Rate my startup (3rd time's the charm)
The current (third) revision is a million times better than the first two... and I actually think the first was better than the second (less clutter but less information).
My first submission's feedback: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2123579
And my second submission's feedback: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2206413
(The old site may be broken now... I haven't checked and I don't care to.)
So... here's what I did...
Someone said something along the lines of "the name is terrible" (and it really was)... so I ended up spending a couple of days trying to figure out a new name. It's seriously absurd how many .com domain names are taken for resell and not used whatsoever. Out of principle I didn't even bother contacting those nimrods for a quote. I put together a long list of potential, available domain names and finally got one... and registered it for $5.
Next I had to come up with a new design. I believe someone called my 2nd revision's design "appalling" (LOL) and it most definitely was. I had my reasons for doing it like I originally did but it just didn't work as I intended. I wanted to fit pretty much all of the information on one, concise page... but it ended up looking stupid and unprofessional.
I also got rid of the demo animations and video tutorial. Those were lame too!
As for the new design, I looked around the web a while for some inspiration and found a few sites of which I felt had a lot in common with my product. I combined the look and feel of one site with the structure of another and of course added my own touch to it. Some of you may be able to recognize which sites I used as inspiration.
It took me about a week to complete the entire new front end and recreate the sign up process to be much more user friendly and match the new look. And of course I had to tie up the old back end with the new front end and do a ton of testing.
Last... I added a walkthrough for first-time users. It should guide users through the entire app enough for them to know how to use it. This needs further real world testing, I'm sure.
I've also considered adding a demo button that has all the functionality of the free trial except for the networking aspects and no data is saved after they log out... so that people can click once to try it out rather than go through the sign-up process. Maybe I could give demo users the ability to switch over to the free trial mid-demo so their data stays intact. Anyone have thoughts on that?
Oh and today I added a small feature that should scale the text for various resolutions (since the app itself is based on percentages)... I still need to add an option for users to toggle this on and off and possibly specify their own font size.
And in case anyone mentions it (as was mentioned in revision 2)... I go straight to https because users can log in on any page.
There's definitely still some more work to be done but I think I'm finally at a point where I can officially release my product into the wild. And I couldn't have made it what it is today without the help of you fine folks... so thank you. HN is truly a valuable resource.
http://www.tourlogger.com
11 comments
[ 6.5 ms ] story [ 60.4 ms ] threadOne thing I ran into was that when I first loaded up the page, I didn't realize it was for musicians touring -- I thought it was about 'sight-seeing' touring. Maybe you can emphasize the musical element somehow. Nothing on the front page indicated to me that this was an app for bands. Maybe your tagline ("Instantly track merch sales and expenses") could be tweaked slightly ("Instantly track your bands merch sales and expenses while you tour").
Good luck with the official release!
I'll definitely let your suggestion about the sight-seeing confusion twirl around in the ol' noggin. Thanks! :)
Good luck with it! Looks like an incredible improvement.
It definitely is a MAJOR improvement though, 100%.
And as for the logo, I have the g's hanging over the image so that the rest of the text lines up. I tried moving it up but it just looks weird to me. I prefer it to hang over like that... reminds me of when I was first learning to write... and the g's, p's, j's, etc. hung below the line.
I did add a slight stroke to the g's to make the bottom overhang stand out more.
Let me know if that's any better!
What I was specifically talking about with the 'floating sausage' remark was the 'o', 'u', 'o' and 'e' in the logo, and how they seem to ALMOST touch the border they sit above.
For what it's worth, I fancy myself a designer too, and I constantly struggle with letters that dangle and figuring out the appropriate alignment for them.
In general, the site looks amazing, but if I had to point out its achilles heel, it's definitely the logo.
when you hover over the big three images on your landing page, they 'blink' while the new image loads.
the easy fix is to preload the hover images in javascript.
alternatively, you would make them a sprite (one image) and change the background offset on hover to show the appropriate one.
congrats on the progress.
It shouldn't take long at all to do... so I'll add a div with a fixed position way off the page and out of sight to preload the images since I want the landing page(s) to be 100% functional without javascript.