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Ask HN: Please review my startup

by steveneo on 4/24/09, 1:51 AM with 18 comments

• by cellis on 4/24/09, 2:57 AM

  What am i supposed to do?

  Imagine i am a very ADD person and I don't know what to click. You need a big DOWNLOAD or SIGN UP button, otherwise you are squandering your 5 seconds that i've allowed you.

• by sutro on 4/24/09, 6:55 AM

  The first link I clicked revealed an animated gif depicting a woman breaking a water balloon over her very well-endowed chest in slow motion.

  At the risk of being redundant, I would say that your startup shows a great deal of promise.

• by mynameishere on 4/24/09, 2:47 AM

  Seems nice. I guess my question is: How is it distinguished from other make-your-own wiki solutions?

• by inconvenient on 4/24/09, 2:16 AM

  Overall, it seems to work pretty well. Under "prettyURL", the "Tiny URL" is often longer than the "Meaning URL". Use a shorter hash key. Also, you might want to have some basic content that loads instantly along with the "loading" graphic (e.g. Logo, basic description).

  What user base are you going for, and how to you plan to monetize it?

• by hwijaya on 4/24/09, 7:12 AM

  Few things on my mind as i look at it. You need:

  1. Tagline - Make people understand what you're doing within 1 - 2 seconds. Most people don't read at all.

  2. Better call to action - I generally prefer to have one priority over another. Making it blue and red communicate the same priority, and remember Barry's paradox of choices? It made me not clicking both. I learned call to action a lot from here: http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/good-call-to-action-buttons/

  Good luck!

• by diN0bot on 4/24/09, 2:25 AM

  cool. i signed up and made a private space. it feels like you're giving a lot of value to users, though i don't have anything concrete to say about that....i'm always vaguely looking for private wiki space for small collaborators.

  biggest question: will you still be around in 6 months? i've had not so good experiences in the past with finding "a really cool private collaborative wiki" (free) that suddenly stopped working...

• by josefresco on 4/24/09, 3:47 AM

  From a web design perspective you need more space below your site logo (above the content). That is all.

• by uninverted on 4/24/09, 3:15 AM

  Loading screens are usually irritating; in general do what you can to minimize them.

• by jlm382 on 4/24/09, 4:39 AM

  it'd be nice if screenshots were on the front of the page -- otherwise, it looks like another weekend project that never got finished.

  increase the size of your TRY NOW button 5X, and you'll notice a higher conversion rate.

• by TheAmazingIdiot on 4/24/09, 3:11 AM

  I've got a habit on middle-clicking when I want to open X content in a different tab when I know there's more content on the main page (like HN).

  Now, when I see those "GeniusWiki Documentation Center" and those other boxes with content, the links aren't links. They're javascripts that force me to go away from that main page. I usually just go away when I see things like that.