Comment by ColinWright | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ColinWright | Hacker News Reader

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OK, I've gone to your page and had a look ...

    Nota features an innovative toolbar
    to help you get the job done

What job?

    Area Selection Tool: Lets you highlight any part of
        a web page. And best of all it takes a screen
        capture of the selection!

For what?

    Text Highlighter Tool: Shows copy changes and catches
        typos in text heavy pages. (Yeah, we're looking at
        you "Terms of Use" pages.)

What?

    Take the guesswork out of web development, with Nota.
    Nota records every click, scroll, and keystroke, giving
    you the clues you need to efﬁciently understand and
    repair user issues.

WHY?

the thing you're missing in all of this is the question of what problem you're solving. I assume you're solving a problem, but:

* How do I know I have your problem?

* How do I even know it's a problem to start with?

* What is the problem?

* What is the context?

* Who is your audience?

In short, based on my visit to your landing page, I have no idea what problem this product is solving.

So I left.

Does that help?

Thanks for that. This landing page can sure be optimised quite a bit. Though as today the main problem is not so much converting users from landing page to sign-up but rather getting current beta users (that do not complain in any sort about the app) to actually try it in they day to day workflow. I am striving for feedback, and if no one use the app I can't get any.

You're getting downvoted, which is a shame, but you need to understand that your landing page and branding issues are the exact same issues that you're describing, too. People may sign up for beta, but may not know how to integrate this into their day-to-day workflow. Who's your audience? Web designers? Developers? Do you have an example workflow, so they can see how Nota fits in?

You need to open their eyes--don't expect folks who signed up for your beta to just see what it is to make the leap of, "Oh, I can use it for this!" TELL THEM WHAT TO USE IT FOR. Show them how to use it. Do you have a Getting Started guide? I couldn't find one. You tell me it integrates with Jira, GitHub, and Basecamp. Super. Integrates how? Show me!

Tell me who I am. Tell me who I'm soliciting feedback from. Tell me why it's better right on the site. Don't expect people to just "figure it out." None of your beta users are familiar with your app. You are the only expert.

"if no one use the app I can't get any"

I did sign up and was left puzzled by what to do next - I wanted to try the functionality but the only example I could see was to send feedback to you, and I couldn't see the tools mentioned on the home page.

I suspect nobody can work out how to get started with your product!

That is strange. There should a sample project called "tutorial project" right on the page you land on after your first registration. Did you try to give the page a refresh ?

Then

a) Why didn't you ask that explicitly - you need to think really hard about

a1) the questions you ask,

a2) why you ask them,

a3) what answers you expect,

a4) why you got something other than expected, and

a5) what you will do with the answers.

If your question/answer pairs aren't actionable, then your questions are wrong and you need to ask something different.

b) You need to engage your existing users directly. Don't spam them, but send an email along the lines of:

b1) Hiya - you signed up for XXXX and I was wondering how I could help you today? Or better,

b2) I noticed you haven't used YYYY, which I think is one of the most useful features - can I talk you through using it and save you time and money?

The problem of so many startups.

Not a programmer, but from what I have read on various forums the problem seems to be you have a client.

ooh... you were supposed to scroll down? i opened page and thought "nothing here till i hit that damn button" and closed it. ^_^

I can't count how many times I've had to tell designers that their great design idea of resizing the first "tile" to perfectly fit the viewport was a UI (and conversion) disaster.

It's also a well known problem referred to as a "false bottom." See number 15 here: http://goodui.org/

Yep, I have little idea on what or when I would actually use your service.

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