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Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

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Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#91
post #90

I was just wondering if you were planning to integrate CasperJS too, which is an awesome addition onto PhantomJS. If not, it'd be interesting to have access to an online PhantomJS REPL.

I've been seriously considering it. However, I've never used CasperJS myself, so I'll have to get a better handle on what it is offer first.

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#92
post #86

Heya, Do you plan to license this for self-hosting? If you do, I think you might be surprised at the enterprise buyin on this sort of thing. I can immediately think of $confidential projects that could use this.

You should consider this. This could be useful for automated testing, but that will all be on an internal network.

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#93
post #84
post #62

Oh, I can outdo you! Many years ago I did an upstart that was a combination of delicious and facebook, using bayesian filtering to locate links and people you might be interested in from what you posted yourself. Incredibly clever product. Before Google had even thought of pagerank. We got funding, we had great engineers, and I was the CEO. But you know what? We never launched. We ran out of money before we got that…

MixMax, as in the cakes? You wonderful human being. Those cakes rock my world.

I had no idea it was a cake - it's just a silly name I thought up 2024 days ago when making an account for some strange newfangled startup site I'd found through reddit. :-)

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#95
post #85

My advice: stop advertising PhantomJS and let me sign up for your service. Why did I have to scroll down 80% of the page to get to a sign up button? And nothing on your page convinced me that I should. I am in your target market - I build websites for a living, and I hate testing in multiple browsers. Convince me, in one sentence, why this is a good idea, and give me the option of doing something about it. Good luck.

Definitely too much copy before the sell, though long form can work in some cases. Probably too many price points with meaningless (to me) names. Maybe 3 with a lower priced entry? But a/b a/b a/b if you have the traffic. Cross browser issues is probably a topic ripe for blog posts. Charge for the testing service, give advice on identifying and mitigating problems for free.

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#96
post #85

My advice: stop advertising PhantomJS and let me sign up for your service. Why did I have to scroll down 80% of the page to get to a sign up button? And nothing on your page convinced me that I should. I am in your target market - I build websites for a living, and I hate testing in multiple browsers. Convince me, in one sentence, why this is a good idea, and give me the option of doing something about it. Good luck.

This. It's a wall of text. I guarantee you, 90+% of people who go to your page are going to hit the back button long before they finish getting to the “sign up” button.

-Condense the value proposition into a few sentences, or better yet, one.

-Use pictures, include screenshots or drawings of what it does. People don’t like reading a wall of text.

-Use multiple sign up buttons. Top, bottom, and between the text. See how http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/ does it.

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#97
post #52

Disclaimer: I'm a hardcore phantomjs user. Add a service that scrapes results and I think you'll be overwhelmed with interest. Scraping is a pain. It takes a special niche talent -- but a ton of people want it. Let people submit what information they want off a page -- you write the script that does it for them. Pay as you go, etc. If it saves people time, they will pay for it. I do full-time consulting -- building o…

Just curious, but isn't this what ScraperWiki does?

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#98

You posted twice on HN and no one up voted you - posted this 'Tell HN' and this time you're on the front page, I'm sure that a bunch of interested hackers will visit your website now and register with your service. Keep telling the world about your service, find out what works better and do it again.

> no one up voted you

This is a problem with HN. I've submitted 6 stories with this account, all of which seem like they're definitely interesting material highly relevant to HN's audience, and rather similar to stories that have made the front page.

But they've gotten at most 3 upvotes, as of this writing. Heck, I have single comments that get more upvotes than all of my submissions combined.

I don't want to think about having the success or failure of a product riding on HN's ability to find my submission and upvote it.

If you want to personally do something about this, next time you read through the front page and still want to procrastinate, look at the New feed, and upvote some stories that don't already have a big group of people looking at them!

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#99
I am glad you launched! If I can just give my 5 cents here, it will definitely get you more users if you could summarise your test into easily readable point forms or short paragraphs to explain your product on your main website. Similarly, if you are sending out to your mailing list, you will want to keep it concise!
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