Ask HN: Review my startup - www.triviatise.com | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Review my startup - www.triviatise.com

8 pointstriviatise8 comments

Would like some review of the site, elevator pitch and suggestion of features. Also, please dont mind the design we are focusing on functionality right now. If you are a designer, we would definitely considering hiring you on a contract basis to fix up the site.

Elevator pitch triviatise helps advertisers get consumers to remember their message. In return for learning and answering questions about the advertisers' product, consumers get a chance to win a prize. Answering questions has been proven to create a much stronger retention of information.

Consumers can improve their chance to win by referring their friends and having them take the triviatisement

Here are some features we are working on: 1) leaderboards that give you extra chances to win 2) tasks that give you extra chances to win 3) the more triviatisements you take, the more chances you get to win

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I was initially skeptical, but I found myself sucked in - I've completed the quiz for the ipad. Furthermore, I now know a lot more about your product, because I had to look up the answers.

I think a major challenge will be, how do you keep people returning to the site? Once they apply for a few promotions and don't win any, what's stopping them giving up? Perhaps you could feature short (believable) interviews with the people who won, or for a short time after a prize was won you could have a banner on the site saying, "Mr Smith Won an iPad!". Something that will make people feel close to the winner, and make them think, "It could have been me".

I noticed that you must be over 18 to win the prize, but you also seem to be planning to spread primarily through social media. These two factors are opposed to some degree: the target audience that would be most excited about this site, and the most willing to share on facebook, are the younger teenagers. Personally, I didn't share on facebook because it wasn't something I wanted to be associated with. Would it be possible to say, you can enter but you can only receive a prize with your parent's permission?

Also, when I submitted the quiz, chrome brought up the red 'malicious webpage' screen, because content was coming from heroku not triviatise.com.

thanks for trying it out. The biggest barrier is perception of a scam. This is why we show what your probability to win is as well as the current leaders and your current # of entries. After the triviatisement closes an email goes out to all winners and losers with the winners listed.

We feel like the target audience is stay at home moms and college students

Finally to keep people coming back we are working on 1) a metagame 2) trivia that is fun that helps you stay engaged, get status and get more entries to win via levels.

The idea is that people might check once a day to see if anything they want has come up.

I tried it but frankly I am not a fan of this. Experience-wise it reminds me of those "Enter to Win a Prius" box in the mall where you fill out your information in hope of winning something which even you realize will not happen. In the meantime your personal information got sold to various mailing list...

I know you are not like that but that's my first impression. Your site is too showsman-esque (even the logo, and your NAME) and in this age of privacy (or lack thereof) I think many would be turned off. Try to think of some other ways to come across as less slick-oily.

For example, you may want to do this in a way that participants always win (instead of entering for a chance to win). Give smaller prize that doesn't cost your advertiser much. Hammer the fact that participants not giving away any personal information -- I think you said it in the website but the message was not strong enough.

The snake oil perception is a huge barrier. But we also think it will become a barrier to competition once we become legit. (people probably thought groupon was a scam at some point).

The triviatisements can be embedded in advertisers websites so that is how we will get our initial traffic. The branding and the trust will come from the advertisers. We have 4 advertisers lined up (and did 5 at SXSW) with a total mailing list size of about 200K users.

We are trying to avoid the snake oil perception by having transparency in the process. At all times you can go to the site to see what your probability is to win. You can also see which of your referred friends took the triviatisement so you know exactly how your entries are calculated. finally at the end all entrants are notified of the winners (and advertisers have the option to give coupons for the product)

The theory is that it will increase conversions

Hi Tony!

I've got to agree with the other people here that it feels a little too much like those scammy "You have won a free iPad" banner ads all over the place or those weird, "where does my info actually go" Facebook quizzes.

I like the idea of using trivia as another social media outlet. Is there some way to combine the social/group aspect of groupon and living social with your trivia game? For instance - 300 people got the trivia quiz correct, so now everybody gets 20% off coupons for the product - 500 correct, everyone gets 30% off and so forth? Give people some incentive to spread the trivia quizzes around.

yeah most of the time the stuff will not be us giving away ipad 2's. Most of the stuff will be advertisers giving away stuff using triviatisements embedded on their website. So the credibility comes from them. Then after it is over, they will generally give out a coupon. Our theory is that their conversion rate will be higher than with normal coupons.

I think this could be a good service. But possibly Flash or something more polished and less spammy. Possibly the tradeoff would be 'Hey, what do you know about us? Pass the test and take 15% off your next order."

easy to click: http://www.triviatise.com

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