There is nothing wrong with niche and small when you're dealing with an affluent populations such as recreational dog breeders. There are people that may pay hundreds of dollars per year for a high-quality service.
I think you underestimate how breeders work. They have a huge network in place and in most countries there are national organizations aimed at "dogs finding love". :) You know, pedigree and all that jazz. There may be a market for this, but to cater to it you'd have to be much less cute and more professional.
And while on the topic of actually getting offspring from this "love", it might not be such a good idea to have any random Joe off the street get the idea to have "ooooh puppies!" and then down the line realize that having eight of them at eight weeks old is ... actually quite the job (and at this point things get nasty).
Add to that that some dogs just should not breed due to various weaknesses, excessive inbreeding in the past yada yada.
That was a tangent, but to respond to poster: dogs/owners running around having a playmate for a few hours, great. :)
I can't see anything without creating an account. Perhaps expose some data to logged out users so they can get a better idea what the service is about.
Also, you don't have any traditional method to contact you (just facebook and twitter). An email address would be nice.
You should make it more tailored (but not explicitly mention that) it's for dog owners to meet each other. For example, meeting other "friendly dogs and dog owners" or something like that.
Everyone knows it's not for doggie breeding, most pets are spayed or neutered.
Wow, what a difference from here in Sweden.
While cats are are about 70% fixed for dogs the number is MUCH smaller, 7% for females and 4% for males.
But we don't have a wild-dog problem here, leave a dog out unattended over the winter and it's pretty much guaranteed that it will be dead come spring. Cat's seem to do much better somehow.
That's exactly how dogster.com started, a free dating site for dogs (walking dates, etc) which lead to more than the occasional real date for single owners. There are/were a few clones too.
One question is why dogster.com, who was clearly the leader, shifted direction towards being more of a portal and less of a dating site.
A few comments about the basic design of the front page. I'm not a designer or anything, so take with a grain of salt.
The design is nice, but has a little bit of a "thrown together" look: the different things on the page don't really seem like they belong together.
I'd recommend a few things:
1. Align the logo of the site to the left (aligned with the text below).
2. Since I assume your subscription form at the bottom is not the most important thing, I'd make it much smaller, and move it to the right (someplace more out of the way). Where it is now, it looks like it should be the login form.
3. On that note, I'd move the login form to where the subscription form is now, and make it much bigger. Also, I'd probably make the "new user" link even bigger than that, since you'll mostly be getting new users for now. I'd probably make it a separate, very large, "call to action" button, and center it in the screen (ala Drop Box).
4. Last thing: I don't know what plentyoffish.com is, and that's in the first sentence of your site. You really don't want me leaving your site first thing.
If purpose of the page is to get people to sign up, change the design to push that: explain, with pictures and text, what people will get/see if they sign up, and have a big, obvious, unintimidating, sign up form.
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[ 7.5 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] threadThis may come out as a dog-owner dating site :)
I think you underestimate how breeders work. They have a huge network in place and in most countries there are national organizations aimed at "dogs finding love". :) You know, pedigree and all that jazz. There may be a market for this, but to cater to it you'd have to be much less cute and more professional.
And while on the topic of actually getting offspring from this "love", it might not be such a good idea to have any random Joe off the street get the idea to have "ooooh puppies!" and then down the line realize that having eight of them at eight weeks old is ... actually quite the job (and at this point things get nasty).
Add to that that some dogs just should not breed due to various weaknesses, excessive inbreeding in the past yada yada.
That was a tangent, but to respond to poster: dogs/owners running around having a playmate for a few hours, great. :)
Also, you don't have any traditional method to contact you (just facebook and twitter). An email address would be nice.
On the internet, nobody knows you're not a dog.
Everyone knows it's not for doggie breeding, most pets are spayed or neutered.
Of course when a single female cat can make over a dozen kittens per year, this is still not high enough to avoid the obvious problems.
But we don't have a wild-dog problem here, leave a dog out unattended over the winter and it's pretty much guaranteed that it will be dead come spring. Cat's seem to do much better somehow.
Agreed that this site has some promise.
One question is why dogster.com, who was clearly the leader, shifted direction towards being more of a portal and less of a dating site.
The design is nice, but has a little bit of a "thrown together" look: the different things on the page don't really seem like they belong together.
I'd recommend a few things:
1. Align the logo of the site to the left (aligned with the text below).
2. Since I assume your subscription form at the bottom is not the most important thing, I'd make it much smaller, and move it to the right (someplace more out of the way). Where it is now, it looks like it should be the login form.
3. On that note, I'd move the login form to where the subscription form is now, and make it much bigger. Also, I'd probably make the "new user" link even bigger than that, since you'll mostly be getting new users for now. I'd probably make it a separate, very large, "call to action" button, and center it in the screen (ala Drop Box).
4. Last thing: I don't know what plentyoffish.com is, and that's in the first sentence of your site. You really don't want me leaving your site first thing.