Ask HN: What is wrong with my bookmarking tool? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is wrong with my bookmarking tool?

1 pointmemset1 comment

Hello! A couple of years ago, I wrote a bookmarking tool to scratch my own itch. However, nobody wants to use it. My question is: why?

The tool is this: https://www.homepagr.com/

I ask because I've tried to create this as a small business using "textbook" techniques, but without much user feedback or traction. I'm interested to see where the formula is breaking down!

- I built a tool that I myself wanted

- Started with an MVP a couple of years ago, with a simple UX, and then iterated to where it is today

- Put together a landing page, try to explain value proposition and collect email addresses (nobody signed up)

- Currently giving away the product for free - but even people who use it tend to stop after a week

There is clearly a market: pinboard.io, lots of positive feedback for raindrop.io, and I see bookmarking tool threads on HN very frequently.

Often, people ask me "why should I use this instead of x product?" I don't have a good answer: except that I like mine better because it has the features that I care about (an uncomplicated UX), and none of the features that, to me, are a distraction.

Could it be that this is, essentially, a tool which is too specific to my own preferences? Am I marketing or positioning this poorly? What am I doing wrong?

(Incidentally! This is not a complaint - the tool is something that I built for myself, and have been using for a few years, and will continue to use! But, I am very much interested in help debugging why this is lacking traction compared to others!)

> There is clearly a market: pinboard.io, lots of positive feedback for raindrop.io, and I see bookmarking tool threads on HN very frequently.

> Often, people ask me "why should I use this instead of x product?" I don't have a good answer: except that I like mine better

I think that sums it up. If your product doesn't offer anything unique, I might as well take one of the 100 bookmarking tools out there. Yeah, the market is there, so is the tooling. Just have a look at this list [1] - what makes your bookmark manager special?

I have written my own bookmark manager [2], and it provides a unique feature that I haven't seen anywhere else (a single HTML file is being generated, with the whole app included, so it can be easily shared without hosting it anywhere). I'm dog-fooding this project at my job and many people find it useful. Still, I've noticed early that it will be very difficult to market, so it remains an open-source project.

I'm closely following bookmarking discussions (hence also seeing your post :) ). One trend I've noticed is that most people like a "dumpster"-like pinboard solution more than any folder-like tool like yours or mine. So that's another factor that makes our approach more difficult to market.

> Put together a landing page

One point I recommend changing is the headline/subheadline. The main benefit, "essential bookmarking for teams", is 14px light gray. Make it much more prominent. Make it even part of the main headline. The light gray doesn't pass accessibility contrast ratio by the way - this applies to all the heavy light gray usage. It makes it difficult to read.

Is it possible to provide a live demo for your app? Maybe a demo/demo account?

BTW - the "take the tour" link in the footer scrolls the page to the top, not the "tour" part.

I hope your project takes off :)

[1] https://serafin.io/bookmark-managers/

[2] https://darekkay.com/static-marks/

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