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Ask HN: How to get users/traffic who are actually interested in this webapp?

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Ask HN: How to get users/traffic who are actually interested in this webapp?

#1

Post by oms2010 »

Hi HN,

I've launched a web application earlier this week called www.organizemysearch.com

The idea is to let users organize things like used car searches, apartment rental searches, or other types of searches they do online.

For example, if someone is looking for a used car, they will go to several different sites and look at various car ads. This website allows them to save all the ads found on different websites (automatically loading all the data). This way the user can more easily see all the ads he is considering and have everything in one place to sort and compare all his/her options.

The problem is I can't figure out what keywords I should use that would actually represent what the application does accurately, which is "a tool for organizing your online searches" (eg. organize your used car searches, organize your apartment rental searches, organize your search for 'blueberry muffins',etc)

I would like to optimize the site so people who are actually looking for such a tool will find it easier in search engines, but I'm not sure what approach I should take. I don't even know what category this web application falls into?

Most searches about 'organize' on google are things about physically organizing your garage, home, garden or apartment. And anything with 'search' in it gives very generic or non related results in google searches.

Example of some keywords I've tried:

organize search [very generic, most google results are articles about seo and search engines] organize car search [1 hit on google] organize appartment rental search [no results] organize shopping items [tons of articles about how to organize your groceries]

Any ideas on how I can better market this web application, or optimize SEO for this website so I can attract people who are actually looking for such a tool?

Re: Ask HN: How to get users/traffic who are actually interested in this webapp?

#2

Post by JarekS »

Excuse my buzz word but I think the only way you can make it spread is to embed a virus. One of the things you can do is to enable user to share his search with friends/family over facebook, twitter etc. They could help him adding additional elements to the search (i.e. if they find something on the web that user is looking for they can submit a link), or give other advice.

SEO will not work - as it didn't work for Dropbox. Nobody is waking up one day and start searching for such a tool that you provide.

Re: Ask HN: How to get users/traffic who are actually interested in this webapp?

#3

Post by imp »

I'm not sure who your target audience is. I've searched for apartments, a car, and a house. Every time I used a spreadsheet to keep track of those things and it worked great. From my quick look at your site, that's all you really seem to be offering. I'm not sure what extra value you're adding.

Re: Ask HN: How to get users/traffic who are actually interested in this webapp?

#4

Post by getonit »

imp wrote: post #3

I'm not sure who your target audience is. I've searched for apartments, a car, and a house. Every time I used a spreadsheet to keep track of those things and it worked great. From my quick look at your site, that's all you really seem to be offering. I'm not sure what extra value you're adding.

That you used a spreadsheet puts you in an incredibly small minority. His target audience is going to be those that can see (or will instantly recognise when shown) the benefits of such, but without the motivation to take on the hassle(1) of organising it themselves - people who keep it in their heads, or scribble on whatever scraps of paper etc. they have to hand.

Take the endless 'to-do list' type sites as a comparison: They basically offer nothing (or are not generally used for anything) that couldn't be handled by a carrying around a small notepad with a pen shoved down the spine.

(1) Minor hassle it may be, but magnitude means nothing to a great many people.

Re: Ask HN: How to get users/traffic who are actually interested in this webapp?

#5

Post by oms2010 »

imp wrote: post #3

I'm not sure who your target audience is. I've searched for apartments, a car, and a house. Every time I used a spreadsheet to keep track of those things and it worked great. From my quick look at your site, that's all you really seem to be offering. I'm not sure what extra value you're adding.

I hear you, and thanks for the feedback.

The idea of this webapp however is to do things more than that. You could say some people prefer using even bookmarks or in my case sometimes I used to use notepad for keeping track of car ads for example.

But the websites has some advantages.

1) It parses out data for you automatically [unlike excel or notepad], like car mileage, color, price, etc (or in the case of other types of searches - parses out relevant information like monthly rent, number of bedrooms,etc) (which allows the user to really sort and compare all the options)

2) With future enhancements it will automatically detect ads which have expired from everything you saved (not easily done with bookmarks)

3) Also it can be accessed anywhere, being a web application

4) But most importantly it saves one time to look through everything, eg. all options.

For people who really take their time to make decisions when buying certain items like a used car, an apartment rental, or something else, it would be useful to be able to really compare everything you found for things like best price or lowest mileage across all ads you found from different websites.

Try doing that in notepad or with bookmarks and it quickly sucks up your time (which was one of my main personal motivations for creating it).

Re: Ask HN: How to get users/traffic who are actually interested in this webapp?

#6

Post by oms2010 »

JarekS wrote: post #2

Excuse my buzz word but I think the only way you can make it spread is to embed a virus. One of the things you can do is to enable user to share his search with friends/family over facebook, twitter etc. They could help him adding additional elements to the search (i.e. if they find something on the web that user is looking for they can submit a link), or give other advice. SEO will not work - as it didn't work for D…

"Excuse my buzz word but I think the only way you can make it spread is to embed a virus".

I guess I can't take that as a compliment, but will acknowledge much room for improvement of the website :)

As for SEO, I'm not just looking to optimize it for SEO as the main method of 'putting it out there', but rather looking to figure out ways to market it and place it in it's niche (which I'm still not sure of).

Re: Ask HN: How to get users/traffic who are actually interested in this webapp?

#7

Post by apowell »

Perhaps you could work with some of the classified sites themselves (start with smaller ones) to add an "Organize My Search" widget. Pitch it as a way for them to increase engagement and drive more return visits.

Also, many car enthusiast forums have "Cars for Sale" sections, and they're utter disasters. It would be valuable to be able to save those listings easily (bookmarklet?). A little word-of-mouth campaign on a forum can go a long way, and you can kick it off with a forum sponsorship with commercial posting rights.

(Side Note: The question in your header is implied -- don't state it, just answer it.)

Re: Ask HN: How to get users/traffic who are actually interested in this webapp?

#8

Post by adam-_- »

By the way, the homepage is bit of a mess on Safari + Mac (I know you're not asking for that kind of feedback but yeh...).

Side-scrolling main frame thing is just awkward. Some of the images overlap as well.

I don't think this is something that people will know they need, or at least, not know what to call. So approaching potential customers through forums, reviews on relevant blogs, widgets/partnerships sounds like a reasonable route to take.

Re: Ask HN: How to get users/traffic who are actually interested in this webapp?

#9

Post by oms2010 »

apowell wrote: post #7

Perhaps you could work with some of the classified sites themselves (start with smaller ones) to add an "Organize My Search" widget. Pitch it as a way for them to increase engagement and drive more return visits. Also, many car enthusiast forums have "Cars for Sale" sections, and they're utter disasters. It would be valuable to be able to save those listings easily (bookmarklet?). A little word-of-mouth campaign on a…

Yeah, I was thinking about the car forums approach actually, but the widget idea is a good too. Thanks for the feedback.

Re: Ask HN: How to get users/traffic who are actually interested in this webapp?

#10

Post by oms2010 »

adam-_- wrote: post #8

By the way, the homepage is bit of a mess on Safari + Mac (I know you're not asking for that kind of feedback but yeh...). Side-scrolling main frame thing is just awkward. Some of the images overlap as well. I don't think this is something that people will know they need, or at least, not know what to call. So approaching potential customers through forums, reviews on relevant blogs, widgets/partnerships sounds like…

Thanks for pointing that out. I have rushed a bit through the css part in order to get it out there, otherwise bugs and ideas keep piling up and you never release (even small apps like this).

I have planned to switch to Blueprint css framework to simplify the design part (design is not my strong point).

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