I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project. • Hacker News Board

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#121

Post by blauwbilgorgel » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 10:07 PM UTC

Do you offer a simple input field for users, where they can enter a URL?

I think the bookmarklet is a bit high threshold for some (if not most) users. Telling them to copy+paste a website URL and enter it into a field on their control panel is not.

For SEO your site could use a little work. Perhaps a blog about pregnancy could help get your domain ranking for some niche related terms. You are probably aiming for social sharing here, and organic search might be a lesser priority. Make sharing on Facebook and Twitter a lot easier (API helps) and visible (icons help). I might not sign up, but still like or recommend your app.

Also adding just that extra page to convince users to sign up, or a even demo video, can help with user engagement.

Finally I'd have a small look at making your site canonical, by rewrite or specifying canonical: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-y... because /about and /about/ return the same content. And to quote W3C "Always declare the encoding of your document" (declare a meta charset like ISO or UTF-8 in your header http://code.google.com/p/doctype/wiki/ArticleUtf7).

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#122

Post by natgordon » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 10:10 PM UTC

araneae wrote: post #103

natgordon wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the #1 thing on the TODO. So far all sign-ups (which are not many) have successfully added products, which has surprised me.

But less surprising given that a lot of your traffic is from HN :)

pre-HN :) (which was a small number)

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#123

Post by axod » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 10:11 PM UTC

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #112

axod wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The name does, and it's great. People will go to babylist.com. They will probably copy the concept if it takes off. Bad idea.

"People" will Google "babylist". Remember that the vast majority of the people using the web have no idea what a browser is, much less a URL. Even when they have a URL, that ubiquitous google box is the place it gets put.

...and google "babylist" returns surprise surprise babylist.co.uk

It seems silly to try and compete with established players.

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#124

Post by jmulho » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 10:15 PM UTC

subpixel wrote: post #66

natgordon wrote: post #2

I'm 8-months pregnant. When I went to create a baby registry I was pretty disappointed with what was out there (I ended up using Amazon Universal Wishlist). I found myself with some time on my hands waiting for baby, and decided that I'd build a better baby registry. I partnered with a great designer I met on forrst.com, and this is the result. I'd love any feedback, suggestions etc.

This is great, and it's awesome that you guys are back in the game after going through a big 'dip': http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1325785 Kudos!

They are back in the other game, too (lenguajero.com). See this blog post, which happens to be called "back in the game": http://aflanagan.com/back-in-the-game/.

Quote: "Instead of building something complicated that was based on our free community (i.e. a freemium service), I decided to write two guides about something I know about, and something our users care about, learning Spanish slang."

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#125

Post by pbhjpbhj » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 10:18 PM UTC

dayjah wrote: post #114

natgordon wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know. I contacted the owner of babylist.com (it's a mirror of babylist.co.uk) and they never got back to me.

once all the referral cash starts flowing you can just buy it :) In the mean time work out a way to ensure as few people as possible have to verbally pass the domain on, think about tools which enable you to let the interested party notify their friends that this is their list; easy things like publishing to facebook, twitter, email, etc. (some of these may have been done, sorry if they are - I didn't take the time t…

>once all the referral cash starts flowing you can just buy it :)

Looking at the company I think you might have to pay a hefty whack to get that domain.

I'm going to guess that they didn't have anyone there who knew what to do with your request, was it a money offer. I think I'd make a modest money offer (no more than a couple of hundred GBP) - people generally know what to do with an offer of money.

Make it very clear that you want to buy babylist.com name only, that you're not competing directly with them and are based in the US.

I don't think you want a huge offer as this will ring a bell saying "ooh, I better check with someone if I can get more ...".

YMMV considerably, grace and peace.

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#126

Post by nickgeiger » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 10:30 PM UTC

natgordon wrote: post #106

prpon wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the partnership work in this case? % of revenues? % of the project/venture? What if the designer gets too busy with other projects? Sorry, I am being curious because most of us hackers are in the same boat when it comes to design.

From my POV, I waited until I was sure that the designs were what I was going to go forward with (this took about 4-5 weeks, maybe 2-3 iterations of different pages and colors). Then I proposed a % of revenue for x amount of time and it was accepted. The project has moved slower than if I'd hired a designer (for example Lindsey is currently defending her thesis at school and is 100% focused on that). But I maybe alwa…

Great site and thanks for the background info. As a developer, I'm always in need of good design. I love the site design and the story of how you found the designer. I hadn't heard of Forrst. If anyone has a spare invite to kick my way, I applied for membership.

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#127

Post by capstone » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 10:41 PM UTC

bdclimber14 wrote: post #7

I love the site, although I am certainly not your market (male, don't want kids). However, a month ago someone posted an almost identical concept to HN. I think it was for wedding registries though. Overall, great concept, attractive website, and a real need. My only criticism relates to it being fairly obvious. What hacker hasn't bought a wedding/baby gift and thought "Wouldn't it be cool if there was a registry for…

You've hit the nail right on the head. I've had the same idea and articulated some of the problems here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2176962.

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#128

Post by eru » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 11:01 PM UTC

axod wrote: post #77

subpixel wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The url really doesn't matter. The name does, and it's great. My advice would be to use the proper spelling ('Babylist') in general - especially in your html titles - and in no time you'll be #1 for the term, regardless of spelling: http://bit.ly/h5fizW

> The name does, and it's great. People will go to babylist.com. They will probably copy the concept if it takes off. Bad idea.

People will go to google and type babylist. (Or even search for babylist.com.)

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#129

Post by NickPollard » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 11:04 PM UTC

patricklynch wrote: post #95

natgordon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a member, but not actively. I had the idea for the site and posted it ( http://forrst.com/posts/Any_designers_interested_on_collabor... but I don't think this link will work if you're not logged in) This is what I wrote: Hey, I'm a ruby on rails developer and I'm 5 months pregnant. Today I created a baby registry and it was a nightmare. I ended up using the amazon.com universal wishlist. It's a bookmarklet that l…

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. -from Gödel, Escher, Bach

You know someone's a programmer when they even talk in recursion.

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#130

Post by ThrowAwayUser » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 11:05 PM UTC

fabiandesimone wrote: post #75

sanj wrote: post #63

One followon idea. If you know the approximate birthdate of the delivery, you can contact customers a year later suggesting first birthday present ideas. And second birthday ideas. And third birthday ideas. You get the idea.

Just make sure something like this does not happen: "9 – BabyCalc.com – If you were about to have a baby you could go on this site and punch in some numbers then it would email you as your baby was growing and let you know what was going on… “like 10 days until you should be able to tell the sex of your baby!” or “Babys heart beat starts today” ect.. stuff like that.. I paid to have the backend developed and the site…

I'm posting this on a throw away account, not my regular user name for obvious reasons.

I used to work for one of these baby companies. It was an interesting challenge coding wise due to the large volume of data they dealt with.

When I first joined what they didn't tell me is that all e-mails about miscarriages and deceased babies would be forwarded to my work inbox. It was then my job to add the flag to the user's account on the database, that way the marketing e-mails and so on would stop. Users could do this themselves, but often they wouldn't find the menu option to do so as it's hidden away, and it's harder to find when you're stressed, so instead they e-mailed us. What shocked me was the sheer volume of e-mails like this I had to deal with from understandably distraught users.

What's worse is that sometimes you'd get an e-mail from a mother who has given birth to a still-born baby or had a baby with SIDS, asking for things like a specialist photographer, or other service who can provide the sensitivity and care they require.

When you here statistics like this it's one thing, but to get e-mails from people, knowing each one relates to a real deceased infant every day it slowly wears you down.

That's one job that haunts me when I least expect it. A lot more people have miscarriages than I first expected.