Rate my startup: Simplton

It's pretty enough in its own way, but do you know what my first reaction was? I first viewed your site in Chrome, then loaded it up in Firefox, and finally IE because I was convinced that something wasn't rendering correctly.

Two things stand out in particular: first, my laptop's resolution is 1600x900 and I have to scroll down to see the links on the left; secondly, that's a HUGE amount of empty space on the right hand side, and it looks like it could accommodate the "What is Simplton" text quite nicely.

Honestly, I'd advise doing what I do - although I'm not terribly successful, so perhaps you should disregard this advice ;-) Anyway, go to ThemeForest, find a decent sales page theme, and another one for your user area. It'll cost you $30-40, and whilst some will object to what are pretty obviously cookie-cutter themes, you'll find out pretty quickly if people will pay for it.

I was in the same place as you a year ago, with a tool whose design was 100 times worse than yours is, and I was signing up 1 trial account per day. Many months later I bought a design for $15 and an admin theme for $20, and that increased free trials to 20 a day!

Good luck! :)

clickable http://simplton.com

Here's my brutal honesty:

1) The cute homepage image is a waste of space and makes no sense for your target market.

2) Having your menu below the fold makes no sense at all. I bet your bounce rate is really high.

3) Pricing page could use some clarity...The images make no sense, the price well, the whole page is unclear.

4) The handwriting on your screenshots make them really hard to read. On some of the screenshots it looks like you have threaded messages, but the threads look like they're inversely indented. First message shouldn't be more indented then following messages.

5) "Small town values bug and issue tracker" Says: is a terrible tag line. Your tag line should say who your targeting and why they should be interested.

"Simple issue tracking for designers" -- If your a designer here's a SIMPLE way to track issues.

"The most powerful issue tracker for manufactures" Says: If your a manufacture, we have a highly configurable system to meet your needs.

Your tag line says: "Meh?"

I think you're trying to stand out with some cute web design, but really you could use a very standard template. You really need to work on WHO should use your service and WHY. Go to woothemes and use wordpress. Websites are a time suck, use a CMS and spend the extra time on your product.

Probably worth the 20 bucks: http://47hats.com/ebooks/

On http://simplton.com/philosophy I would make the bullet points the only content on the page. Click them and it expands to show your explanation.

For something that focuses on simplicity, you sure have a lot of words. If I were you, I'd look to cut 75% of your verbiage.

I don't understand what the companies represent on http://simplton.com/pricing. Is that companies that use your service? Am I buying real estate in this imaginary town? I think you're overusing your town metaphor.

I like the "small town bug tracker" marketing on the home page, ... not sure if the image depicts a small town tho.

About design, I have only 1 thing to say.

Use gradients or don't use gradients, PICK ONE. If you use gradients, then all (or most of) your elements need gradients. I recommend removing gradients, as sometimes gradients are hard to make work.