Ask HN: Please help review my startup's messaging | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Please help review my startup's messaging

13 pointsrmorrison15 comments

Hi Guys,

Instead of describing our product here, I'd prefer to let the website speak for itself. Could you please take a look and let us know:

1) Is it clear what we do?

2) Is the value of our product apparent?

3) Any other suggestions/thoughts on the messaging, product, or company would be very appreciated.

Our website is: www.eggzack.com

We have paying customers, and are now working on refining the message to attract new users over the web.

Thanks in advance!

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I think that your messaging is clear and the value of your product is tangible: You help get my information out, with the result (hopefully) that I get more people to come to my site / more generally interact with my brand.

Stream of thoughts - no order:

* EggZack? Ok. First thing that popped into my head was 'Ballsack' .. maybe that's just the way my mind works :)

* The logo / graphic design feels a little bit lightweight / children's TV - might cause an issue if a prospective client has to run it by their boss first: 'Why am I looking at a cartoon about eggs?'

* Am not entirely sure HOW the process works - I want the end result.. what are the steps that lead to it? Do I just press a button and whoosh?

* I have a slightly irrational fear that this sails close to spamming - I assume it doesn't, but you might need to assuage that fear in others

* I looked at the FAQs to narrow down some answers, but was bombarded with implementation 'stuff' that confused me further: sub-types, outlets, file-resources, building a website?

* Is your product essentially a custom-hosted CMS for a website that has all these broadcasting/publishing/pinging/api-integration features built in (not to belittle it - that's great)? If so - it's not obvious from the main pages/video that this is the case. I want your end-result, but, I already have a website that I have invested a lot into - what can you do for me? (Hypothetically)

* In your FAQ you have a link to your 'custom website development process page' that doesn't work.. so I couldn't find the answer to the above.

That's about it I think - good messaging, good sounding end-result.. how do I get there?

Best of luck!

Thanks a lot for the feedback:

I have a slightly irrational fear that this sails close to spamming - Good point, but that's certainly not what we're trying to do. We're getting their message out to people who want it. They're not pushing it to everybody, just people that connected to their social networks, or visited their website, or reporters who want to write about it.

FAQs - You're right, we were kind of using FAQs for both potential customers and existing ones.

Is your product essentially a custom-hosted CMS - One of the features is a CMS-like system. Companies can optionally choose to host their website on our servers. Regardless of whether or not they do, we still broadcast it to all the other places.

Thanks for the thoughts, we'll definitely use it!

No worries.

Thinking on things a little more: I'm not sure what your conversion rates are like, but that element of 'what exactly is involved here - how does it work?' is the thing that causes most friction for me..

If you were to explain somewhere: 'we do X, you do Y, we do Z.. then everything's ready for lift-off' then that would remove the last hurdle, in my mind at-least.

1) Yes, but I'm a plugged-in savvy Internet user, not a plumber or baker.

2) I think your customers -- less-than-net-savvy local businesses -- might not make the leap that you and I made automatically: "... and success at online marketing will bring you more customers and make you money."

3) I think you will find you spend a lot more time evangelizing Internet marketing to your customers than you spend evangelizing EggZack, which might be problematic for you. I think the core challenge is convincing them that this weird newfangled thing that they do on the Google with the webmails is actually going to make a difference in their bottom lines.

You're right, that it is difficult to visualize from the POV of a less-than-net-savvy local business owner.

However, we are finding that a lot of small business owners know that they need to take advantage of the internet, but they don't know how. They have a website, usually a static website that they paid some student X thousand dollars to build, that they can't update because the kid disappeared. They hear about Twitter and Facebook in the news or Inc magazine, but they don't know how to get started. They have a lot of information that others are interest in, but they're not getting it out there. We help with that, for example we also send their content to local journalists who are always looking for more local happenings.

After spending time looking it over it seems like it's potentially a really cool and useful service. From the little marketing I've done, I know it can be tedious to manage a bunch of services. Here's my feedback on your home page:

1) No, it wasn't clear until I went back for my second visit. I originally thought it was some link or photo sharing service. The egg is distracting and I didn't see the "Your Information" icon next to it. That helps describe exactly what you distribute. Also "your information" is vague. It would help if it was more specific as to what information you're distributing.

2) Not really. If someone's website is already on Google, why is their logo listed? How do you publish someone's marketing materials to Google? Also, why should I or someone else care about having info on MySpace or Topix or fwix? I didn't know those were sites business cared about, and I haven't even heard of the last two.

3) You already have the egg guy in the logo, I think it's a little much to also have him be the primary focus on the explanation graphic of how your service works. Also, I don't like to view videos about products because they always take too long. I might suggest also adding a page that describes the benefits of your product so that people can learn more before having to decide to sign up. I'm still not exactly sure how the service works.

Also, I'd like to add that Feedback Army is great for this kind of high-level website feedback: http://www.feedbackarmy.com/

The video is cool but I really want to see some screenshots or a video of the app in action. Right now your landing page is kind of a black box and I can't see what's inside without signing up..

I'm also not sure who your target market is. Are you going after Jill the restaurant owner or John the web startup junkie?

Are you going after Jill the restaurant owner or John the web startup junkie?

Our target market are small businesses, like Jill the restaurant owner. We have found that these people want to take advantage of the internet, know that they should, but don't know how to go about it. That's where we come in, as a one stop shop to help them.

Thanks for the feedback. Maybe we'll try putting up a few example customer images/descriptions.

Your closest match might be Hubspot.com. I'm not sure how different your approach is but it seems like you're going after similar target markets.

They seem a little more traditional of course - webinars and white papers abound on their site. Personally when I see webinars/white papers on a site I immediately think of old people in suits.

Your site seems younger and more 'hip' so I'd play that theme up more. It's always good to play to your strengths IMHO.

1.) Well, at first it doesn't. What makes things clear is your caption below your logo. Please make that more visible.

2.) If it's really one click, yes.

3.) A change of color scheme. The egg is cute, in a very ethnic geekery way. =)

You have paying customers - great! Ask them why they're paying for your service. Ask them to describe the value they're getting. Then (minimally) clean up those words and use them on your website. No one can market your product better than the people who are using/loving it.

I understand what you offer, but have no idea how you actually implement it. Screenshots of your app and maybe a chart of the steps you take to get my info to all those places would be useful.

I just don't see how you can automatically get my info to reporters, etc... or at least in a way that doesn't spam them and get the right info to the right reporter (they each focus on an area).

Love it. I would sign up if I had the money.

1. Clear yes 2. Very - the metric thing is very important.

No, in the first five seconds it's not at all clear what this is. Visual design says ignore me.

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