My startup. Comments? | Hacker News Reader

My startup. Comments?

scriggle-it.com

31 pointsjoe47 comments

Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?

Nice looking design. I've been involved in the music industry, and I grokked pretty immediately what you're selling--so you might not need to take the comments to the contrary here too seriously. It might be a bit wordy for musicians, particularly bass players, though, so you might try to pare it down a bit.

Any musician knows about the merch table, and they know they want the customers name and address fast and in a format that they can read (probably a quarter or more of paper mailing list signups are illegible and lost). They also know they've got a laptop on the road with them. You might make it clear that the installed software doesn't need internet access (because clubs don't consistently have wifi). I assume that to be the case, since I know you'd have no other reason for making an installable app.

URL is a bit long and tough. Couldn't get "scriggle.com"? Maybe try a different name, instead of adding a special character (hyphen is hard to remember, and scriggleit would be hard to read). Just a thought. I don't think it'll kill you, but word of mouth will suffer--and word of mouth is how this thing will spread. Musicians talk before and after the show with the bands they're playing with...someone will ask, loudly because clubs are never quiet, "Hey, what's that software you're using? scribblit? wiggleit? fizzlemit? Oh, squiggleit! I got it. Cool, I'll go check it out when I get to the hotel tonight." If you send stickers and cards and other logo-encrusted schwag to your customers, they might remember to hand them out when people ask...but I wouldn't bet on it.

Awesome. Thank you for the suggestions and commentary. :)

The Scriggler is what's money. Show it off first, middle and last. Don't hide it after a bunch of text. Put the ad copy over background images of the laptop with the Scriggler on it. Honestly, it would be better if you had one of those images as your header instead of the album-cover satellite art. Which is great, and yes, it lets us know you're cool, but you're not in the satellite business.

Also, I now have 2 in a Room stuck in my head.

My one suggestion comes straight from the mouth of Steve Krug:

"Take out half of the words on the page. Then whatever is left, take out half of that"

Cool idea! Couple thoughts:

- Agree that the front page is very busy and wordy.

- I expected that you could click on any of the icons on the left (Code, Mail, Kit, etc.) to learn more about the offerings. "About" has more about the products, but I usually expect About to describe the founders or contact info, etc.

- I would leave off all the "coming soon" features. Announce them when they are ready.

- Agree with the poster that news.yc isn't your target market. I'd find some bands, buy them a coffee, have them look at your laptop & get their opinion.

- Bonus comment ;-) Bands must get sick of trying to get their gigs listed on all the different sites (myspace, purevolume, etc.), having a solution that could push that info to all those different sites would be interesting part of promoting shows.

Thank you for your thoughtful comments. They're definitely appreciated.

> Bands must get sick of trying to get their gigs listed on all the different sites (myspace, purevolume, etc.), having a solution that could push that info to all those different sites would be interesting part of promoting shows.

In the works!

Go easy on the egregious Flash animation.

Also, realize that you're getting feedback from Paul Graham fanboys and people who read "productivity blogs" and "startup news" websites.

Duly noted, on both counts.

Yeah the flash with the moving words on the circular background actually gave me a bit of a head ache, seizure like...

Besides that I really like the site and the product I know a band that had me write a similar one off app in rails so they could have a laptop and have people sign up at their merch table.

I went to your website. I read it all. I have a question:

What is it about??

This is not a joke.

> What is it about??

That is the kind of feedback I was looking for. One of the things we struggle with is good information presentation.

It's a mailing list management system for bands. Or it was. Now we call it "fan management and data collection", and we have client-side software that lets fans sign up for bands' mailing lists at concerts. And there's more snazzy stuff in the works that we'll be unveiling in (hopefully) a week or so.

However you choose to describe it, do it using words that your users will use. That is what they will search for and that is what they will understand.

Very interesting idea but I'd have to agree with the original poster: it's very hard to figure out what it's about! I went to the site, started reading text to the left and was distracted by the flash animation to the right. So I watched it. And guess what, I couldn't make heads or tails of it! I don't know if it's the style, the fonts or what... but I was clueless as to what the app does. Only when I watched it the second time did I make a connection.

PS: The background of the flash anim is HORRIBLE! It's EXTREMELY distracting.... never use high contrast backgrounds. Never!

It is important to note that a pretty design (and yours is really beautiful) isn't necessarily a good design (frankly yours is almost useless). I think your site fails to communicate what you do quickly enough. I lost patience with it; the only reason I lingered was considering your site as a design exercise.

I think that you are squandering almost all of your front page. No one cares about your news; lose it. You are not in the satellite or civil engineering business; lose the logo graphics. No one looks in flash animations for core messages; make it text.

As far as I can tell your business is charging bands fees to make it easier for them to collect fan contact information and helping them contact their fans. I think you should communicate this boldly in the center of the front page.

I have not thought about the copywriting at all but I think you should say:

>Easily collect contact information at the merch table without an internet connection >Contact your new fans with our email, (snail mail), and text messaging software.

You should not distract your users with anything else.

But, I suspect it may be difficult to sell press packs for $6 a month. I think you could make more money from charging them for snail mailings and sms messages (and you better they aren't free). Further, I think you can additionally monetize your users with affiliate programs for t-shirt printing, cd pressing or whatever else bands need.

As far as I can tell, your team's core competency is graphics design. I think you do a fantastic job and I bet a lot of bands would be willing to pay for you to design their logos or websites or t-shirts or album covers. You can leverage your userbase to find new clients.

I wish you the best of luck and I think you have a good shot if you change your front page.

you know sometimes you got to spend more than 5 seconds to understand something...

No one told users this.

true :)

but! I think if we wanted to contribute good feedback he could say what confused him/her to understand and what!

His comment doesn't clarify if he couldn't understand what the software is about or after realizing what it is about (if "read it all" could mean he understood what it is) and assuming that this is not in his interest (if he is a competitor or just not useful for him), thus deciding to use a dismissive comment, which is more probable to be of that nature because otherwise he wouldn't use two question marks ?? that indicate an attitude of not positive motive, which rather I would expect to see downmotted.

Maybe the site fails to give a first impression what it's about, or it confuses you were to look at it when the frontpage launches but I think for someone who spent reading it all like he sais, the problem not understanding could be maybe due to solution correlation to a market because maybe lack of knowledge or just maybe the market targgeted is wrong/doesn't exist or limited at first...or will have a problem of word of mouth because maybe other artists wouldn't be so ecstatic to share it but thats another problem...

I have nothing to do with music or bands but i was able to understand by just looking at the animation... We are all witnessing a change in the music industry since Napster moving from the classic delivery of music, and any software that gives momentum artist/fan direct contact maybe has potential to be part of this music industry change. After all thats maybe why iJigg stands a change to proof a winner...

now I wonder.. What if I gave a copy of Solaris to a mobile phone user? or better yet a copy of PeopleSoft's software..

Same here. I don't have any idea what is your site, and if I would visit it by accident I would not even see the page, because the page loaded too slow.

Scriggle It.

Start of Byline: Get in contact with your fans. End of byline.

also had this problem....

The typography and the white-on-gray color scheme hurt my eyes. The animation is annoying: every time it changes, my attention jumps back to it and I'm distracted from whatever else on the page I was reading. Oh, and <grahambot>take half the text off your front page</grahambot>.

My attention span is far too short to understand what this is.

Nice! The only thing it lacks is a groovy favicon. Favicons can be one of the most memorable features of a website . . . and keeping with your target audience, I would suggest something like a music note.

Otherwise, very nice site design, and a great idea. I so want to hide behind my code right now . . . way to make people like me feel all kinds of amateur. :)

Looks great. It's immediately obvious what it does, and the site design is attractive and clean. One suggestion though would be to rearrange the features. "Code" is more of an advanced feature since not every musician will understand how to embed code into an HTML page, and so it shouldn't be the lead item.

Congratulations on the very nice idea and beautiful site.

Critique: The top logo area is so tall that it pushes down the rest of the content down to half the page at lower resolutions. Definitely check it out in 1024x768 if you haven't.

Hey, scriggleit.com designer here. Thanks for the incredible feedback, seriously.

I agree with 95% of you.

Thanks for the complements.

Feel free to drop me an email if your interested in some of my work bluecommons (at) gmail.com

Fwiw, this guy works with me and designed the Scriggle-it site. I'm the programmer.

TAGLINE- Say what it does right next to the logo. Or as a headline.

SCREENSHOT - Show what it does, first thing. Show a screenshot of the data collection screen at a table. Next to that (not in a flash sequence-- two pics), should the admin interface, etc. Something like BlinkSale's home page, mebbe? http://www.blinksale.com/home

Overall tho-- nice niche, pretty design.

Congrats!

Speaking of the logo, I'm not sure how much the "it" part of it is clear. I'd go with a simple wordmark.

URL with a dash isn't wonderful, but I know how painful domains are.

Gotta get a domain name without a dash.

We do have one. As I noted elsewhere, I linked to the dashed version for clarity's sake, but it was probably a bad idea. The non-hyphenated one is in "production" use.

Scriggle it. Just a little bit.

It would be interesting, and possibly profitable, to take the user information provided to you by the bands and figure out which combination of bands would do well in an area if they did a concert together... shrug

Get a good domain name, even if you have to pay a hundreds for it.

I think we have one.

The name made sense to me. I just feel your domain name is hindering word of mouth in noisy environments. That doesn't seem like it will matter much because you will do business directly with the bands. It could be better, though. Look at octopart and weebly; their names are easier to spread virally.

I have trouble reading the tiny text in the "what you get" boxes.

I know what it was about instantly, but software geeks are not your customer. Your demographic probably needs some flash glitz but get to the point quicker.

i'd cut the initial sign-up form to the essentials.

Have you had any luck at underground marketing/promotion?

Some. Word of mouth has worked really well. We also get quite a few signups from people who see it in use and check it out.

scriggleit.com is way better than scriggle-it.com

Yeah, we own both addresses. I linked to the hyphenated address for clarity's sake. But you're right. We use the non-hyphenated version in all email correspondence and the like.

Is this a YC applicant/winner?

Nope. Actually we've never taken/sought VC, and we've been working on the thing for about a year.

Remember that album promoters who will use your site are most likely the one who promote their own work. So i would make that clear and loud. Instead of spending time and $ running around with posters and Flyers, this is the one place where they can do it all. I like the SMS thing in it. You could add another simple feature where they can upload a piece of mp3 and distribute their own ringtone too. Good job man.

Drop the verification emails, then drop the text about them which is the only thing on your site I read besides the word "music".

Scriggler is DEFINITELY the money. Guy who wrote it must be AWESOME. >.>

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