You should add a random, monthly-ish gift autodelivery service and call it 'Flowers and Forget'.
Rate my weekend project, Thursday Flowers: a thoughtfulness service
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Re: Rate my weekend project, Thursday Flowers: a thoughtfulness service
#12Wonderful idea. I signed up.
Nth-ing the suggestion on tweaking the ads. They're definitely jarring. Perhaps try to pick up some sponsorships? 1800Flowers, etc.
Re: Rate my weekend project, Thursday Flowers: a thoughtfulness service
#13It seems like a decent idea if that's what you really intend to do with it. I'd get rid of the ads at the bottom though, kind of cheapen the look of the site.
Fwiw, I didn't even know there were ads on the site with adblock on.
Re: Rate my weekend project, Thursday Flowers: a thoughtfulness service
#14It's probably too early but, when you have the users, you should put up a dashboard with how many people are using the service. You could have something like "2436 People Are More Romantic," that would 'prove' legitimacy and verify the your premise of the site.
"Sign up and we'll send you ideas every few weeks at random intervals," sounds like "when we come up with an idea we'll send it out," it doesn't make me believe that you're committing to the site which makes me skeptical of entering my email.
Just my .02. Otherwise, I'm a fan of the idea.
Re: Rate my weekend project, Thursday Flowers: a thoughtfulness service
#15Not sure of the implentation details, but hopefully you're sending out different ideas to some degree per week/user. Depending on the ultimate success of the site, some might notice the use of some external force in 'suddenly thoughtful significant other'
"Bob gave you flowers last wednesday? and a card on Monday? Frank did the EXACT same thing!" (etc.)
Re: Rate my weekend project, Thursday Flowers: a thoughtfulness service
#16It's probably too early but, when you have the users, you should put up a dashboard with how many people are using the service. You could have something like "2436 People Are More Romantic," that would 'prove' legitimacy and verify the your premise of the site. "Sign up and we'll send you ideas every few weeks at random intervals," sounds like "when we come up with an idea we'll send it out," it doesn't make me belie…
The counter is in the plan but is currently an embarrassingly low number (79 and counting!).
Re: random intervals, we'll try to find a better way to express what happens, and as someone else suggested will show an example of what the email will look like.
I think we'll also add a random suggestion to the front page.
Re: Rate my weekend project, Thursday Flowers: a thoughtfulness service
#17Not sure of the implentation details, but hopefully you're sending out different ideas to some degree per week/user. Depending on the ultimate success of the site, some might notice the use of some external force in 'suddenly thoughtful significant other' "Bob gave you flowers last wednesday? and a card on Monday? Frank did the EXACT same thing!" (etc.)
Every user gets a random idea from a a database of ideas; there's maybe 40 ideas in the DB for each combination of genders. We have some logic that prevents you from getting the same suggestion twice in a row, and in a branch we've yet to merge we've added a link to the emails that lets the user get a new suggestion.
We've got Big Plans(tm) to add user accounts that will let users than customize their own suggestion list.
Re: Rate my weekend project, Thursday Flowers: a thoughtfulness service
#18This is just an opinion, but if you need reminding to be thoughtful, you've already lost a lot of the essence of what thoughtfulness is all about.
Being given suggestions about how to be thoughtful further removes the 'thought' from the so called 'thoughtful' act. Though I haven't signed up, in technical terms I'm sure its a fair achievement for a weekend project, however I really think it misses the mark in an area where there could be much larger scale opportunity.
For example: you're limiting this service to romantic thoughtfulness, completely ignoring being thoughtful to people with whom your intended users might have a non-romantic relationship.
There are quite a few reminder / notification type projects popping up lately and I have to wonder how long-lived they will be even for avid users. I can't help but think its eventually going to feel like spam (even if your email content is fantastically insightful and useful).
With that said kudos for an interesting idea that you've made a reality.
Re: Rate my weekend project, Thursday Flowers: a thoughtfulness service
#19Please, by god, kill the ads at the bottom of your sign up page. It makes me highly skeptical of your service, since you seem to be interested in making a quick buck.
Re: Rate my weekend project, Thursday Flowers: a thoughtfulness service
#20Are you really making enough from the ads on the bottom of the page to let it clutter up your design? If you continued to develop this so your special offers would allow me to do whatever it is (send flowers, etc.) with one click or one reply e-mail, that'd be great.
I'm so on the fence with the ads. I agree they clutter up the design. We've made the big $0.04 on the ads so far... I'd much rather send well formed and target recommendations with the suggestions. tl;dr - we'll probably kill them, but thought it would be cool to buy a beer with the proceeds.
Definitely kill the AdWords. Those ads, at least for me, are not relevant at all (diabetic socks, huh?).
As others have suggested, you can monetize with the affiliate ads in the emails that relate to what you're suggesting ("Need flowers? Try FTD.com"). Those ads will bring in higher revenues because they are relevant. AdWords feel really cheap here.