ASK HN: Feedback on my 9,356th attempt at a niche business.
aplanofattack.com
aplanofattack.com
B. Wordsmithing. You need a copy editor, with a degree in English or its moral equivalent, to go over every line of this with you. Let's take apart just the third sentence:
Probably depends on how good of a designer you are!
"How good of a [X]" is a very awkward phrase in print. It might work in very casual spoken English, but in print it looks amateurish. Starting a sentence with "probably" is likewise too casual. Your customer base is made of designers. They often care about such details.
You should also consider avoiding the exclamation point. Heed the words of Elmore Leonard: "You are allowed no more than two or three exclamation points per 100,000 words of prose."
Now, having marginally improved the sentence by changing it to something like:
It probably depends on how talented a designer you are.
...you should delete this sentence altogether, because it is an awful sales pitch. You are, literally, questioning the skill of your prospective customer. Let me translate this opening:
If people aren't paying you $200 to $500 to design simple things, you probably suck!
Guess what? Your prospective customer is probably not currently being paid $200 to $500 for custom Facebook pages. If your customer already knew how to build these pages, he or she would not be shopping for your product. So your opening pitch can be further distilled to:
Dear customer: You suck!
Ouch. Get the whole thing off the page and replace it with something more like this:
Customers will pay you $200 to $500 for custom-designed Facebook pages, and you can build them in minutes with this tool.
Only with fewer words.
C. For a product that offers to simplify a complicated process, the home page looks awfully complicated. Too much technical jargon. Don't write things like this:
Forget about learning XFBML, FBML, FBJS, FQL.
You are trying to convince your customer that they need not learn or even think about these acronyms. So don't name-drop them. That's like trying to sell a Caribbean vacation by saying:
Forget about sharks, food poisoning, skin cancer, or pickpockets.
Make the prose on the page be as easy and soothing as the product is meant to be. Speak to your audience. Don't use any technical terms except those that your customers need to know: "HTML" and "CSS". If a subset of your customers needs to know about the XFBML, put it in the FAQ.
D. The name. I hate to have to say it, it's like picking on someone's kids, but "A Plan Of Attack" is not a good product name. It doesn't suggest Facebook, it doesn't suggest design, it doesn't sound like the name of an application or product, it contains too many words, and it starts with an "A" which will turn your word-of-mouth recommendations into an Abbott and Costello sketch:
A: "What should I use for my simple Facebook pages?"
B: "'A Plan Of Attack'"
A: "Which plan of attack?"
B: "No, that's a spreadsheet. Use 'A Plan Of Attack'"
A: "Did you even hear my question?"
B: "Third base!"
Good luck! If I ever need a custom Facebook page I will be sure to try your product.
I agree with you, of course.
Moral: everyone could use a copy editor. ;)
Are you a designer forced to dance to FBs tune? Use aplanofattack to deploy hassle free and concentrate on what matters the most; beautiful, seamless design.
Wanna learn more? Check it out.
I would chip away those lines again and again until it sounds like the voice in their head is saying it to them.
Also, have you thought of making it an intermediate thing? As you've replied in the comments something like this already exists for non-technical users, and you want to target developers, but why don't you target them both?
It's a matter of UI design. You can just about recess the less commonly used, and more complex functions out of sight, or make different views like WP has a visual compose mode and a HTML mode that works pretty well. Also, it would be awesome for a developer short on time to jump into modes for that good enough mockup.
I like that! Thanks for your input. I definitely hear you on the "show don't tell" aspect. Ideally I'd have a catchy line like the one you made and then a slideshow of beautifully designed Facebook pages with a link to the actual live FB instance.
My goal here is to validate the core concept, hopefully gain some useful contacts/help and of course get some beta users.
As for the intermediate thing, definitely. If I can grab a couple of interested users, it would not be too difficult to build upon the functionality. My concern as of now is just to laser focus on my own unique angle. Pagemodo is really not something I'd want to emulate personally, but having easy wysiwyg templates is definitely useful.
I appreciate your feedback. Do you mind if I try to implement your phrasing?
Don't do a slideshow either. It takes too long to load on a slower internet connection and people tend to lose interest by that time. Instead photoshop something like coverflow with 3 beautiful pages. I am not telling you to rip off coverflow. Don't do that. Your customers are very sensitive to such things
Make a draft layout on paper and play with it. Cut out pieces of paper and move it around on your desk.
>>>My goal here is to validate the core concept, hopefully gain some useful contacts/help and of course get some beta users.<<<
I can understand that, but they are humans too and humans tend to get bored if they aren't engaged within those first 20-30 seconds. I am not asking you to make a fluff piece. No, I am asking you to make a hook to pull users in.
>>>As for the intermediate thing, definitely. If I can grab a couple of interested users, it would not be too difficult to build upon the functionality. My concern as of now is just to laser focus on my own unique angle. Pagemodo is really not something I'd want to emulate personally, but having easy wysiwyg templates is definitely useful.<<<
That sounds wise, but be careful not to box yourself in. I wish I could advise you more, but I haven't done any serious software development. So, I have no clue what challenges it brings on this side.
>>>I appreciate your feedback. Do you mind if I try to implement your phrasing?<<<
Of course not! I'll be honored if you do so. :)
If you think that I can help you in anyway at all then don't hesitate to contact me at yesthisisananonymousid at googlemail
P.S.- Do I get a free account? :p
http://www.uploadscreenshot.com/image/91811/1706063
Are the boxes intentionally gray placeholders that you'll replace with screenshots or the like?
The text in the yellow is hard to read, why are certain words in an even more yellow background?
The secondary marketing line isn't quite english:
"Probably depends on how good of a designer you are!"
I'd change that top bit to say:
> Create facebook pages for your clients with our WYSIWYG editor.
> A simple one page promotion page on Facebook is easily worth $500 for your clients. Design and sell them with A Plan of Attack today!
The problem with your text is that it's challenging and instills doubt. Am I good enough of a designer? Maybe not, oh well lets not bother. You want to say: Is a simple one page promotion page worth $500 to your clients companies? fuck yes - and we let you make them trivially!
"sell" is a bad word - especially to designers. Maybe "earn $500 by making your clients facebook landing pages" if that doesn't sound too dodgy.
The images on the right are just grey boxes, the login link should be top right. Let me create a page without signing up. (make the demo account auto login and obvious)
The sign up button should probably be on the right hand side of the page, i dislike how it turns red (too jarring)
The "Aplanofattack is in beta..." paragraph should be added on the sign up page, if not later. Sounds too sketchy on the first page.
Reiterate the service is free - on the sign up button.
Stick a contact button more obviously on the home page.
Kudos for saying "benefits at a glance" and not "Features at a glance" but now remove 80% of the words below that header.
Hacker News has pretty much been my cofounder, investor, mentor and friend all rolled into one. So as always, thanks everyone.
If you like the concept please feel free to "Like" my application here: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=129421017095...
This will help me do some customer development and also get my Facebook url (without the identifer).
The homepage is a good start, but could be slimmed down and needs to be more visual, as others have already said.
The actual admin though (I signed up) is a bit chaotic. The list of widgets is only one widget and I don't really understand how it all works together. The code editor looks great: I'd suggest having some sort of drag and drop interface that pulls the widget UI and the code editing UI together.
Where did things not come together - unable to get traffic, to get conversions, to get sales, to monetize...? How much did you work at it in the past before giving up and moving on? If you've had problems at a similar area each time , there might be a blind spot or mistake in how you do things around there that needs specific refinement, as opposed to general feedback.
So you try sending out press releases, asking bloggers you know to mention your site, all those efforts result in a few spikes to 2-5K/day and then it goes back to 30. After a while you give up and move on to the next thing.
Did I guess right?
The tattoo and testimonial ideas both look they're fundamentally solid and workable, and would now require lots of Real Life Walking Around (TM) to compliment technical refinement.
For instance, this was part of Patrick Kalzumeus's (patio11 here on HN) plan when launching Appointment Reminder. Emphasis mine:
"This summer I’m going back to America for about a month to visit family, do a bit of consulting, and have something of a vacation. Over that time, I’m going to be taking the demo (or the product) on my laptop and showing it to as many service providers as I can stomach seeing. Thankfully, I expect that they’ll indulge my request for an interview — I intend to pay them their normal hourly, so coffee and a discussion of their industry and opinions about the software will work out just as well as offering a haircut/massage/etc would."
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/05/14/unveiling-my-second-prod...
That's probably what you need at this point - showing your service to as many people in the business as you can stomach seeing. Face to face is different from behind a screen, much different. If you hate doing this and/or aren't good at it, that might be reason to partner with someone with has good face to face pitching/communicating/selling skills.
I have tried a lot of times not only because nothing worked (to my liking) but overwhelmingly because I learn by doing. So here goes.
I used to print t-shirts. I learned the entire t-shirt printing process from studying online. Not just hobby stuff, I actually grew to a warehouse with professional-grade equipment.
I decided I would try and create a website for my t-shirt printing business.
1) I built a complete back-end php/mysql system to manage and process orders. My dream was to have it fully automated on-line but that was pretty damned hard. So I just used it internally.
2) I decided to make an ecommerce website that sold my own t-shirt designs. Thinking I could design, produce, and fulfill tshirt orders from my own custom-made ecommerce system (not to mention actually marketing it online to you know ... get sales) is pretty damned hard.
3) A while later I realized it would be great if I could sell custom "tackle twill" hoodies online because most people don't realize how insanely great a tackle twill hoody can look. Everyone is used to seeing boring solid color College type hoodies. (i also did embroidery). I set out on building this great system that let customers design their hoodies online from a set of pre-defined fonts, colors, patterns, and apparel choices. It was GREAT for the level of developer I was at the time, but needless to say... it wasn't that great. Never finished it because it was too complex and not nearly on par with the competition.
I was doing all this as a hobby since I spent all my time printing shirts. Then after a couple years I decided to go full-time web developing.
4) Took a year to seriously learn how to code, learned kohana and jquery and built a website that created websites. Pretty much like weebly, but a thousand times more complex (which is really bad!). It works pretty well and powers http://larasgift.com (I have a couple of clients). But all in all, making websites for people is a huge pain in the ass.
5) Created a website that was to be an improvement to wikipedia. It is/was a cool idea, but obviously who the hell am i kidding with that idea ... (how do i make money?)
6) Created http://pluspanda.com because through building the weebly clone, I realized local businesses don't really need whole entire websites. The internet is about word-of-mouth, referrals, and ... testimonials! (that's still live, just having trouble finding an acute market)
Here I learned that my coding was getting better but my productivity was suffering. Too much time wasted on stupid things. So after some deliberation I commited to learning Rails. I couldn't get Rails to work in Windows so what the hell, installed Ubuntu and become a command-line zen-master.
So now I'm riding the Rails on Ubuntu, source-controlling it with git so that i can deploy via capistrano and loving life chilling with the Linode production server.
7) http://tastyink.com was my first rails app that I built to learn Rails. I think this is a SOLID idea that I'm still working on but it's too complex of an idea to sell so I figured I needed a more dead simple IN to these local businesses which led to ...
These are the main projects that I've actually commited to trying, there are a handful of other projects not worth mentioning and of course freelance work every now and then.
The point is ......
Everyone tells me all the time "just stick to one project and stop abandoning everything"! I know that is sound advice. I know it! I just don't think of it as abandonment. I think of it as refinement. All of my projects have actually been perfectly inline with a core concept: Helping local businesses leverage the interent. It started at as some massively and painfully overcomplex website building engine 2000 (never make your apps complex!!) and slowly, slowly, I've iterated to very core and very simple "services" that business can use and understand quickly and easily.
I'm getting there!
Hope this helps.
Good stuff. At some point you're going to have one on your hands that you have a pretty good feeling about and are excited about, and you're going to want to gear up on that one and do everything you can to make it work. Building to learn while refining is a great plan, you might get lucky and catch a really good break and have an idea take off on you. But don't count on that happening - it's actually quite unlikely, you'll have to gear up on one project specifically and pretty some serious focus on it to have it break through.
Good luck and best wishes! You've obviously got the moxy to make it, at some point when you've got one on your hands that you think has a nice mix of good market, offer, and that you enjoy working with, you gear up on it and make it a success.
Nowadays (as an entrepreneur between projects), I'm pretty ruthless about avoiding any idea where I don't have 2-3 GREAT ideas on how I'm going to get customers for free/cheap.
If you're concentrating on small businesses, you have a tough road. They are notoriously hard to reach in a cost-effective way (many investors run away screaming if you say that your target market is SMBs-- with good reason).
you are trying to sell design services...your sales page should show the high quality of your product
I know of http://northsocial.com/ which is nicely done.
Also this writeup on http://pagemodo.com @ http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/04/facebook-tab-creator-pagemo... lists some services in the comments.
The services I've seen focus on freemium and "ease of use" relative to non-developers/designers. Specifically pagemodo is a template generator.
I'm positioning aplanofattack as a service for designers/developers to use on behalf of their clients as a means to add to their product offering.
Pretty much exactly what http://campaignmonitor.com is for email newsletters. It gives freelancers and extra product to offer, without the infrastructure headache.
Thanks for your help.
What I mean is that I am an aspiring web developer that happened to come from a non-related previous background. I chose not to go to college and after deciding to be a web developer, I just taught myself by building and building and building and building. I learned how to program horribly in PHP, and then I found Kohana and jquery which helped me code decently, and about 2 months ago I committed to learning Rails, built 3 Rails apps (including this one) and now I'd like to believe I'm pretty good!
Don't feel bad for me, because I love it! Thanks
I like that! I will take your advice.
It's like the search for a lightbulb filament, you've probably learned more trying out that stuff than you'd have ever learned if your first trick had taken off. You are so much better prepared to really make a go of it once you find a live one.