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Ask HN: Can't get signups. Any advice?

13 points by emmamc ↗ HN
Hi there. I'm a female (not that it matters!) single-founder startup and I have created a site and system called Gallereo - www.gallereo.com. I am getting a good number of visitors to the site but really struggling to get people to sign up, even to the trial. I have tried various things but I'm not sure if I'm too close to this as a project and if there is something simple and stupid I am doing wrong. Any advice on how I could improve the visitor -> signup ratio would be wonderful! Thanks in advance. Emma

22 comments

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mikecane
It seems to me you're trying to break into a field where most people already know what to do (or think they do): art & photography. Maybe branch out into other areas too? Maybe target writers who want to sell their ebooks -- setting up that is a PITA, I can tell you as a writer. Otherwise, I like what I saw.

EDIT: One other thing, put a yearly fee on it instead of the $7.99/month. Monthly charges seem to inspire uncertainty in people.

emmamc
Hi, thank you very much for your comment. We've actually just started experimenting in terms of monthly / yearly price structures. It was previously set at $99 per year, and we changed to $7.99 per month to see if it made the difference. I'd be interested to know what other people think about that.
tgrass
7.99 a month is a much easier sell.

Perhaps offer to archive the site and site name for x months if someone cancels.

togasystems
Another good market to target is Hair Stylists. I just finished creating a portfolio for my girlfriend. I know there are hundreds of thousands of stylists that would love to have their own portfolio page.
tgrass
My friend is working on her MFA in painting and I assure you this product is necessary. I had to build her site and had many requests for her friends.

As this product is for the non-techie, make it simple: no sign-up to use. Let them jump right in. You're already offering a month free. Your "Build Your Site Now" button is deceiving. It takes you to a looooong form. Let them get started immediately. After a few steps of building, request an email to save their work. Once you have an email, you can request more info later.

Good luck. Looks great.

emmamc
Hi, thanks, much appreciated. Funnily enough, we've just been working with a lot of students based in the UK on building free websites for their end of year shows - we found we got a lot of great feedback from them as a consequence.

The sign up form is something that we should definitely look at if it looks daunting or too long, and the wording for the buttons, so thanks for your comments there! Any suggestions as to what you think would make a good call to action in this instance?

Emma

tgrass
The "Build Your Site Now" is perfect IMO if one can in fact build immediately.

I want to say that it looks like a really good product and the price point is reasonable/competitive.

For a stronger call to action, I'd remove the ARTNews box and the start building box next to it.

The navbar is very busy too for a landing page.

Maybe on the Build Now button drop the no-credit card required and 30-day free trial - So maybe it's not perfect :) - No reason to make them think about money if they're getting the free month. Hit em up with when they save their first build.

Put the price and free month info in the Why Choose Gallereo box.

MenaMena123
Maybe your not getting the right visitors? Do you advertise or SEO. Any Facebook Fan Page? You can have 1000s of visitors but if they aren't looking for what your doing its pointless, get the exact user you need to your site.

Also the site looks pretty good, I like it. Just find a way to market it.

emmamc
Hi there, you make a great point, and SEO and marketing is something that we're trying to ramp up at the moment. We also have a facebook fan page which again is something we're working on building fans for.
itsrobert
I took a quick look at the signup process. My question to you is do you need details like Company/Organization (optional), First Name, Last Name, and even Email?

I'm not sure how the software works, but do you feel that these details are necessary for the initial signup process?

The reason I ask is that a longer signup process, and the more details you ask for right off the bat, the more daunting it is to users. If it's not much trouble, I would suggest stripping out those that are not absolutely necessary to allow for users to signup quickly and easily and begin playing around with the actual features your system provides them with.

You could always request these details, along with a payment option, once the 30-day free trial has ended in order to sign them up as a paid user.

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tgrass
Just signed up - if you can switch the process so I can build the site first I think you'll really improve conversion. That was so simple to build, you'll have people hooked.

Side question: are you implementing payment processing so they can actually sell their work online?

emmamc
Brilliant, thank you!

We do have payment processing for people who sign up so that they can sell their work. We have a range of payment gateways available from Paypal and Google Checkout, right through to Credit Card processing for anyone that wants it.

JoachimSchipper
I'm not your target market, but I wasn't ready to buy on the front page ("30 day free trial"). I would prefer "only E5.99/month / see our featured galleries / sign up for our 30-day free trial" - especially since I was pleasantly surprised by both price and quality.

I'd strongly consider replacing your header image by something like a small version of (a/this month's?) featured gallery - they look pretty good.

Finally, if you are having trouble finding customers, a referral system seems to help some sites (Dropbox offers free storage; you could offer one free month for every referred customer that pays for a third month, or somesuch.)

keeptrying
I think there are a few problems here.

1. Your positioned for the Art market but your site looks so corporate. Have a look at the design for smugmug.com (targets photographers) and carbonmade.com (targets artists).

I'm guessing your market may assume that your a fly-by-night operator who bought a template from somewhere and isnt really serious about the market.

This is just my opinion - you can easily A/B test this with another design.

2. There is no testimonial on your homepage. This is not good.

3. You can only figure this out if you start A/B testing. There are a lot of products out there which will let you run experiments without changing your homepage. So start doing that.

http://blog.kissmetrics.com/landing-page-design-infographic/

4. I should be able to build the site first before logging in.

AmberShah
Based on the description of the design here I was expecting it to be a lot worse. The design is okay, but yes, A/B tests will let you know for sure.

But the building-the-site-first idea is tops particularly because people can get worried that (1) it will be too hard, or (2) there won't be a theme/design they like. Instead of trying to prove it with words/pictures, just let them start. At this point, even giving your email address away is a commitment, not even just CC info.

emmamc
I just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone for taking the time to comment, your feedback has been excellent, and really gives me something to think about in pushing Gallereo forward.

Thanks again,

Emma

nhangen
I think your design is fine, though could probably use a bit more nuance to identify with your market.

I think the thing I'm missing is images of sample sites, right on the main page.

The "latest news and gossip" sends a strange message, makes it feel like I'm on a gossip site.

The sign up process could use a bit more attention. It feels like a contact form.

Overall, I think it looks like a great start though.

nametoremember
I think you need to start actively selling your product. Try find related businesses or business people that aren't online and try sell them your product.
ddemchuk
You have an intimidating signup form. You really just need email and password, everything else will be gathered when they pay you later on anyways.

Creating a system to let people build without an account yet might be hard to work into the current app workflow, so maybe create a demo account that resets every 30 minutes or something so they can login and see what they're getting themselves into without committing to anything?