, Netlify) and allows your team to leave feedback on deploy previews.

You can leave the feedback directly on the preview, without going through extra tools. This way, the context of the feedback becomes clear, or is easy to clarify. Everybody always sees the same version. Designers and other stakeholders can approve parts of the changes (it’s no “all or nothing” like with Figma/Slack). Giving and receiving feedback is quicker than recording+watching Loom videos, and definitely faster than Figma+Screenshots.

Because the process integrates with development tools like GitHub and others (think status checks that block merging, integration with bug tracking, etc.), visual review becomes a strong part of reviewing pull requests without adding unnecessary overhead.

All in all, I expect this tool to reduce feedback loops by at least 80%, which saves both developers, designers, and other stakeholders like PMs a lot of time.

With reviews typically taking about 1h+ for developers and designers each, the tool should pay for itself after the first visual review.

Example​

Visit www.reviewlayer.io to see a few screenshots and a demo video.

Price​

Plans start at $9/month (1 member). Will also test a $79/month (5+ members) and $249 plan (10+ members).

Market​

• Web developers and designers collaborating on creating or updating websites/webapps in product companies
• Freelancers and agencies who want feedback from their clients
• QA teams

Competitors​

There are a few competitors out there that do something very similar (see https://ruttl.com/, https://usepastel.com/, https://bugherd.com/, https://www.markup.io/). This seems to suggest that there seems to be a general market for such a product.

What I'm missing from a developer's perspective is great integrations with my existing workflows. This is where I see my potential niche – awesome integration with other products and developer tools.

About Me​

I'm a young but already experienced web developer from Berlin who had this exact problem at my last company. I’d send the URL to a designer, who would then take multiple screenshots of the page and add comments on top of them. We would repeat this many times.

The feedback process above is real and I always thought “Isn’t there a better way?” – I want to scratch my own itch.

That's the idea. Would you pay for it? Or try it out to see how much time it could save you?

 

[mcarans]

@maylanhtrieuan1 This is a good idea, as shown by the others that are already in the space. We used Bugherd at a previous agency and it was great. This was a design agency where we worked with offshore devs, so there were frequently a lot of issues with the first round of the build.

Something to think about is who makes the buying decision on these types of products

If you're aiming at a bigger agency that does everything, I think it's the PMs, or someone in an operational role, not the developers.

So, you need to convince the PMs, or the COOs that your solution is better than more established alternatives.

If you're aiming at just development agencies, you could lean into the integrations much harder to show why you're better than what's already out there

I'd think hard about who the most likely buyer is for this and then base your go-to-market approach on this

 

[maylanhtrieuan1]

@mcarans Thanks @mcarans!

The thought with who makes the buying decision is an important one, thank you very much!

 

[patib]

@maylanhtrieuan1 Not a web designer, but this seems really cool!