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Comment by matt1 | Hacker News Reader

You really need to explain what this is for.

Agreed. I took a look for about 30 seconds, then came here to say the same thing.

EVERY site should have a single sentence (at the least) with a concise, non-jargony explanation of what it is. You can't just assume.

When I saw someone mention the Favicon I went back and got it :) I think the problem I really had was that I read your "example" but it made no sense since I couldn't see any of the character boxes until I typed in the number of characters.

I've added a tagline now. I didn't have one before because before I launched it on a domain name I had a much more obvious name for the site which would need a tagline much less.

No you don't. It's quite obvious.

It would be even more obvious if you put the favicon next to the "Crosstips" header.

Judging by the number of comments saying that it needs to be more explicit, it's quite obviously not obvious to everyone.

I've clearly learned something by all your feedback. It used to have a more obvious name before that I couldn't use because of domain name real estate. I had to change to Crosstips but didn't pad it with more explanation of what it does. Plus having stared at it so much myself I got "home blind".

But most of the complaints say it needs to be more explicit because they didn't realize it was a crosswords tool, which inherently means they DID realize it was a crosswords tool.

It was definitely NOT obvious for me...

Damn it! That's what I hoped I wouldn't have to. Especially the example under the form.

Even a simple sentence at the top explaining who the site is for and what it does would be a HUGE improvement.

"Crosstips helps you finish that crossword you're stuck on."

"Need help with your crossword?"

"Can't solve a tough crossword? We're here to help..."

These aren't very good, but at least I know what the site is for now...having a description will also help with SEO.

Not just crosswords... scrabble!

I don't think it would be all that useful for scrabble. For that you would have to be able to input random letters and get words out. I didn't, however, have any difficulty figuring out what the site was for (the name and the icon made it fairly clear I thought). The "crossword puzzle" metaphor could have been incorporated a bit more in the design, maybe.

Well, Google does not explain what their search is for; why should you have to? Considering it is a niche market for folks that want to solve crossword puzzles, and you had enough people talk about it with each other, you could keep the front page non-descriptive. It is a destination site that people will visit when they know about what it does.

I wouldn't want to see a slogan every time I visited the site, anyways.

Change the tip word daily to mix it up a bit.

I've made some improvements now thanks to Nicholas Woodham. There is now a tag line and the first time you visit it it writes the tag line in full.

It became obvious to me after glancing at the favico. It's one of those tiny details that ends up being important.

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