Ask YC: Feedback on our startup/application

This post is a bit overly critical, but I'm being honest and hopefully you'll understand what I mean.

Your site design feels very dated, unprofessional and cluttered. Simple things like rollovers are wonky and nothing lines up - it's hideous. The fact that everything is done in tables stands out like a sore thumb and adds to the "this was made in 1998" effect. I'd dismiss your site straight away based on its design.

Your site is too complex and has no single "hook" as to why someone should use your site over the more popular alternatives. You need a core idea that can be summed up in a few words - the fact you needed 7 points to summarise the site is a bad omen and smells of too many half-implemented ideas. Tou need to figure out what the core problem is and what your solution is. Note most successful sites can be summed up in 2 or 3 words to potential users - "Internet Auctions", "Web E-Mail", "Search Engine", etc.

It also badly fails the "Do I have a reason to use it?" test. Basically, a good test is whether /at this moment in time/, irrespective of /any future/ growth, it's useful to people. In this case, the answer is a resounding "no" - for neither buyers or sellers who are all already on eBay and their ilk. It's a /serious/ uphill struggle for a site to take off from that point and is a major problem you need to solve before you can expect anyone to use the site - and, believe me, 'word of mouth' is not the solution.

Another problem is that the site is too big - you don't need so many categories and sub-categories when you have so few items on it so they become a real challenge for anyone using the site. Remove them until they become necessary, and link to your listings on the front page. Having an initially small site fosters community and makes it easier to use, and it's comparatively trivial to split a site into smaller parts if and when it's required.

Honestly? Today it's honestly not something I would even consider using and I can't imagine anyone wanting to use the site. If I were you I'd seriously consider shutting the site down for now, figuring out a simple hook, how you're going to make your site initially popular, and how to take on eBay (these are the huge social problems, not technical problems), and then redesigning with that in mind. Let's not forget you're trying to succeed where bigger names like Yahoo! Auctions have failed.

Thanks for the honest feedback.

About the design, yes all points taken. Actually we are programmers and tried to do as better job at design as we could. May be we need to get professional designer and I surely hope to generate enough business to be able to afford that.

You are right, we need to reword lot of content to express the exact message. I did 4-5 rounds of user-testing from usertesting.com and redesigned, but sure there is lot of room for improvement.

I think we need to do better job at explaining that we are not auction site and we are not trying to attract users who like auctions. Rather we are trying to attract people who like the price-negotiation and also Alibaba model. We tried to explain that in the demo video, but seems like we need to do better job.

Thanks for the feedback. This is what I love about hacker news. Very good and honest feedback.

I know the hard work behind such a project; I strongly recommend that you take all criticism easy, focus more on getting the best out of them.

You may not build the next eBay but your idea can evolve around a better niche if you remain focus, don’t weight the first impressions against your hard work, and don’t let your feelings get in your way. Make it your mission to build something that people can actually use.

Thank you so much. Exactly what I was thinking. The great thing about hacker news is the feedback and wisdom that we can get from other like minded and smart folks.

We are pretty flexible in changing ideas to make sure we build something that people will like and use.

There's no good explanation on the frontpage of why this is better than eBay, outside of no listing fees. You have infinitely less users and infinitely less items for sale.

What's the one sentence explanation of why Onista is better?

"Onista is an auction-less social marketplace where people can buy and sell products." doesn't tell me why I should care.

Thanks, I think we need to rework on wording to express the exact message out there.

   1. The one liner

What is your exact meaning?

I suggest forgetting about marketability, memorability, etc. of the wording, and trying to continue this conversation with a long time ebayer:

Onista is an auction-less social marketplace where people can buy and sell products."

"Huh?"

Use as many sentences as you need. Work out the meaning, then get it into a zinger. If you can't well then find another way of communicating that. Not everything fits into a one-liner. There are other ways of saying things. Start by working out what it is people need to understand before giving it a try.

  2. the terminology

Social marketplace I think that's industry jargon. Do users use the term social to describe things (social news, social networking, social bookmarking?)

I'm sad to bring this up.

We looked into creating an innovative auction site some time ago. Unfortunately there are a lot of software patents in this area, and Priceline (and its founders) have some that you need to look into before going too crazy with this site.

Unless you've done some heavy analysis here, I recommend you do so and maybe talk to an attorney. The biggest danger here is that: any auction site has to get pretty big to make decent money and once you get big with a potential patent infringement, it can sink your entire ship if caught by surprise.

We discussed some licensing possibilities on some of these patents, and those groups didn't want to talk to someone who wasn't able to pay some very high initial licensing fees. (I.e. licensing solely via royalties or equity wasn't interesting to them.)

Maybe nothing you are doing is a direct infringement, but this is a heavily patented area. Do your research.

We did talk to attorney and I think we need to do more research to be absolutely sure

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Se...

"1.) A computer-implemented method for facilitating an exchange of items, comprising:receiving from a remote computing system information about an item offered for sale by a seller, the received information including an indication of the item and an indication of the seller;determining item listing criteria for the item by analyzing transactions associated with the third-party item exchange, the transactions including sales of other items that relate to the item offered for sale by the seller; andfacilitating sale of the item in the third-party item exchange by electronically providing an item listing to the third-party item exchange, the item listing based on at least the received information and determined item listing criteria.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the received information includes at least one of an address associated with the seller, a customer identifier associated with the seller, or payment information associated with the seller.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the received information includes at least one of a textual description of the item, an image of the item, an indication of a category that includes the item, or a product identifier associated with the item."

"The method of claim 1 wherein the facilitating the sale of the item includes at least one of notifying the seller that the item has been sold, providing shipping materials for the item to the seller, or providing payment to the seller."

"40. The method of claim 30 further comprising, initiating a payment to the seller based on a price paid by the buyer and a commission."

You're going to need to pay at least 10,000 (and probably more for such a confusing area) for a patent search, and another 10,000 to develop your innovations on this kind of marketplace into your own IP if you want to attract investors.

You may already be infringing (although this is not a patent that has been granted yet).

If you left that lawyers office feeling at all optimistic, and asked at all the right questions, that lawyer probably wasn't good.

You're going to need to pay at least 10,000 ... for a patent search

From where does that information derive?

http://robertplattbell.blogspot.com/2007/10/i-cant-afford-pa...

If you do not want to perform your own search, or want a more in-depth search performed, many attorneys and professional searchers can do a Prior Art Search for you. We do offer this service at the present time. Our fee for a basic Prior Art search is $500.

if people followed patents there wouldn't be internet as we know it. No Google since they weren't the first search engine, not eBay, since they weren't the first auction site, not Facebook since they weren't the first social site.

I say go all in. Noone is going to bother you about patents until you are successful, and at that point you'll have enough $$$ to fight back. Or the whole patent system might get reevaluated. I mean if you look chances are some asshole has a patent on a "reply" button that "facilitates the transmission of your reply to database servers"

The search box (only thing I looked at, first thing everyone will try) is vulnerable to cross-site scripting; it checks clientside for non-alphanumeric characters, but if I submit the form directly through a proxy, I can get a results page with a Javascript popup on it.

It looks like I can read any message sent between users on the system. When you read messages, your backend locates the messages using a client-specified "mid" parameter. I sent a message to myself; it wound up with "mid" 51. 50, 49, 48 --- the system didn't generate errors when I tried to view them, but didn't show any content either. But when I asked for message ID 47, and clicked "forward" on the "empty" message, the message content textbox was populated. Ouch.

You may have some work to do on security before you start clearing transactions. Let me know if you'd like some advice.

Two other notes:

* Wow, signing up for an account was painful. Why do you need so much info from me just to get an account name? Also, why on earth does your PHP app care how I enter a phone number? I used dashes instead of parens, and you rejected it. Ouch ouch ouch.

* Have a copywriter --- they're cheap --- run over the whole site and fix the grammar and spelling.

Thanks for pointing out. Soon I will fix these issues.

I scanned this, was about to click-onwards, then read -

  "Instant Real-time price negotiation resulting in Instant Gratification for consumer"

I think that is the one line gotcha.. it seems an obvious thing to build a new product around.

So, maybe just lead with that ?

Can it be optimized further... "Realtime price negotiation means Instant Gratification for buyer and seller"

.. keep working it, it'll fly.

gord.

Thanks. Yeah, what you suggested is better wording.

I'd suggest not using "instant gratification."

I see that and think "I had some instant gratification before my date in the shower so I could last longer if I got lucky."

I actually found that feature made me angry. So the true price is hidden, and I have to mundanely increase my bid until I find the minimum? Why not just give me the minimum and forget about the gimmick? I quit the video and left the website after seeing that part.

Since the obvious issue of 'you need a userbase' has already been covered, lets assume you had a thriving userbase. Here are my thoughts:

1. I am a buyer - In your video you cover the pains of buying from ebay which is essentially, "wait to get a good price, or pay now at a higher price" But I don't see how your site actually solves this problem. Your solution is to have 'real time' negotiations. But to see you demo it, all you are doing is uncovering a "reserve" price set by the seller, in which case the seller is notified if he wants to "accept" this price. Well he knows full well what he set his reserve price to, so he isn't going to want some ridiculously low price. In this case no one is actually "negotiating" anything. Presently there are plenty of commerce sites that allow generic sellers to list their goods in both an auction and "private offers" format. These are generally found on the wholesale level to liquidate overstocked items. I personally know this because I used to be a reseller on ebay and looked to these sites to find wholesale connections. So I don't get how its "real time". You still have to wait for sellers to accept offers, and if there is anything that sellers know online, its that people lowball , more about that later. So for the buyer, I don't see how this is a "new or improved way to buy.

Also , as a buyer, how do you arbitrarily conclude that bidding is bad? That the auction format is flawed? If anything ebay has been the single most influential online company to drastically affect how people buy goods. They have virtually annhiliated prices for so many items to their bare minimum costs. With ebay, their buyers have always received the biggest benefits.

For sellers - all I want to say on this one is that if theres anything a seller knows when selling online, its that people love to lowball. Your format encourages lowballing. This is not "wrong" but the most logical course of action for sellers will just be to increase their listing and reserve prices. How did you guys not expect this? I know you want to be "different" but I think you need realize that there WILL ALWAYS be a basement price that a particular consumer good can fall too. And honestly ebay nearly ALWAYS uncovers that price. So if the cost of getting that price is waiting 5 days, or "buying it now" then so be it... And this applies to sellers because sellers need buyers, you may have great benefits for sellers, but if theres no one to sell to, well all the bells and whistles in the world won't convince them otherwise.

To conclude, I honestly think you need a drastic overhaul of your concept. As another poster said "less is more". You need to really look at the actual business viability to your plan, rather than to rely on this "build it and they will come" mentality.

Yes, I am an a$$hole, but I think this really needed to be said. Hope this helps.

Here's an interesting/free feature idea for an auction site. Maybe it won't work as well for yours, but here you go anyway:

Offer visitors a cut of the selling fee if they correctly predict what price the item will sell for. (Maybe closest without going over?)

This brings people over to a "I'm not looking, but I'll make a guess" site, but also might get you some users, friend invites, etc. In addition, it might also help buyers when they see that "230 people think this item should sell for more than $300" or somesuch.

It's basically a way for getting other people interested in a transaction they have nothing to do with. Which could get people looking, evaluating, and thinking about products even if they're not an immediate buyer.

I think momentum and traction is the key, and if sellers know they'll get exposure just with random auction watchers, that's publicity they may not get via ebay and searching.

This is a great idea. Just need to make sure this feature doesn't get spammed.

You're presumably trying to compete with eBay, which is certainly an ambitious goal. I like that about your team: you're aiming high. The problem is that it might be too high right now. I think you need to find a niche and then expand as your customers want it.

For the average internet user, onista is probably a bit overwhelming. Hell, its even overwhelming for me and I read HackerNews! I get to the site and think eBay. Then I see social networking and think Facebook. Then I see automatic negotiations. It's not clear from your homepage how all of these are woven together to create something that benefits users. I think a lot of people will see this and say "I don't get it" and move on.

My 2c:

- Do usability testing with some normal people. Figure out what they don't get and where they get lost and make changes - Maybe simplify the homepage and make it clearer how the site benefits the users

- Who is your target audience? Consider finding a niche.

- The color scheme... while very web 2.0, you might do better with something more distinctive. I don't know who came up with the colors for HackerNews, but it's different and I've come to associate that combination of colors with this site. It has an identity. Go to the nearest bookstore and spend some time flipping through the magazines finding color schemes you like. Test a few out on onista and see what works.

Your site has a lot of potential, but you've got to get passed this initial stage for it to matter.

I keep thinking of WebVan for some reason. I'm not sure if thats good or not...

I don't see anything different than what ebay/craigslist offers. You mention a "social marketplace" and your front page says "Leverage the power of social networks" but I don't see any features that make your site social, or where I can leverage the power of social networks.

You have a community tab where users can have events. Why would I use your site for events, why not evite, facebook, etc...? You should focus on one thing and do it well, instead of adding tons of features but neglecting your main focus. "Less is more", right?

Bugs: 1. I just did a search for "car" and got no results. Although you clearly have a car for sale on the site. 2. The captcha on the register page doesn't load an image until I click on the "Try another Image" link. 3. In the community -> Questions and Answers, a search for "sell", "selling", and "fees" returned no results (in fact, nothing returned any results).

Overall, I don't see any unique value created for the user. I'd love for you to tell me I'm wrong and point me to some features/aspects that I missed. (Maybe all the social features are still in development?).

I dunno about anyone else, but to me it seems like the whole process is actually more complicated than it is with craigslist ebay.

Also if you aren't charging anyone, how do you plan to make money?

I have a feeling it's like Priceline. On the spread/difference between the reserve/strike price and the bid.

We are charging 3% of the closing value for each product that is sold. We also offer optional premium services (like eBay) that enhances look of the listing. There is some charge for showing product in "featured products".

In future we also plan get some ads but nothing decided on that yet.

Hope that explains,

If you use ads, either the ads are unrelated and the advertisers will be uninterested, or your sellers are unhappy because your advertising competes with them.

It's a nice site. I'm glad you have a demo video; that's a Web 2.0 trend that's exceedingly helpful. I like being able to watch a short video to find out what a site can do without having to randomly click through to try to figure it out.

Here's the problem: you spend the first full minute of your video listing your competitors and talking about their process. I understand you're trying to build a comparison, but why don't you just show your product off and let people draw the comparison themselves? You could also put the comparison closer to the end. The longer the video is, the more people will drop off partway through, so you want them to see more about your site and less about your competitors.

You need to solve the "bootstrapping" problem. That's what locks everybody else out of the auction space. You need a critical mass.

Some ideas:

- Perhaps a partnership with some sort of overstock dealers?

- Focus on one city at first? Hit up every pawn shop in town and offer to send an intern over to index their stuff?

- Some sort of trade system where people could list stuff they want to get rid of and stuff they'd like to get?

- Offer services for eBay / Craigslist with some sort of incentive to move over to your platform?

(Also, please break or remove the long preformatted lines in the article submission. They break the layout.)

Great suggestions. We just came out of coding phase last week and now we are going to give our best shot to get sellers and buyers. Suggestions like these really help a lot. Thanks again.

My first impression of the home page was that it's way too busy. The "Use Onista To" type information should be front and center followed by search for products. The social networking stuff is cute, but not the major function (or at least shouldn't be -- I'm not looking to make friends, I just want to buy/sell something).

Agreed with the comments on you need to hit critical mass fast. I may return one more time, but if there's still a bunch of zeros next to all of the categories, I'm not coming back again. Same's true for sellers. I won't bother posting my item for sale here if nobody else is because chances are there's no buyer traffic.

Another idea might be to "lower the bar" for getting started. Yes, you need people to register to buy/sell, but you should take sellers through posting their item before you slap the registration/login form in front of them.

As a minor thing, some of the graphics are poorly executed (the Join Now graphic has a white border around it), and the HTML/coding is a little sloppy (but it was done in Dreamweaver, so that's to be expected). You can probably do better in terms of SEO if you re-structure your pages.

I saw a link to one of my pages on this site. Some comments:

1. No, a patent search does not cost $10,000 although an infringmenet opinion or validity opinion can run that much. Most attorneys charge $500 to $1000 or so for a basic patentability search.

2. You cannot infringe a Patent that has not issued. The claims published in an application are not the claims that will necessarily issue - if they ever issue.

3. Even once issued, trying to analyze claim infringement by amateurs is a risky sport. Armchair claim analysis is invariably WRONG. Patent claims are often not as broad as they initially appear.

4. If you released this 40 days ago, you have one year from the date of first public use, sale, offer for sale, or publication, to get your patent on file (the "bar date") keep that date in mind. You may have already voided overseas rights.

5. Business method and internet business method patents are getting unusual scrutiny from the USPTO these days. So expect a long wait and extra costs to prosecute one of these Patents.

Good luck with your project in any event.

1. To bid on your DVD player, I had to randomly guess the lowest price. The only reason I would pay more than the lowest price on Onista is out of frustration from having to guess the price. Unless the prices were wildly cheaper, I'd just go to eBay and "buy it now" and avoid the hassle.

2. Before you promote your site, get a copy editor. I am very cautious about paying - let alone registering - on sites that have lots of typos.

3. Cut out as many features as you can. This probably starts with the "social network." Not only is the sheer volume of options confusing, but it's also impossible to maintain such complexity with three part-time developers. There are a lot of broken links and titles that don't accurately reflect the content they link to (such as category links that say there are multiple listings, when there are in fact none, and vice-versa). I'd rather have one simple and well-done feature than 10 half-baked ones.

I think halo's critique is pretty much correct. You've done a good job with the site, but I just can't see it gaining any traction against ebay, craigslist, etc.. in it's current form. You've got a lot of nice features, but consider stripping the site down a bit and focusing on a specific niche or interesting concept that is easy to convey. For instance, what if the site was entirely focused on submitting things you want and submitting things you have and it automatically matched up buyers and sellers. Not saying that's a great idea, but it's one example of how you could take one of your concepts and focus on it entirely to begin with. Then as people start to use it you can expand your site and start adding in the other pieces. Anyway, that's what I would consider doing if I were in your shoes. Also, like matt1 said, usability testing and focus groups would be a good idea.

"car": No results "laptop": No results "sofa": No results

Eh.

Put the demo video on the main page. Let people can play it immediately because I really don't understand the whole point of the website.

Auction with price negotiation? Sell things in non-auction way? Sell things in Alibaba.com way? Negotiate price in Alibaba.com way? And, how to buy without searching? So, I have to click every category one by one? And, "looking" through all the items instead of "searching" through all the items?

also you shouldn't list the person's address publicly keep that private to be shared between buyer/seller

Yeah, I never thought of that one. Sure we will work on hiding the address.

Really? Make sure that is the first thing you do, otherwise people other than your friends would balk at signing up.

http://www.onista.com

For convenience.

wow. this is the next eBay. give these guys the $5,000 already...whew.

I only have time for feedback on the design of the front page.

It's pretty damn good. Way better then most of the stuff I see when I'm at Y combinator. I had thoughts on the right hand column.

Your order is:

sign in, then use onista to... then not a member, join, then invite friends, then demo.

I think the order:

sign in, not a member, join, then use Onista to... makes more sense, with invite your friends only showing up to logged in users. The demo video should show up like youtube vids do, instead of the clip art, and be on the left hand side, maybe where the slogans are.

Also, I think your three slogans should be saved for elevator rides with people you have 30 sec to pitch too, rather then customer facing. "Think outside auctions and classifieds Eliminate listing fees! Leverage the power of social networks" is for industry people, not your customers. The only critique here I am absolutely sure about is that you should never ever ever say "leverage the power of social networks" to your customers.

But, thats nitpicky. Your site design looks pretty damn good. I particularly like your colors. It makes my eyes feel relaxed and happy. Far better then most sites I see linked from here. Usually I'm talking about how much the design sucks and how the designer should find a new job, or there wasn't someone focused on that. You should keep your designer. Sorry I don't have more time to comment in detail. Nice work!

Thanks a lot for great feedback. Soon I will change the page using all your suggestions as they perfectly make sense. As far as design goes, there are only 3 of us working on this app on part-time basis and work includes design and coding.