Tell HN: How I pivoted or: please review my startup redux. | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: How I pivoted or: please review my startup redux.

9 pointsdrx9 comments

A while ago I posted on HN [1] about my film/tv show/video game recommendation app called Archfinch [2]. It wasn't received well and it didn't even make it to the front page. I was a little disappointed that fellow HNers didn't care about my app and that no blogs wanted to write about me since I was overshadowed by a similar app a month earlier (which at the time I didn't know about). But such is life and I hacked on.

I tried a few ways to advertise around, but I noticed a common trend: some people naturally bounced, others liked the site enough to rate dozens of things, I got some nice emails from users who liked Archfinch a lot but retention was very low. To my amazement of people who rated anything at all, the average rating count was high:

    avg    |  stddev  
  ---------+----------
    60.943 |  68.147

Clearly I was doing something right. But there was no way I could keep people based on movie recommendations alone -- people don't need that kind of service often, and by the time they do, they will have forgotten about Archfinch.

I implemented something I planned to do 'in the future': fresh links, HN/reddit-style, with a twist: you get personalized link recommendations. This seems to work well so far, people are coming back for more. And it has a chance to work -- reddit, Digg, etc. have all succeeded in the past and people need their daily fix of links.

In theory, link recommendations could be the end to the 'eternal september' syndrome that all such websites suffered in the past: the algorithm could recommend cat pictures to the masses and awesome links to people like us. Time will tell however.

Some of you mind find this boring but personally I like reading about people's mistakes and their subsequent analysis so maybe some of you will find this interesting as well.

If you feel like checking out Archfinch [2], feedback is very welcome, either here or at luke@archfinch.com, I read (and try to respond to) all emails.

References:

[1] - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1601930

[2] - http://archfinch.com/

This might sound harsh but I hope it's useful.

The landing page is terrible. Before I can make head or tail of what this site is, you are telling me I've been logged in as a temporary user, I might lose my data yada yada. What data? What are you talking about? Do you mind introducing your site first?

You need a simple one-liner describing what or who your site is for.

Next, please don't use plain text links for films. Movie posters exist for a reason. You need images asap. Engagement will shoot up. The same goes for users.

Why are you hiding your rate buttons? You know hover doesn't work on touch devices, right? Even when they are visible, they are too faint. And too complicated. Don't make people think if a film is 1 to 5. Everyone's now used to Like or Dislike. Just keep it simple.

Lastly, on a meta level, when you are looking for advice on your app or startup, you should always first search HN for advice given to other people with similar ideas. For example, a quick search for your case brought these up:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2253574 for http://www.subzin.com/

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=519649 for http://www.greatmovieexperiment.com/

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1767309 for http://watchth.is/

Good luck!

Thanks for the feedback, it's indeed useful and not really harsh.

The one-liner used to be there, but I removed it, forgetting that not everyone knows what it is. See, this is why getting feedback from strangers rocks.

I need to definitely do something for touch devices somewhere along the way. I like the way they hide right now because it makes the site much less cluttered. I might experiment with this though.

One thing I will fight until the bitter end is the Like/Dislike thing. I'm using the site personally as a catalog of things I've seen in my life, having just Like/Dislike would feel wrong (Pulp Fiction and Valkyrie hardly deserve the same rating). I might make the scale optional (for "power users") or something.

In any case, thanks!

Ok, then at least make it more interesting. How about Love, Like, Meh, Hate?

I think a good start would be a phrase explaining what service Archfinch provides. I felt like you should greet me with a phrase about your service. "Archfinch 'find what you like'" seems to sum up the site in four words. The service you provide to me are the recommendations, I pay the system with my ratings for those recommendations.

People like to accomplish tasks. Your initial list of movies to rate is too long. I'd get that down to five. You can continue to ask about other movies but you need to let people feel like the system has enough information after five (maybe ten). The site is boring after rating a list of fifty movies - I want the recommendations!

You must have a "haven't seen it" option.

I ventured into the lists page and was greeted with a "We don't know you well enough to recommend you anything." I may be willing to fill out the information that you need so that you can give me a recommendation but I want you to lead me there...where do I go to give you the info you need? (link?)

What is the Pics link about? Why are those pictures recommended for me? Are they supposed to be?

"Save your data by creating a Permanent Account" ...sounds serious, like I'm buying a burial plot. Why not just "save your data by creating an account?"

Just my .02

Keep chuggin, I think you could have something you just need to polish it.

Thanks for the feedback!

>I think a good start would be a phrase explaining what service Archfinch provides. I felt like you should greet me with a phrase about your service. "Archfinch 'find what you like'" seems to sum up the site in four words. The service you provide to me are the recommendations, I pay the system with my ratings for those recommendations.

Right, I had something like this, removed it along the way forgetting not everyone knows Archfinch like I do. Definitely a mistake that needs to be corrected.

As for the rest, all great points, thanks.

It's not clear to me why I would be interested in Archfinch over, say, Reddit.

And the movie recommendation functionality is totally gone now?

As you were explaining your pivot, I thought you were saying that you were going to add a hn-style "hotness" feed to a movie ranking site, which I thought was a genius idea. Basically, people would write pitches for their favorite movies, why they're awesome, and then everyone would up/down vote them, and you'd get a feed of what rises to the top. It'd be even better if it was personalized based on your taste graph, but that wouldn't be necessary to start.

So, I don't know... different kind of idea than what you're doing, but it seems sort of interesting to me.

Clickables:

[1] - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1601930

[2] - http://archfinch.com/

I like it, generally speaking. I played around with it a bit, and here are my thoughts:

- The site needs some character. The logo has some, but isn't enough; It's REALLY neutral to me, and I'm a pretty big fan of minimalism.

- There's no "I haven't seen it" option, or "Let me rate this later". Which means that when I got to the end of the list of things I could rate, I was at a loss as to what to do next. Also, it bugged me that I couldn't make 'Cloverfield' go away, even though I've never seen it.

- What do I get out of it as I rate them? I certainly don't mind rating these things to help evaluate, but ... is there ANY reason I might come back and do this again later?

- The lack of registration option is a little confusing. I hit the home page, rated a few things, I see a log OUT option at the top, which is a little quirky, and I see a log IN -- oh, never mind, it was in the middle. If that's the call to action, it should be more pronounced, I feel like.

First of all thanks for checking it out.

> The site needs some character. The logo has some, but isn't enough; It's REALLY neutral to me, and I'm a pretty big fan of minimalism.

I have a finch-like character (it's a kind of bird) in mind that I plan to put in a few places to add some character, but I wanted to get the site out first before that.

> There's no "I haven't seen it" option, or "Let me rate this later". Which means that when I got to the end of the list of things I could rate, I was at a loss as to what to do next. Also, it bugged me that I couldn't make 'Cloverfield' go away, even though I've never seen it.

There's a lists feature that lets you add to 'ignored', but perhaps it should be more pronounced than that.

> What do I get out of it as I rate them? I certainly don't mind rating these things to help evaluate, but ... is there ANY reason I might come back and do this again later?

Ah right, there used to be a landing page with an explanation ("the more you rate, the better the recommendations") but I lazyfied the signup process so I forgot to stress that. Noted, thanks.

> The lack of registration option is a little confusing. I hit the home page, rated a few things, I see a log OUT option at the top, which is a little quirky, and I see a log IN -- oh, never mind, it was in the middle. If that's the call to action, it should be more pronounced, I feel like.

I'll figure something out regarding that.

Once again thanks for the feedback.

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