Ask HN: please review my start-up (baseloop.com) | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: please review my start-up (baseloop.com)

baseloop.com

4 pointsbaseloop13 comments

The general theme on the comments so far is that the homepage is not descriptive enough to entice anyone here to sign-up. It seems to be a consensus so far, so we will definitely go back to drawing board with the homepage design. I'm glad, however, that people feel that at least the general design is nice. I would definitely appreciate the same level of incisive feedback on the product itself, as opposed to just the homepage design, but I guess I can't get there until the homepage is redone.

Just to give everyone a datapoint, to-date we have about 30,000 registered users, so the current survey style homepage has been somewhat effective at piquing people's curiosity. We actually modeled our homepage off of hunch.com, a company that we really respect.

I have NO idea what this is about.

Nice design though.. so that intrigues me. I'm guessing some sort of social networking, but there's no way you're going to force me to sign up before I find out what you site's about.

Tell me, if it is a SN site, how do you get your first 10,000 users, so it gives the slightest chance of me finding someone I want to network with?

Assuming that you started on day one, with just your nearest and dearest signed up, where do you get your real customers (are they customers I still don't know if you're providing some sort of service) or users from? I'd love to know.

Can I ask you what particularly about the design you like? What part exactly is intriguing you? Clarity would be great so we can focus in on those areas. Thanks!

Effective and interesting choice of blue tones. I like the point and click pictures on the front page - I actually wanted to click to see what happened. so I did...then you want me to sign up. Please give me something before you take.

If I could see what the site did, before you signed me up, I might go for it. All I know so far, is that I've told you my three favourite foods, and that I want to go on a "Camping trip at Yosemite".

I'd love it if you'd answer my question to you.. where do you get your first sign-ups for your social networking site? If there's no one to network with, what am I doing here?

We marketed to groups and organizations. Hence, they all had connections when they signed up.

I like the design but then again it is not clear what the service does. As a new start-up it is of prime importance to make that first impression otherwise you will have a lot of one-time visitors. It looks like some kind of social networking sort of thing but not exactly clear and I would not want to go through the sign up process unless I know it is of some interest. So, your first job is to get me to sign up and then go from there.

Good effort though!

Point taken. How would you suggest we go about this? I look at other sites like Facebook and Twitter, and it's not entirely clear upfront what they do either. Are you suggesting something like an "About" or "Learn More" page?

Dont forget Facebook and Twitter are a household names

This is what they used to look like when they first went semi-public at harvard: http://blog.gleuch.com/post/50407323/the-original-facebook-h...

Note that the about link at the bottom went to more info as well.

Very interesting, I've never seen that screenshot before. Thanks for providing.

Hi I'm not sure what this is about :) I went "skip" a few times and am now stuck on this page

http://www.baseloop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=reg.signUpLogin

An about page would be good and maybe a demo. Design is nice and I get the basic concept.

Will try again if I can get out of register page

I think your main problem is one you yourself have mentioned.

Sign Up and Find Out What's Going On

I have no idea what it's about or why I should sign up.

The most important part of any site is the WIIFM factor: tell your consumers what is in it for them to sign up.

Go with "About us" or "Learn more". It should explain in clear, concise way what exactly the service does. I would go with some sort of pictorial flow-chart sort of thing..where if I sign-up --> I get <something>. You know what I mean.

Message out a clear value to your customers. I was prompted for personal information with no idea what I was receiving in return.

I think if you focus in on that clarity of message you'll see a good increase in sign-up conversions.

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