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What's wrong with my site? Did I just pick a bad idea?

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What's wrong with my site? Did I just pick a bad idea?

#1

Post by dicroce »

I suspect that I am in a position that a lot of the users of this site have been in, or will be in.

About 1 year ago, my wife was looking for a small business she could run to make a few extra dollars. I had seen a few custom trail mix websites, and realized that I could beat them all with a site that showed you what your mix was gonna look like BEFORE you order. I took two weeks off from work and coded the site. Here's a link to the coolest part of the site http://www.trailmyx.com/createMyx

Once the flurry of orders from our friends and family died down, we settled into about 1 order per week. Not very exiting.

We tried advertising with Google AdWords, but nothing I tried was profitable. Furthermore, everyone I've ever attempted to contact (food bloggers mostly) have either ignored us, or flaked out on us.

I'm taking the next two weeks off from work to work on the site. What should I do with this time? What is it missing? At what point do you throw in the towel and try something else?

Re: What's wrong with my site? Did I just pick a bad idea?

#2

Post by smoody »

My thoughts:

- "Trailmix" is too generic. Do an alternate version of the site named hackersnacker.com or something like that and market it as the perfect food to have in a bowl next to your keyboard. In line with this, add chocolate-covered coffee beans to the mix along with other hacker-freiendly treats (sweet tarts, etc). Sell it to the audience you know.

- Anti-alias the various ingredients so that the images look more natural. The white boarders around the nuts don't make it seem very appetizing.

- Add a facebook "like" button so your friends and family can get the social graph rolling.

Re: What's wrong with my site? Did I just pick a bad idea?

#3

Post by dicroce »

smoody wrote: post #2

My thoughts: - "Trailmix" is too generic. Do an alternate version of the site named hackersnacker.com or something like that and market it as the perfect food to have in a bowl next to your keyboard. In line with this, add chocolate-covered coffee beans to the mix along with other hacker-freiendly treats (sweet tarts, etc). Sell it to the audience you know. - Anti-alias the various ingredients so that the images look…

Cool. :) "HackerSnacker.com"... Or perhaps "BackPackerFuel.com"... You know, chocolate covered espresso beans are already on there.

Re: What's wrong with my site? Did I just pick a bad idea?

#4

Post by Geee »

First off, the images on the site load slowly and also are scaled into wrong aspect ratio. Pre-scale those thumbnails and set proper caching for faster loading. Every time the item is added to the mix, all the images load again for some reason. Also, please upgrade to a faster server, that's just really slow.

I'm not sure that the 'approximate image' of the mix is a huge selling point (while cool). In general, I would work on the design of the site, now it comes of a bit 'amateurish'. Try to find a nicer typeface, use larger fonts, align everything, and remove all unnecessary items (like site news, and login). Concentrate on the images in the design.

Why there's login option? I think you should just allow people to create mixes and share them easily without logging in. Just create unique url for every mix like trailmyx.com/mix/dji4r and let people share that.

Re: What's wrong with my site? Did I just pick a bad idea?

#7

Post by dicroce »

Geee wrote: post #4

First off, the images on the site load slowly and also are scaled into wrong aspect ratio. Pre-scale those thumbnails and set proper caching for faster loading. Every time the item is added to the mix, all the images load again for some reason. Also, please upgrade to a faster server, that's just really slow. I'm not sure that the 'approximate image' of the mix is a huge selling point (while cool). In general, I woul…

Well, the login option is so that you can save a mix you've created. But I really like the idea about a permalink for every mix... I'm going to add that to my todo list right now.

As far as the design goes, it's really not my strong suit. Perhaps I need to find a designer to partner with...

Re: What's wrong with my site? Did I just pick a bad idea?

#8

Post by dicroce »

mcarrano wrote: post #5

When I first looked at your homepage, I was wondering if the site was active - Will I ever get my order, if I ordered something? This has do do with the fact that the site news was last updated almost a year ago.

Someone else suggested I just remove the site news. I think I'm going to do that.
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