Had a look at your site - Nice design, but quite bad "communication". Not getting what nota really is about and why I should use it.
Ask HN: Everyone loves my startup concept, why is no one using it?
21–30 of 100 posts
Re: Ask HN: Everyone loves my startup concept, why is no one using it?
#22Maybe people you've explained it to love the concept, but I have no idea what your product does after scrolling through your your bootstrap page. I THINK you capture events to help analyze visitor patterns better, while helping to solve some common mistakes like mistyped words and such, but I really have no idea.
Re: Ask HN: Everyone loves my startup concept, why is no one using it?
#23It's been mentioned several times but I think the main thing is telling what problem you're solving, as early as possible.
Also, your sign in looks like a modal, but it isn't. Confused me a little bit when i wanted to go back and almost made me stop completely. Probably just me, but might be worth a look.
Try asking the people that love the concept what they think of your sales site. Maybe you explained something to them which caught their attention that you're not saying on the site.
Re: Ask HN: Everyone loves my startup concept, why is no one using it?
#24I wanted to give you feedback that there is no feedback mechanism on the right side of the page but ironically you don't give the user opportunity to apply your product to your own site.
Re: Ask HN: Everyone loves my startup concept, why is no one using it?
#25No price listed. I usually don't sign up to anything unless the price is listed.
+1, always the first thing i look for.
I hate when i start to use a service and then the pricing is not even affordable or can be replaced by something a lot cheaper or even free (open source).
Re: Ask HN: Everyone loves my startup concept, why is no one using it?
#26What does your site/product do? The first thing I read is something about a toolbar ... a toolbar for what? :)
Re: Ask HN: Everyone loves my startup concept, why is no one using it?
#27To echo the feedback others have provided: your website makes it a challenge to understand what your product does.
Being obtuse about the point of your product is not an effective strategy unless you are in stealth mode and you have a simple landing page just to drum up intrigue.
I would clarify the problem and why your product's features supply the best answer.
Re: Ask HN: Everyone loves my startup concept, why is no one using it?
#28OK, I've gone to your page and had a look ... Nota features an innovative toolbar to help you get the job done What job? Area Selection Tool: Lets you highlight any part of a web page. And best of all it takes a screen capture of the selection! For what? Text Highlighter Tool: Shows copy changes and catches typos in text heavy pages. (Yeah, we're looking at you "Terms of Use" pages.) What? Take the guesswork out of w…
Thanks for that. This landing page can sure be optimised quite a bit. Though as today the main problem is not so much converting users from landing page to sign-up but rather getting current beta users (that do not complain in any sort about the app) to actually try it in they day to day workflow. I am striving for feedback, and if no one use the app I can't get any.
Re: Ask HN: Everyone loves my startup concept, why is no one using it?
#29I would have left you this feedback live on your site, but no widget there, which I feel is a missed opportunity.
Anyhow.
Talk about how web designers in specifically should be using this rather than getting their feedback over email with non-descriptive explanations like "I feel the paragraph was overshadowed by the icon." "What icon?" "The green one." "On what page?" "The home page." "Oh yay after 3 emails I finally understand what you meant!"
Get Beta Access doesn't read as a button.
The hero shot is a lovely photo and I don't want to crush your soul about it, but it sells a lifestyle of working on Macbooks in hipster cafes, not your software. It is impossible to tell, at that point in the sales process, that the fake website which gets 100% of the screen-within-a-screen real estate is not actually the point of the shot, but rather, the UI that gets 10% of the screen-within-a-screen real estate is the point. That UI is unreadable to me, both literally and figuratively. Your animated explanation later on the page is superior in explaining what your software actually does.
You should probably sell this face-to-face to designers at meetups/etc. Give away two dozen beta accounts to actual people in real life, with that crazy founder gleam in your eyes. If they don't use it, pester them about why. Answer the objections in onboarding -- e.g. don't have a website that I need feedback on right now, didn't get the snippet installed, etc.
Re: Ask HN: Everyone loves my startup concept, why is no one using it?
#30Don't market to "everyone". Market to a very narrow, carefully defined market. And it doesn't matter if they "love" it. What matters is that they need it, and need it enough to pay. Who are you seeking for beta customers? How are you reaching and inviting them? What kind of feedback are you getting from them?
My target market is small (2~10 employees) web agencies. I worked for such companies and build that app to address the pains they have with the feedback loop. So far I have mostly been doing cold mailing to very targeted market and made some promotion through listing site (betalist, reddit). I had about 300 users out of this. The type of feedback I got so far sounds like: "Great app will save me lot of time!!" yet af…
Have you spoke to those users that stopped using the site. Seems like they're you're biggest chance to find what's wrong. You can get as many users as you want, but if you can't keep hold of them then you'll still have problems.
Find out why they started, then find out why they stopped. Maybe it wasn't right for them in the first place, in which case you can focus on the people it is right for. Maybe there's something they thought it had which it doesn't, it might be worth adding that in if it's consistent for everyone. Good luck!