Review my startup: YouIntern.com
youintern.com
youintern.com
It's a website that connects students looking for internships and employers providing them. The focus is advertising/marketing industries, but we're looking to expand into other verticals in the future.
Thanks!
I have a suggestion that might be of use: reduce the content on your main page so that the user can tell in 15 seconds or less what your site does, and how to get started.
Some examples:
- removing "Search Employers, Internships, and Reviews" and the middle search box, while leaving the one on the top
- Removing "My Portfolio", should be shown only when logged in
- Moving "Contact Us" to the bottom of the page
- Removing "recent reviews" and replacing it with "From the Blogs
- Adding some big buttons for "Students" and "Employers" (your main audience)
Keep up the good work!
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=342705
Too much off-message content right up front. "Freedom from coffee and copies" and "new and improved" are the two messages you hit me with on first impression, which loses me. Your message seems to be, "YouIntern.com brings students and employers together." That's what needs to be in 1000 point font. You should follow up with your main point of differentiation, i.e. "by crawling 8 bazillion thingers and having a team of monkeys sort them to match your skills".
I'd also change "But you need a great internship, one that moves your career forward" to simply "A great internship that moves your career forward."
Maybe something like, "Great minds, at a special, introductory price." ;-)
1. I like the logo, but I don't like it against the blue. It washes out the colors. I'd change the background to something more complimentary - or maybe instead of a drop shadow a white glow would work (not sure without seeing it :)
2. I don't like the byline "Freedom from Coffee and Copies". You'll turn off the set: "I had the best times fetching coffee" and "I show them the ropes to X, why shouldn't they get me coffee" and "If they can't be bothered getting coffee, they aren't motivated enough to be an intern at supercompany Y"... etc... etc... This is even if they have a great position - people can be stubborn on principle. I'd save it as a byline for the "Interns" section.
3. I initially didn't like the name, which is never really a big deal, but I liked it when I saw the "you-intern" blue/red logo. You could also emphasize the three colors if you went to "you-in-tern" - which is also a neat play on words.
Again, all just style. Good luck.
1) Would be great to put listings front and center on the homepage. The idea doesn't need a whole lot of explaining (it's a good thing)
2) I wouldn't auto-hide the internship details on a listing. That is the most important info on the entire site, I think.
3) Agree with commenter that most people prob browse rather than search
After doing a search that suggested that I "try choosing 'include old results'", it was entirely non-obvious to me that I needed to mouseover the checkboxes, and the options under "employers" went past the bottom of my browser window (firefox 3.0.1).
Other than that, this looks like a really awesome service. I'm bookmarking it in case I actually end up going to college in a year or so in the hopes that it grows into what it has potential to grow into.
Good luck, and thanks for launching a project that has immediate practical use to a lot of people.
"Search Employers, Internships, and Reviews" to bring people to Advanced Search is too wordy
Remove the whole blogs part of the main page...it takes up way too much time and you gain absolutely nothing from it.
I'd also add a browse functionality which at least lets people look at all the jobs in a particular field. i.e. Finance, Medicine etc.
Your actual internship description needs to be full from the start. You take up 90% of the space just to tell them the company name, and then for actual description you ask them to click "Show full info"
One bit of advice: make a Facebook app.
Your logo looks very similar to the MS Office logo.