Show HN: My product lets you catalog your book collection online

how is this different from goodreads.com?

unless I am missing something your login and signup pages do not appear to be using SSL

1. Great product. Fantastic product.

2. Love the design. B+/A- from an unreasonable grader who hates every website he sees. The blue-green-blue content flow is especially smart. There are a few small things I really think you should change, but they're perception-small, not code-small; and since you're early on, we'll pass on them.

* Nice font choice - readability could be better though. Backburner. But good job on the sizing and justification.

* Perfectly done job of setting the "class picture" of apps on devices just so, so that the eye expects more content underneath and wants to scroll down.

* Green is the best section. Hits on all cylinders content-wise and really sells your product well and sells it quick. The value-add is made very obvious.

* Great understanding of "content funnel" on a single page - blue1: BAM, this product is real and here and ready; green: non-technical value-adds decision-makers will appreciate; blue2: decision-makers see as extra nonsense, they "already know everything they need to know"; whereas techies see that and say, "Yes, yes, yes, this will be an improvement, Mr. Manager who asked my opinion via email, on our existing, Centralia-esque catalog system. You were right to observe the opportunity, sir. You are a philosopher-king of management."

3. Fixes.

a) Top bar:

* "Find out how easy it integrates"

* Logo: Black clashes with playfulness of leaf colors. I'd pick a light, light gray.

* Less-than-quick fix: rethink your white bar content. "How to" AND "FAQ" tells me users have a lot of questions. "Order" should be "pricing" or "plans" or "service tiers", etc. Lose the "login" button - implies (right or wrong, you tell me) that the librarians/whoever will need to run their system infrastructure from a web app -- this sounds great to me but does not scream reliability to decision-makers, and reliability is the one thing other than the obvious value-add you need to persuade them on. Lose "Free Trial" and replace it with a button/something elsewhere on main page. See patio11/Patrick McKenzie's vid on free-trial funneling (or maybe A/B testing).

* CHANGE YOUR "ABOUT" TO SOMETHING ELSE. Yours was the first "about" page I've clicked on in like 5 years. They usually have shit for content. Yours has great content! Nobody's ever going to see it!

b) Blue 1:

* Quick fixes: The publications. a) Either make the names clickable links to their corresp. reviews of your product, or (my preference), put an "as seen in" somewhere on the right-ish. b) Do something about the logo non-coherence. IMO, make all of them white. Actually, IMO, throw out Irish Times and RTE alltogether. If 2 of your 4 exes were runway model 10s and 2 were unphotogenic 5s, you would not, if you wanted to convince me you were a 10, show me pictures of all four. Why would you? Because four gf's is better than two gf's? I could've thought you were a 10; now I think you're a 7 who got lucky. c) Definitely, definitely move the App Store button beneath the publications. d) Replace the Android phone with an iPhone, and replace that screen with something that looks more fun/interesting to use. If you want to emphasize cross-platform availability, the place to do it, given your market, is with the choice of laptop. "Oh, all our computers are old PC's." -- decision maker who thinks you don't want his business. It will happen. Maybe already has.

c) Green: Make Coverswish photo bigger - I had to squint to tell what was going on. Change "fancy music album art" to iTunes. The attempt at distance made me think you were hiding from the association rather than embracing it, perhaps because you would prefer I think that you came up with it yourself. I don't care if you came up with it yourself. I care if it works just like iTunes. I know iTunes. I trust iTunes. Any friend/copycat of iTunes is a friend of mine.

* Get rid of "using a smartphone's camera". "So, do I use the camera app, or...what." This confusion is the reason QR codes never blew up.

* Less conceptual-style language, more concrete-object language. "Libramatic then retrieves the book's catalog information for automatic viewing - title, author, and even content abstracts."

* MUCH better than the current graphic would be just a zoom of a screenshot of Libramatic displaying a really impressive abstract. Define as you will. But be sure to partial-zoom, focusing on the abstract and cutting off the other info, because you're not trying to sell them on that, because Libramatic is too awesome to think of mere book titles and author names as an impressive feature, and because your customers expect better. Whether or not any of that is true, I have no idea, but that's the impression you should give.

d) Blue2: You already know what, you lazy person. All the icons and paras are offset and different sizes and different styles even. Stop dat. Also, I disagree with some icon choices, especially the globe and the paintbrush (kidding). But I gotta go now, late for lunch. Shit. Anyway, good luck out there, Shane.

Interview with the creator. Very well done Shane, nice job. You kept it simple yet powerful!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPy3T_vJEVY#at=42

Back when facebook apps first started I wanted to write an app that allowed a user enter in all their books and allow a library like checkout system where your pool of possible books to checkout were the collection of all your friends books (where they allow "friends to checkout" on certain books).

If you continue with this, I would love to see a similar feature.