HN Explorer

Should I launch my site now?

3 points by kuasha ↗ HN
Hello,

I have been following this for some times but this is my first message-

It seems very funny to launch after just working about 4 weekend days (~64 hours) - But I hear people insist on early launch-

So here it is- I am designing a small service to verify phone numbers (and use it as 2 factor authentication among other things). The service supports two factor authentication, it has a working openid provider (so 2 factor authentication enabled openid - you can grab one, its free :) )- users can create application from developers section and using the API on their site can verify phone number of anyone claiming to be his/ her number or do whatever with phone verification (like use it as 2FA for their own registered users)- That’s all what is done for now- Is it too early? Shoudl I start buying a high resource server and install the service and launch this weekend or should I use this time to implement more features (I have a ton in the list) and wait for few more weeks?

If you suggest launching what should I do when the servers are ready to take traffic? Tell friends? Buy some ad? Start writing blogs or what?

You can find the service at http://auth2.com – [fully functional but can serve only a few requests per second]

Also what feature you think would be useful?

I have no idea about product launching and I appreciate your help.

8 comments

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maebert
Launching early is always a good idea, and there's nothing like real customer's feedback to help you prioritize your quadzillion ideas.

However, I strongly suggest you spend some time on copy and structure of your landing page - without reading your post here I would have no idea what your service had to offer me, and my motivation to whatch youtube videos on landing pages has been rather low lately. :)

kuasha
I sincerely thank you for your sugestion- I'll add some text on the page- And add an image instead of the video and keep the video as a javascript soft window that will activate on click of a link-
bchess
I'm with you--it's hard to put the idea of upside risk out of your mind. (What if you tell the world and the world loves you so much your server turns into a pile of slag?) But try to put it out of your mind anyway.

You need a landing page that helps your target customers know that they're in the right place. That's a sentence or two that explains the problem you solve and how you solve it. It looks like you want attention from developers. I think a lot of developers would like to get a feel for the API without registering. (I went to the "developers" tab thinking I might be able to give you specific feature-related feedback.)

With that done, I'd think you don't need or want attention from the whole world. For a first round of feedback, 5-10 like-minded friends would do fine. If they're really friends, then they'll have encouraging words for you, but look for common points of confusion or concern. After that it's a matter of refining your message and finding wider and wider circles for gathering input.

kuasha
Thank you for your time and advice!

I am removing the login required annotation from developer page- And redesigning the index page to say clearly what it does-

About the risk -You are right- I am going to get more than 10 visit per day and most will be my friends :)- But I still want to remove it from my test server 600 MB RAM- because the robot voice quality seems bad on this- and I can not test and call this production server at the same time-

wittjeff
I have been thinking about the need for something like this, but a bit more menu-like. Suppose I am running a high-security site that needs more than 2 factors? Shouldn't that be as easy to set up as 1 or 2? So I image having a bunch of fields, any number of which may be required or optional:

- Real Name (if you can verify against public records that might be worth something) - account name - mailing address - home address - phone#1 [voice? text?] - phone#2 [voice? text?] - question #1 - question #2 - question #3 - select an anti-spoofing graphic - RSA key -...

Some levels of security, such as RSA key may be worth paying extra.

It would be particularly sweet if you provided a simple UI (checklist as above) that writes working client code for me. Oneall.com does something like this.

Overall though I have a few impressions: - Not a good color scheme; doesn't sell it. I say this as a non-visual person. - Include a bundle of sample code, and some docs with diagrams showing the flow of typical use. Yes, we can figure it out with a minimal explanation but your business model is making it super-easy to do what we could do on our own. - I think your site (due to the nature of the problem space) may benefit greatly from iterative A/B testing. - I like the domain / service name. I would actually remember that. I think it would be worthwhile to partner with a good site designer.

kuasha
Thank you for your thoughtful comment! I am taking notes.

And you are absolutely right about the UI. I did not get time yet for that (I even did not copy the CSS and linking directly from django site - just like viewing image from external site :D)-

Will make the site itself secure using HTTPS or RSA key as you suggested and include sample code and some applications that will help protect machines and networks.

Thank you!