Ask YC: Feedback on startup: wirenode.com

When I first typed in my blog URL, I was hoping to immediately see the "mobilized" format of my blog. But I am now asked for another URL name - the name for the mobilized blog. It is a bit unexpected.

After giving an URL name for the mobilized blog, I was hoping to see the "mobilized" format of my blog. But now I am asked to signup.

I gave up.

It is a good idea with lots of potential. But without seeing some mobilized format, I am not going to sign up.

The idea itself looks cool, but the main page lacks focus.

Might I suggest a prominent path to a quick demo - free registration will put off any casual user, whereas if there were an easy "conveyor belt" taking you through the steps of building and demonstrating a really easy mobile website, you'd have much more engaged users by the time they finished.

Let me play devil's advocate here. There may be more types of users out there. But in my mind, there are at least the following distinct types of people that have their own websites:

1. Those that are web savvy but use hosted application solutions for their content (e.g. bloggers using blogspot).

2. Those that are not web savvy, but have paid somebody else to create a completely custom website solution for them (e.g., a charity with a custom database-driven website and CMS).

3. Those that are web savvy and also are technically-adept, so they create and maintain their own custom website solution.

Now, here are some challenges.

When dealing with type 1 folks, they will just use the path of least resistance a.k.a. whatever their hosted application provides. And in fact, it probably is already on their hosted app provider's agenda to include some sort of mobile version to users.

Type 2 users won't even know that you exist and might not even be able to comprehend why they would want and/or need to use your services. The developers that hand-hold them might though. You may want to focus on attracting these sort of developers and catering your service to their needs (e.g., make it easy for a developer to do things she needs to do as opposed to making it easy for a total computer newb to do things he wants to do).

Type 3 users are probably going to roll their own solution and will simply skip over your solution at worst, or at best will use it as an interim solution.

If you can somehow create a kick-ass solution that hosted application providers themselves would want to adopt and roll out for their own users, that would probably yield the greatest reward for your efforts. However, I think the most realistic market right now are the developers who help out Type 2 users. Speaking as somebody who has done this sort of development in the past, here is what I would pay for and would simply pass on to my clients as a cost-of-doing business.

1. I do not have the time, inclination, nor infrastructure to create, maintain, and test against the wide array of mobile devices on the market. But I want to have my cake and eat it too. I don't want to lower the mobile experience down to the lowest common denominator. If iPhone users are used to a specific UI, I want my site to appear and behave like a native app (e.g., maybe using iui.js). Likewise, if RIM users have a particular preference (e.g., some of the older ones had a scroll wheel) I want the mobile version to be optimized for the scroll wheel on the RIM device. Here is what I am willing to do in return: Provide customized structured content, maybe in XML, to your service. You don't have to translate my RSS and distill it down to whatever lowest common denominator mobile version works across all devices. That's not what I want. A lot of my clients have websites with a ton of content and the content itself will have to be adjusted for use on mobile devices, so this isn't entirely a technical problem. I'd much rather provide you with a custom XML document that also has content catering to mobile users and in return you deliver optimized solutions for each platform.

2. My clients are professional organizations. A mobile version of their site needs to be accessible by their own domains. Make it easy for me with instructions on how I can adjust my DNS entries, similar to how Google Apps for Domains works. So maybe if I hit mobile.my-clients-website.com, it hits your servers. I don't care if your servers do the heavy lifting, but I can't be using any other domain for one, and especially not some weird .mobi one that compute newbs can't figure out.

Good luck and hopefully I've provided some useful tidbits for your company to consider (and that I haven't come off as being overly harsh)!

I personally like homepage layout, I think your conversion rate could be really high for blog conversions, but, as browngeek said, there is no instant gratification.

I'm not to tempted to create my own cause I don't know what's entailed. I do know it takes 5 minutes now and that's not time I have right now.

Maybe you should make the "Start creating mobile pages" link bring you to a blank mobile page where you can become invested and then force the user to sign up once they have everything they want; like their layout, pictures, url..etc.

Good idea though, and you're off to an AWESOME start.

I think this is an idea with a lot of potential. Rather than importing your blog, I'd focus on being the weebly.com of mobile.

A couple more notes, from using the product:

Deleting an element pops up an incredibly annoying confirm box. Offer undo instead; confirm boxes are almost never the right choice.

You have a captcha on signup. That will reduce the total number of accounts created. You're not big yet; add it when you're a valuable spam target.

I'm not sure what I can build that's useful with this. Show me some examples of awesome mobile webpages I can copy.

as a designer I would say the front page is a nice start but there are some details I would clean up.

the "Build your own mobile web in 5 minutes." does not look great and probably needs to be an image.

I would make the text box to "Mobilize your blog" bigger and more of a focus of the top of the page as it feels a little hidden.

The fade to white around the images in the yellow box do not look great. I would take off the shading and perhaps just use a darker yellow border or something. Images that look crisp are always the best.

Other wise it looks great and was super easy to signup for. On the first occasion the "phone emulator" got stuck on my mouse and I could not close it with out refreshing the page. I have not been able to reproduce it though.

I had to click on some of your "Read about us at:" links to really understand what you're offering and how your site works.

I don't like to register for something if I don't understand what it does or how it works. Perhaps an informational link on the home page or a quick video would help draw people in to your registration process.

I like the overall page structure and design otherwise, though.

Right off the bat there is no link for a more in depth review. You have a good pitch, but no 'Read more here' link. You have links to other sites reviewing your product, but I would like to see an explanation(more than 3 steps) of how it all works. Interesting idea, I think you may have something here.

"Build your own mobile web in 5 minutes."

This tagline makes it hard to understand what you do. It's hard just glancing at the front page to tell what problem this is solving. Something like "turn web pages into mobile pages in 5 minutes" might be more descriptive.

I like it, a lot! I signed up and started making my site right away. For some reason, it didn't like my RSS feed. I'm generating it from blogger and using feedburner, so I'm a little surprised that it didn't work.

Very cool idea, though!

Quick and easy, I like it. I noticed however that link the whitespace around links gets destroyed when creating a site from RSS. See for instance: http://tinyurl.com/3wquw5 .

Nice job.

I'm running the Firefox 3 nightlies and it came up as an unsupported browser, even though you have Firefox 3 checked as a browser you support.

Front splash page is nice, although 'create your own' position is unusual. Also would be hesitant about registering so early without seeing it.

Hi all, thanks you all for your comments. Thanks to 9oliYQjP very much too.

Regards Tomas Zeman tomas.zeman@wirenode.com

There is some sloppy English in multiple places, which (to me) makes the site seem less professional.

I want a demo.