Please review Hikify, a hiking and mountaineering website | Hacker News Reader

Please review Hikify, a hiking and mountaineering website

hikify.com

15 pointsArturSoler23 comments

Hey Artur,

Good work on your site!

I started a climbing news site last month, so I think we are in the same boat. Here's a bit of advice based on what I've experienced so far:

1. Focus on the front page.

People want to find something interesting or relevant as soon as possible or they will leave.

For your target audience I'd imagine that they'd want a list of hiking trails in their area. Make it easy to find. Craigslist has that nailed by redirecting to your current city after you hit their main site.

2. In the beginning it's going to be all about YOU.

It's tough to find quality contributors when you don't have much content on your site. You are going to have to put a ton of work into your project, and only then will others be motivated to help you.

A site like this grows from the inside out. Don't provide links to empty information -- it's misleading and frustrating to users. Instead, start by providing quality, unique information about one small area, such as your hometown, and then spread to other areas. Advertise to local hiking groups, outdoor stores such as MEC/REI, climbing gyms, etc.

3. Keep at it!

There's going to be a lot of doubters and naysayers, but they are almost always the most vocal ones. Prove them wrong by working hard at your idea and constantly improving it. Small steps will help you on your way to success!

I hope this is helpful, and wish you good luck. Feel free to send me a message if you'd like someone to bounce ideas off of: csytan@gmail.com.

On your first point, do you mean it would be better to make a content front page rather than a "sales" one?

You make good points, I'll certainly keep them in mind (and in the todo list).

Thanks for your encouragement!

You are off to a great start--nice work! Here's my initial impressions:

1. Is this for hiking or climbing? Your homepage text made the target audience/user-base a little unclear. I think you will find that the two communities are unique and strategies to market will differ between the two. Perhaps refine the focus slightly.

2. You will absolutely need to seed this with content. I hit the homepage and had no desire to proceed since I don't see any user generated content.

3. What advantages would I have using Hikify over say Trails.com or the Trailspace forums? I want to share/participate with an existing community. How will you create yours?

Remember, if this gains traction it will be about the community you establish first, and the technology that powers it second.

1. For the moment it's about peaks and hikes leading to a summit. Perhaps I should remark that a bit better.

2. I'm working on this one in my local area, trying to reach enough peak density in it to be of bigger utility.

3. You're right in the importance of a community. It's something I have in mind and I will start working on it soon.

Thanks for your feedback.

The first thing I wanted to do was search by region - my go-to site is http://www.santabarbarahikes.com/ - but it looks like local low-key hikes like those aren't included.

The search functionality is not there yet, sorry. It is planned for the near future.

You're right that for most areas there are no hikes yet. Feel free to add your favourite peak (no need for it to be a very high mountain).

Do you know http://www.hikr.org ? It seems to fulfill the same purpose. It's centered on Europe and reports are mainly in German and other West European languages, but there's an English-speaking community on there, too. It has been around for a couple of years, has a huge community and tons of hiking reports already.

How is Hikify different?

Also, I think the copy of the three steps could be tightened. Something like "Find an interesting route near you - Climb it - Log your achievement and share your experience and your pictures."

As far as I see it, hikr.org is more about hiking reports, and hikify.com is more about a peaks and routes database. There are also many interesting ideas that I have not had time to implement yet :)

Thanks for the copy advise. As English is not my native language, copywriting is not my greatest virtue.

The nice thing about hikr for me is that the reports together form a routes database, but with personal first-hand insights from different viewpoints. That goes beyond a traditional guidebook or route database. Sorry, I really don't want to bash your site, just trying to help you understand my perspective as a hikr user.

Beware about the copy, English is not my native language either, and neither do I have any experience with copy writing. It was just a suggestion, before changing your site you should consult with someone who's better at that!

Good luck. I always like to see more hiking sites :)

We used to work on something similar - www.trailbehind.com. It started as a social hiking site, but we turned it into a search engine later. You might find, like we did, that you can link to a lot of cool content. One site we crawled was summit post.com, whihis very relevant to hikify.

As another commenter noted, it's hard to get traction for something like this, especially with several other similar companies so far ahead. It's amazing how well-competed the space is, considering there is no money in it.

We do iPhone apps now instead oh hiking websites :)

What "user story" are you trying to fulfill here?

Are you trying to be a reference site for worldwide peaks? Or are you trying to be a resource so someone looking for a hike near them can see what their options are within a few hours of their current location? Or is this for trip/vacation planning?

What you have right now does not fulfill any of these due to lack of data, not localized, etc. You need to pick and audience, cater to them, and focus your site.

Hikify is a hiking and mountaineering database, in a wiki-style, where anyone (registered) can add or edit a peak, a range, a route, or a division (country, state, region, etc).

There are few peaks introduced yet, but the number is (slowly) growing.

Please feel free to add your favourite local peak if it's not there yet (it won't probably be).

Any feedback will be welcome.

This is really exciting, nice work.

Can you delete this photo? I accidentally uploaded a DNG which resulted in a really crappy resized version.

http://www.hikify.com/images/2/

I'm glad you like it.

The image has been deleted. If I assume correctly and you have climbed the McKinley, you can do a climbed log (I have to change the wording to make it more clear).

Thanks, I'll have to dig up my journals. I'll try to do when I have a bit more time. Once again, great work.

landing page could use some more inviting photography and the color scheme could be more suited to the subject matter

other than that i have no suggestions, because i never leave the house.

A giant photo stretched across. Make me want to go out.

And I dunno, I browsed around a little bit but I'm guessing that the peaks are like k2, not the trail near my neighborhood.

It might be interesting to see trails on Google maps though, instead of having to browse around a directory.

It's true the first peaks I have introduced are very difficult ones, but the site is also appropiate for average peaks.

Perhaps I should stress it better.

Browsing with Google Maps could be indeed interesting as well, I'll try to implement it later.

Thanks for your feedback.

Petty perhaps, but it strikes me as a difficult name to pronounce: I kept reading it hɪk-ify not haɪk-ify

You should promote this to users of whiteblaze.net. Huge community there, if not a Web 2.0 one.

Sounds like a site that'll give you hickups.

The map has to be larger (or at least possible to enlarge) and also the "Google Earth" plugin should be enabled.

Right now the map width depends on your resolution (and that is something to improve).

Meanwhile you have a "See in Google Maps" link, which perhaps should be more outstanding.

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