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Ask HN: Can I Help You with Anything?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: Can I Help You with Anything?

#11

Post by donuts »

dcrankshaw wrote: post #10

I would suggest a minor tweak to your site. To me, the "How can I earn your support" part of the page is the most interesting, especially because you are asking for money. But the panels switch too quickly for (at least me) to read an entire one. You should either slow down the switch frequency or let users switch between them manually. Interesting site idea though. And your copy is engaging. I noticed the issue beca…

& Steve8918 - Thank you for letting me know!

Sorry for that usability peeve! I originally set the slider to pause whenever the mouse is hovering over a slide, but I didn't forsee that the short timeout session would be bothersome in case the cursor was elsewhere (like on the actual buttons, oops!)

I've just quadrupled the timeout time, so viewers will have more time reading a more stationary slide.

Re: Ask HN: Can I Help You with Anything?

#12

Post by donuts »

spiralganglion wrote: post #7
ltamake wrote: post #5

Interesting idea for donations. I'll give it a try once my PayPal account stops hating me. Maybe add some alternate payment gateway support (e.g. WePay, Google Checkout, etc.)? :)

Stripe? I'm going to donate $5, just because the thought of someone being stuck using anything other than a Mac is more bothersome than not having another latte. Maybe I'm too big a Mac fan. Maybe I still have a functioning Mac Plus on my desk.

=P Thank you, Ivan!

If you're ever in the bay area, shoot me an e-mail! Hopefully I'll have a Mac by then, and I'll take you out for some local coffee =)

& ltamake, zacharycohn: thanks for the payment suggestions, currently setting up an account!

Re: Ask HN: Can I Help You with Anything?

#14

Post by donuts »

mrkmcknz wrote: post #4

If I was you I would check out http://i.crowdfunded.it/ Might be related to what you're doing :)

Thanks for the suggestion =)

I've donated on similar cause-funding platforms like kickstarter.com before, but I decided to make my own website because I wanted to get some hands-on experience in building my own site, marketing my site, and understanding my user feedback and analytics--things that I'm interested in doing professionally in the web industry. So the project is a challenge for myself to validate and improve on my marketing/copy skills, and also a kind of social experiment because I'm generally curious how the whole thing will turn out =)!

Re: Ask HN: Can I Help You with Anything?

#15

Post by thaumaturgy »

So, I'd like to not criticize anything at all, and just say that this is a neat idea, it's presented beautifully, you've written it in a way which got me to actually stop and read it (and visit it a second time), and I dig your sense of design, which seems to do a great job of balancing humanism with engineering.

Re: Ask HN: Can I Help You with Anything?

#16

Post by DallaRosa »

steve8918 wrote: post #8

Not to be over-critical, but your "starting ideas" transition too quickly, so that I can't read the full page to figure out what you actually can do to help me. I would slow it down a lot more.

same problem here. Had to keep pressing the buttons again and again.

Re: Ask HN: Can I Help You with Anything?

#17

Post by yesimahuman »

donuts wrote: post #3
arkitaip wrote: post #2

Keep an eye out for PayPal shenanigans; lots of donation drives have had problems with them lately. Oh, I will donate $10 when the html is 100% valid :) http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwillworkforam...

Hi! Aw, thanks for your support =) I hear some mean things about PayPal sometimes too! Unfortunately it was the simplest donation process I knew how to implement (I was checking out Stripe but there was a lot of API/developer stuff I didn't understand--my friend had to help me install my Mixpanel trackers because I didn't really understand Javascript either), and it seemed like a convenient way for people to donate.…

I seriously wouldn't worry about HTML validation. Not sure what prompted him to even check. It's a waste of your time. One of the biggest things I've learned from startups is that you shouldn't take every suggestion and spend time on it or assume your product sucks.

In that spirit, here's a suggestion: if you have some examples of things you've done to put in each box, I think that would help. I might be contacting you!

Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: Can I Help You with Anything?

#19

Post by donuts »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #15

So, I'd like to not criticize anything at all, and just say that this is a neat idea, it's presented beautifully, you've written it in a way which got me to actually stop and read it (and visit it a second time), and I dig your sense of design, which seems to do a great job of balancing humanism with engineering.

Thanks Rob! Your compliments are encouraging =)
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