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Released my startup MVP Outpost, begging for feedback

outpostp2p.com

11–20 of 30 posts

Re: Released my startup MVP Outpost, begging for feedback

#11

that link appends four #### to the URL which seems like it causes it to break. Also after looking at your landing page I have no clue what the service does. You say "Ride, Rent, and experience a new way to travel." This doesn't tell me much, other than it does something cool, why not just tell me the #1 benefit to using this service?

I was confused as well. I typed "Austria" since that's the country that I live in. I pressed "enter" too quickly and it brought me to Austin, Texas. It also only has a single match in Austria, which is Hallstatt. I'll tell you exactly how I experienced the website: I entered text, it opened google maps, it showed me destinations on the left and when I click on one it shows me a price. That's where I didn't know how to proceed. What was that price? What does it include? How pay? Which of these routes matter to me? I don't have any idea which one is good or bad, which one is relevant to me. Is this site supposed to be for general holiday planning, or hitchhiking or what?

Re: Released my startup MVP Outpost, begging for feedback

#12

Really like the What's Around Me button. It's a good way to immediately show people what outpost can do for them. Before clicking it I wasn't sure, as the homepage copy is a bit vague.

I agree with you, I really wasn't sure what the home page is communicating.

Re: Released my startup MVP Outpost, begging for feedback

#13
Information and search is usually easier and more comprehensive on the original site. With that said, there has to be a good reason for me to visit an aggregation service to view that information. For me this site doesn't do it for me. All your doing for me (in the housing category) is plotting Airbnb & 9Flats on a map, which since there are only 2 sites doesn't add a ton of value for me. I would rather go directly to Airbnb to find potential housing because more owner information and more powerful search options.

Again, I think aggregation adds true value to consumers when you save them from visiting 10+ websites, but not from 2 or 3.

Re: Released my startup MVP Outpost, begging for feedback

#14
Your "About" section is more clear than the descriptions on your homepage. Perhaps you can find a better way to convey your value proposition. Your homepage doesn't tell the average user what you do very clearly. Below are some small copy issues.

"Ride, Rent, and experience a new way to travel." -Either capitalize the word "experience" or lower-case the word "rent". Right now it's not consistent in punctuation, in my opinion.

"With Outpost you can check out many person to person services into one spot!" -change "into" to "in".

"Pick a ride share to get to your destination or just walk there." -You need a better way to convey the value of your site in these small descriptions on the homepage.

Re: Released my startup MVP Outpost, begging for feedback

#16

Really like the What's Around Me button. It's a good way to immediately show people what outpost can do for them. Before clicking it I wasn't sure, as the homepage copy is a bit vague.

Just seeing all of the places for rent near me was pretty cool. By far the best feature.

Re: Released my startup MVP Outpost, begging for feedback

#18

Your "About" section is more clear than the descriptions on your homepage. Perhaps you can find a better way to convey your value proposition. Your homepage doesn't tell the average user what you do very clearly. Below are some small copy issues. "Ride, Rent, and experience a new way to travel." -Either capitalize the word "experience" or lower-case the word "rent". Right now it's not consistent in punctuation, in my…

I would add: “person to person services” → “person-to-person services”.

Re: Released my startup MVP Outpost, begging for feedback

#19
I like your home page design and color scheme, but:

- the centering is broken: your information source sites are a bit to the right compared with the 3 steps

- you give me a search box and hint a location, but I don't really know for what... I guessed it should be a destination for a travel but was pretty unsure

- I read P2P as "peer to peer", and I can bet others will too

When I searched for Lisbon, Portugal, I got a ton of results about people that are planning on going there from Madrid, Spain, and offering rides. Clicking on them sends me off from Lisbon to Madrid and got me lost for a while. You should remove the rides from the searches and rework them completely, otherwise they'll provide too much noise and confusion.

Searching for things with spaces presents a lot of labels with the space encoded as "%20".

Overall I like the idea, good work.

Re: Released my startup MVP Outpost, begging for feedback

#20
I'm finding the locations for rides to be very confusing. I searched for "Denver, CO" and there are a number of people offering rides.

It says "Los Angeles -> Denver", which would seem to mean it starts in Los Angeles and ends in Denver? I don't think so, but that's certainly how I read it.

Also I want to just click anywhere on the item (in the map view) and have it take me to the details. I find getting to the details link itself to be kind of frusturating.

Overall I think it's really cool. Love the map interface. Seems very polished already.

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