Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.) • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

#111

Post by jirinovotny » Fri, Oct 14, 2011, 9:27 PM UTC

mikegreenberg wrote: post #99

jirinovotny wrote: post #47

Any ideas how to promote .NET WinForms control? Our Better ListView is designed to replace the inbuilt crappy regular ListView control, and it rocks - we just don't know how to promote it. Check it out: http://www.componentowl.com

- I would start out grassroots-style. Attend .NET meetups to talk about your work and your project while you network. Offer promotions to these groups if they'll have them. - Sponsor .NET Hack-a-thons? - Help feverishly in .NET forums and community sites like Stackoverflow. (Put the service in your profile...people really look!) - Create programs that provide incentive for your customers to spread the word about a pr…

Thanks for your advice Mike! We can't attend .NET meetings that much, because we are based in Czech Republic.

Hack-a-thon sponsorship is an excellent idea. Any idea how to find these?

Thanks for spotting the inconsistency, too!

Re: Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

#112

Post by mwdev » Fri, Oct 14, 2011, 9:31 PM UTC

chetan51 wrote: post #34

Hi Mike, Thanks for your time and generosity! I just entered the beta phase for my side-project OtherMind, a fast way to take notes and make lists ( http://othermind.me ). I'd really appreciate it if you could try it out and let me know whether you think it's useful and marketable. Any feedback in general would also be great. Thank you so much!

This is a lot like what I tried with http://www.mindwallet.com. Here is a video if you don't want to sign up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNpAH7AGhIk

I like the hash tag syntax quite a bit. I love these types of apps and seeing how different people approach it. The one box entry is also a really nice touch.

Re: Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

#113

Post by mikegreenberg » Fri, Oct 14, 2011, 9:43 PM UTC

gmichnikov wrote: post #77

mikegreenberg wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're new to coding, it doesn't show in the least. At a second's glance, this is a polished site. Very clean layout and presentation. Clear communication of value-add. And I assume the images of the colleges gives semblance of social-proof for your product. Excellent! (I don't understand why but cooler colors tend to do much better producing academic products. I have nothing but subjectivity to back this up, but…

Hi Mike, Thanks a lot for the prompt reply. The polish is largely thanks to a purchase from ThemeForest, I did very little on that front. The image slider was part of that layout, and frankly I couldn't think of anything to throw in there besides the images of the schools. I will definitely check out Stripe, thanks. I saw their post on HN, my biggest concern was whether or not I'll be able to figure out how to set it…

Of course. Just realize that many universities have services like this provided by the local honor society and chatpers. (I know this to be the case at my current university, where I ran the program there.)

Re: Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

#114

Post by Vivtek » Fri, Oct 14, 2011, 10:59 PM UTC

gsiener wrote: post #5

Vivtek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customer Acquisition Stages In modeling customer acquisition, the metaphor of a funnel is often. I think you mean "often used ". :-) I was a little taken aback by the gold/platinum/silver categories of customers in services; there was no explanation of why these three are given. (In my case, categorization of users ... hmm, actually it does pertain, now that I think about it.)

Good catch, thanks! Think of those suggestions as v1...coming soon we'll have "business templates" that will flesh these out more.

Business templates is a good idea, damn you. (One I've been thinking about for a while now.)

Re: Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

#115

Post by dougbarrett » Fri, Oct 14, 2011, 11:04 PM UTC

mikegreenberg wrote: post #96

dougbarrett wrote: post #30

Hi Mike, I have created a free service for app developers to connect with their user base through discussions, bug fixes and a static FAQs section. I have some features I will be working on soon (closing bugs, assigning bugs, "private" apps, RSS feeds). Is the idea just not good enough, or is there something I'm missing that I should be highlighting? The site is http://www.dcmntr.com/ Thanks!

Hi Doug, I have to echo much of the sentiment of other comments here. The project is so busy. It does so many great things, but does it do any of them really well? I would identify the primary features the people appreciate most from your project and mercilessly slash the rest off. (If anyone wants to keep it, you've open sourced it so tell them to fork off!) In all seriousness, if you focus your project and show how…

Sounds good. Thanks for the input!

Re: Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

#116

Post by snikolic » Fri, Oct 14, 2011, 11:23 PM UTC

phzbOx wrote: post #104

snikolic wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback! I think you're right. Our recommendation system has seemed a bit weak, especially for new users - I think we're going to bury this somewhere as a Custom option rather than emphasizing it as one of the four major streams. Orienting new users is probably our biggest challenge at the moment, and I think our product's biggest weakness. We have some solutions in the pipeline, but we still don't ha…

Maybe. Ask the user for a couple artist/song he likes. And then, try to find an existing user who liked these songs. So, implicitly, the new user could follow that existing user and get his/her recommendations. Does it make any sens?

Makes sense. We've considered something like this. We also considered showing a cloud of tags, artists, and/or genres and asking the user to select a few. What do you think of something like that?

Re: Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

#117

Post by mikegreenberg » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 12:28 AM UTC

ad80 wrote: post #98

Hi Mike, I love the initiative and using the opportunity... what is your opinion about my recently launched project http://www.mindthebook.com and what would you change to make it a better user experience? Cheers

I think it's a good idea. Books are an appropriate answer to questions, but sometimes I might not want to read an entire book to get to the part that's relevant to me. Maybe you could find ways to cross-reference certain parts of books with questions. (I see issues with getting content rights, or having to build a referencing system that might be more effort than the value is worth.)

Questions beg for conversations to start around them. I'm not certain if this would be clouding the simplicity of your offering...but I think there isn't currently much to make your site "sticky" so the user wants to return. They come for a recommendation, maybe they ask a question, but there's no reason for them to participate further. They got their book. Discussion seems like a perfect compliment.

The other thing that could probably improve is the search experience. This might be a little harder, but you don't only want people to find their burning questions, you want them to stumble on questions they didn't know they wanted an answer to as well. This could be in the form of related questions in search, n-th degree of questions to another question, or other interesting discovery mechanisms.

Does this make sense?

Re: Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

#118

Post by chaddeshon » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 12:30 AM UTC

This shouldn't take more than 5min:

I would love it if you could go to boardgamecalendar.com and tell me one thing I could do to make the product or my description/presentation of the product more appealing.

Thanks.

Re: Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

#119

Post by mikegreenberg » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 12:49 AM UTC

aorshan wrote: post #68

Hey mike!! Thanks for doing this again. If you have some time I was wondering if you would check out this political satire website I do some work for and let me know what you think of the design and if anything needs to be changed. Also any recommendations on marketing it would be appreciated! http://thewashingtonfancy.com/

Hey there! Here are my thoughts...

I think the site could use more breathing room. The blocks are feel like they're on top of each other. Adding some padding will make the site look less busy (or potentially less full, a negative?) and easier for reading.

Honestly, I don't have much to complain about. The next thing I'd start playing with is tracking where user engagement is low and find ways to highlight long-tail content in higher-trafficked areas. Identify metrics that are important to the site's longevity and optimize them. You're probably beyond the point of tweaking the interface at this point short of trying random A/B tests with new ideas.

Re: Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

#120

Post by mikegreenberg » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 12:56 AM UTC

chaddeshon wrote: post #118

This shouldn't take more than 5min: I would love it if you could go to boardgamecalendar.com and tell me one thing I could do to make the product or my description/presentation of the product more appealing. Thanks.

Keep the following text:

This calendar features creative photographs uploaded by the community at BoardGameGeek.com.

54 pages. One for each week.

Remove everything else. People understand calendars. They know how they work. Instead, put a BIG INTERACTIVE demo letting users flip through the calendar to look at pictures. Under the text, place a large PURCHASE button. Add the newsletter signup underneath if you must. But it really should offered after they make their purchase. Make it exclusive! ;)

Bonus points: Insert easter egg appointments in the calendar for ridiculous things like "Catanadians Anonymous @ 8pm (BRING BEER)".

Just an idea.

UPDATE: So it looks like this is a test and the product has not been produced yet. And from the looks of your blog, you've spent a decent amount of time to get to this point. So I didn't mean to cut what you created to shreds. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this page, especially if it's generating cash. However, something needs to be said for conveying a simple message. "I have a calendar. The pictures might be of interest to you. Come and buy it from me." Adding all of the additional text is a distraction from what you want your visitors to do. If they want to buy it, they will. Additional pictures may entice them to dwell on the thought a bit longer. Additional text might do the same thing. But I believe that people prefer visual candy to reading more often than not. That's the main reason behind my suggestion. Hope the explanation helps.