Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000 • Hacker News Board

Re: Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000

#51

Post by joshmlewis » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 12:31 AM UTC

I'll comment with another note, I love that this is coming out of Greenville. I live here and have traveled to Boston, SF, Seattle, DC and others but Greenville is up and coming. It's not too big but not too small. It's still small enough to have a piece of the intimate south, but big enough to feel a great part of the vibrant city.

It's also dirt cheap to live here compared to somewhere else. A 2-3 bedroom apartment for downtown in the heart of everything will run less than 2k if you find a good spot. Also access to CoWork is awesome like the OP was saying. You can find out more about Greenville here, http://thenextbig.co/. All this to say, if you want to kind of step out of the norm a bit and experience something different but not leaving great talent Greenville is an awesome place to be.

Re: Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000

#52

Post by bemmu » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 12:39 AM UTC

unoti wrote: post #9

Those are the most beautiful and amazing resume layouts I've ever seen. You have yourself a serious winner here!

The site design itself is really beautiful too. Loft Resumes isn't the only case where I've heard projects getting a lot of useful traffic from CSS galleries.

While in my case (Candy Japan) I'm not sure if the possible improvement in conversions would justify spending money on the design, I wonder if the side benefit of getting listed in CSS galleries would make it worth it.

Re: Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000

#53

Post by dominikb » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 12:41 AM UTC

calvin wrote: post #46

dominikb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's more likely - that you go to a resume builder website when your mate recommends, or download an app? What would you recommend - a cool app, or a website? Apps are physical and cool. CVs should be fun to do. That's the future. Assuming that the desktop is a primary device for people in 2012 is just wrong. Also, CVs don't need to contain huge amounts of text; better keep it simple.

You're right about apps being popular and continually growing in importance. However, you're talking about a task (creating/updating a CV) that takes a lot of manual work and editing. It could certainly be automated to a large extent by grabbing existing information from LinkedIn or Facebook or wherever. But when you get down to the details, there's a lot to write. That will never be fun to do in an app. I can't imag…

I agree. But we also thought it's not possible to cut video on a phone before iPhone.

Look around, millions of people grab 1080p and cut on a pocket device. Not just that, much more.

I was suggesting to be creative and think ahead. I am biased, but I believe it would work great and bring revenue to the table fast.

Re: Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000

#54

Post by Katelyn » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 12:42 AM UTC

dcaldwell wrote: post #50

Katelyn wrote: post #47

- I can really see this type of service blowing up, once you find the right product/market/fit. - The slider above-the-fold on the 'shop' tab distracts me from the rest of the page. It wasn't intuitive to me that I could scroll down to begin shopping. - A simple filter would be a great addition to the 'shop' page. It'd be nice to filter by type (e.g business, creative, etc.), price or design (rustic, elegant) - I won…

Thanks for the advice. - Any suggestions on how to make it intuitive to scroll down? - We've thought about filtering but we've honestly seen no trends in which professions pick which designs - it's been all over the board. - The shopper doesn't own the theme. Due to the copyright agreements that we have with the designers who created the resumes and the font foundries who created the typefaces, we aren't able to rele…

re: suggestions on how to make it intuitive to scroll down:

On the shop page: An anchor link that sits above-the-fold with a call-to-action like "start shopping" or "browse designs" would probably make it more intuitive. Anything that shows me a peak of what's below-the-fold would help.

Since the main slider occupies all of the above-the-fold real estate and has its own horizontal navigation, I just assumed I was 'done' with the page once I had scrolled through each slide.

Re: Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000

#55

Post by bobidden » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 12:44 AM UTC

Can I ask how you're doing the shadow background on the menu elements? It looks gorgeous.

Re: Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000

#56

Post by dcaldwell » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 12:48 AM UTC

bemmu wrote: post #52

unoti wrote: post #9

Those are the most beautiful and amazing resume layouts I've ever seen. You have yourself a serious winner here!

The site design itself is really beautiful too. Loft Resumes isn't the only case where I've heard projects getting a lot of useful traffic from CSS galleries. While in my case (Candy Japan) I'm not sure if the possible improvement in conversions would justify spending money on the design, I wonder if the side benefit of getting listed in CSS galleries would make it worth it.

We actually haven't gotten many orders directly from the CSS galleries. While some designers do order our resumes, they aren't our primary target market (many of them will design their own.)

From our standpoint, it helps out with getting some solid back links for SEO purposes in the beginning and also helps from a referral standpoint. We also just like seeing and spreading great design. We're kind of passionate about that. Some designers will send the link to their non-designer friends because they don't feel like doing it pro-bono for their friend and the money their friend can pay just isn't worth it to create something from scratch.

However, if you have a product or service whose direct customer is designers, then you might be able to get some conversions from the CSS galleries. Your's could be this case.

Re: Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000

#57

Post by Radzell » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 12:57 AM UTC

I think the idea is great, but what really stands out is the execution. The style the way it just works is why this idea could be huge congratz guys.

Re: Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000

#58

Post by sgdesign » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 12:59 AM UTC

I've got to say I'm amazed at the number of templates you have. It must've taken quite a lot of total designer hours to create all these.

Any plans to code them and let people generate mini-sites from them? I could see that doing pretty well too.

In any case the service and site looks great, congratulations!

Re: Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000

#59

Post by dcaldwell » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 1:09 AM UTC

joshmlewis wrote: post #51

I'll comment with another note, I love that this is coming out of Greenville. I live here and have traveled to Boston, SF, Seattle, DC and others but Greenville is up and coming. It's not too big but not too small. It's still small enough to have a piece of the intimate south, but big enough to feel a great part of the vibrant city. It's also dirt cheap to live here compared to somewhere else. A 2-3 bedroom apartment…

Another great site to learn about Greenville is: http://lifeingreenville.com/

Re: Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000

#60

Post by reilly3000 » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 1:14 AM UTC

It would have been great to have some retargeting advertising going the whole time. It can be very cheap and makes people on average 70% more likely to convert.