I’m not a fan of the horizontal slider on a short page with almost no vertical height. I also don’t like how each tile doesn’t even fill the width of the screen. It’s much easier and faster for me the scroll vertically than horizontally. This really made the landing page not work for me visually and functionally to the point where I might bounce.
I don’t understand why you’re showing me a cast iron pan, socks, a jacket, a water bottle, a pocket knife... It seems very random. It made me think those were the items that were on sale?
On the landing page tiles, the way you show the score on the tile, was visually confusing for me. At first I thought it was a price, then I thought maybe a count or a timer or a bid or something? I’m still not quite sure what it is. If it’s upvotes and you’re trying to show hot products this month, consider stealing some design elements from ProductHunt - you’ll see how they make the count an obvious upvote, and they label the section so you can understand why those 3 things are being shown.
Now, your Discover page layout on the other hand is a lot stronger in my opinion. The information layout was a lot easier to understand, it was easy to scroll through, and although I’m sure you have some algorithm for what order they are shown it didn’t feel like specific ones were being pushed.
You might strongly consider just making the Discover page your home page and and just leading with that!
I wonder if you measured percent of unique visitors that performed a search, or average number of items viewed, you would see a huge boost for new visitors who arrived directly on the Discover page versus the current landing page.
If you did this A/B test and wrote about it you’d probably get another shot at the HN front page too.
I think your biggest challenge will be crowdsourcing more product entries. You’re probably well below critical mass where visitors are likely to find something in a given category they’re looking for.
But the core idea of buying specifically for longevity and quality in order to appreciate long term value I think is a great concept.
Just thinking off the top of my head I’d want see products in all of the following categories;
Electronics (Charging cables, rechargeable batteries, maybe data storage) Tools (Essential tools everyone should have 1 of) Household items, from pillows and blankets to fans and trash bins, to personal care like quality brushes and beard trimmers.
I could go on and on, somehow you need to entice or fund the buildout of the database.
I assume you monetize through Amazon product links?