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Comment by natgordon | Hacker News Reader

I'm 8-months pregnant. When I went to create a baby registry I was pretty disappointed with what was out there (I ended up using Amazon Universal Wishlist). I found myself with some time on my hands waiting for baby, and decided that I'd build a better baby registry. I partnered with a great designer I met on forrst.com, and this is the result.

I'd love any feedback, suggestions etc.

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Looks great - wish it had been available when we registered. We had a lot of frustrations with the BRU registry process. Some suggestions:

1. Have generic options for clothing, since there is a huge turnover in baby clothes at most retailers (BRU doesn't even offer pictures for most clothes on the website) - size and item type (3 month onesie, newborn footy pjs, etc.)

2. Offer some suggested items / basic lists to get people started, or consider more social aspects to let people give feedback on other people's lists - there seems to be a big market for this kind of info (see: baby bargain books). This might be a way to keep users engaged after they are done with their own list.

3. Have options for non-purchased gifts or other items to be added, like home-cooked meals or babysitting - lots of people wanted to offer these kinds of things

4. Have options for monetary donations - this is how a lot of cultures work (red envelopes for chinese, etc.) and it would be great to support it in one place

5. Provide links to sign up for store registries to get all the freebies they provide for signing up - lots of people love this kind of thing. This is also a competitive point to consider - the discount stores provide to "complete" your registry was a good way to get a discount on the high-ticket items.

6. Consider ways to offer future gifts - diaper subscriptions or clothes for older babies that could arrive in the future so you don't have to worry about storing it and remembering it 6 months later.

Very professional, I would say. Even though as a Dutchman I'm not really familiar with the concept, I immediatly understood what you are offering. The call to action couldn't be more straightforward and the "works with.." section does exactly what it needs to do. The safety pin is a nice touch.

Also, I can appreciate what you've done and why: I'm an allround developer, so when my wife and I were looking for a name for my oldest child, I quickly decided to build a name site myself. It's online in two languages: in Dutch as http://www.zeevannamen.nl and in English as http://www.valleyofnames.com.

I'd be happy to have a banner pointing to you site, if you wish? Maybe we can cooperate in other ways as well. Let me know if you have any thoughts on that.

We should team up or something... I made this baby names website a couple years ago when my wife and I were looking for baby names. I didn't like the sites out there too much and made this to help search. (since then I've been so busy with the kids and main job that I have neglected my baby names site).

http://www.babynameclusters.com/ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=370745

Yeah, I did the same thing. The babynamewizard was a neat ooh, aah, tech demo, but (as of early 2008 when it was literally nothing more than a dynamically updating prefix-based stacked line graph) useless for actually helping choose a name. My contribution to the genre, with the goal of being helpful in choosing a name, was: http://nametrends.net

Nice job! I agree about the uselessness of baby name wizard. You did a great job making it more interesting. Are you having any luck getting visitors or higher in organic search?

In Jul. 08 got links from Freakonomics and Kottke which led to a little burst. Ongoing organic traffic (I essentially haven't update the site except to keep the data fresh each year) seems to be about 1M page views/year. Squarely in the no profit/hobby territory, but enough that I do keep updating the data.

The design really looks great. We're always looking for good designers to work with, but not being a designer myself, I'm not a member of forrst.

Are you a member, or did you browse the work posted and contact someone directly? Would love to hear more about that process.

I'm a member, but not actively.

I had the idea for the site and posted it (http://forrst.com/posts/Any_designers_interested_on_collabor... but I don't think this link will work if you're not logged in)

This is what I wrote:

Hey,

I'm a ruby on rails developer and I'm 5 months pregnant.

Today I created a baby registry and it was a nightmare. I ended up using the amazon.com universal wishlist. It's a bookmarklet that lets you add any product on the web to an amazon wishlist. Unlike a registry, your friends and family "reserve" an item instead of actually buying it from the specific store that has the registry.

My idea is to create a new website "baby registry anywhere" (terrible name) where you can add and reserve items similar to the universal wishlist. I think it would also be cool to be able to add more than one link for an item, so your friends/family could choose where to purchase it.

I could probably code a minimal, launchable version in a week (or 5 Fridays). In the past I've hired designers for projects but I'd love to work with someone as partners on this.

---

I had a kind of overwhelming response and clicked with one designer via text chat and we went forward. In retrospect, I've spent way more than 5 days on this.

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

-from Gödel, Escher, Bach

You know someone's a programmer when they even talk in recursion.

Hacker News: Hacker acronym can keep employing recursion; news explores web sites.

Congrats! I'm thrilled to hear that you found someone through Forrst. Clicking around the project -- looks awesome.

Can any forrst.com members send me an invite? I'd love to check out the site. My email is lalalee at hotmail.com . Thanks.

Happy to send invites. Just email me at Kyle At forrst .com

I'm still in awe at how well this turned out. Huge kudos to you both. And, made me realize: Clearly we need to do a better job keeping tabs on awesome collabs like this. I'm certain there must be more.

I tried signing up and was surprised that a Twitter account is required.

I usually don't post my address, but this is too good to give up on! I'd like an invite, if possible. dan.raz+forrst at gmail

I would like one too if possible. My email is alexgandy at gmail dot com. Thanks.

Please add me too ... "steve dot moyer plus forrst at selesy dot com". Thanks!

I also would like an invite: eric dot holloway at gmail dot com

I'd like one as well... sbc at charrington dot com. TIA!

How does the partnership work in this case? % of revenues? % of the project/venture? What if the designer gets too busy with other projects?

Sorry, I am being curious because most of us hackers are in the same boat when it comes to design.

From my POV, I waited until I was sure that the designs were what I was going to go forward with (this took about 4-5 weeks, maybe 2-3 iterations of different pages and colors). Then I proposed a % of revenue for x amount of time and it was accepted.

The project has moved slower than if I'd hired a designer (for example Lindsey is currently defending her thesis at school and is 100% focused on that). But I maybe always had the trump card by being like "We need to launch before I have a baby".

Overall I think I got lucky and I'm not sure what advice I'd give. Forrst is like HN for (hungry) designers though.

Great site and thanks for the background info. As a developer, I'm always in need of good design. I love the site design and the story of how you found the designer. I hadn't heard of Forrst. If anyone has a spare invite to kick my way, I applied for membership.

Are you able to share how the partnership was executed? Was it a verbal/email commitment or did you draft up some legal agreements?

Congrats on the launch! The app looks awesome.

Thanks for the advise. I too think that partnership with a designer is a great thing. Things keep changing and you need more design help when you are iterating through ideas.

Thank you, that's extremely helpful. Congrats again on the site, it looks awesome.

Interesting website, very well designed.

I was baffled at first, because I didn't understand what a 'baby registry' is (despite the fact that I have two kids). Had to google it :) and now I understand. We have similar tradition for weddings, but not for babies. I wish you all the best.

This is great, and it's awesome that you guys are back in the game after going through a big 'dip': http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1325785

Kudos!

They are back in the other game, too (lenguajero.com). See this blog post, which happens to be called "back in the game": http://aflanagan.com/back-in-the-game/.

Quote: "Instead of building something complicated that was based on our free community (i.e. a freemium service), I decided to write two guides about something I know about, and something our users care about, learning Spanish slang."

Best use of nesting instinct ever.

Wow, congratulations. The product is really well executed, and the simple fact you did it, and also looked for a partner, is awesome.

pretty!

Looks great, and as someone with four young children I would say that it's a winner concept for the niche. Targeting a specific niche is a very worthwhile pursuit, especially given that advertisers focused on new and upcoming parents are some of the most desperate to make contact.

Congratulations on seeing it through.

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