Show HN: My First Side Project is Live
cheaplyinsured.com
cheaplyinsured.com
Nice design, I think it's pretty clear, and everythings got it's place which is nice. Definitely a welcome change from the advertisement riddled sites that are out there today (though you might want to consider even a little bit of addage, maybe choose one of those ad providers that emphasizes sexy looking ads)
I liked your about/info section -- solving a problem that you encountered is a good way to go into a side project.
So after browsing around for a little, some questions (I didn't browse too deeply, so questions may have been answered on the site somewhere I didn't see)
Clicking through to get a quote, the site seems merely like a referral site (just an aggregation of links to other sites by area code) -- are you considering adding any price-showing features? Like by giving people the option to report the quotes they got, or putting up some quote data, or even a rating system, people could know a little more about the comapanies they're about to click through to?
I looked for life insurance, and saw 5 companies I'd never heard of before, and clicked through to one of their sites and it looked pretty bland -- something to better inform that click-through decision would be nice
At the moment I'm using a company called surehits to provide the listings, and the info they provide is very basic. I do have plans to create a far more interesting platform for connecting customers and insurers, but I decided to keep it very simple to begin with and take the project in steps. My day job keeps me busy so I didn't want to bite off too much for this side project. I've started a few other projects in the past that I didn't finish and I didn't want to do that again.
I do like and appreciate your suggestions and have copied them down - thanks!