Use your brains, please.
(disclaimer: I don't have kids, so mentions of my kids are hypothetical)
- The DESIGN! It's beautiful, charming, and makes me want to snuggle a teddy bear. Your load screen ("loading book") has such lovely colors that I giggled - and THAT is rare praise.
- I like the bookshelf idea, with some exceptions: the popups that occur when hovering over a book are a bit jarring, because they don't fit in with your otherwise beautiful design. I'd like them to gently fade in, with pastel background, rather than whacking me with great blotches of white.
- On the popups, you have prices. I HATE the overlined "regular price whatever", it takes the site from feeling like an exclusive storyland boutique to Walmart. Get rid of that. In fact, don't put the prices on popups - those should just be a short blurb about the book. Make one price, and stick it somewhere on the page.
- Which brings me to the next problem - it's unclear what the price is for. Is it for one video? Just for reading the book? For recording as many videos as I want of that book? Make it clear what the prices actually refer to.
- I personally like the bookshelf, but I understand why others disagree. My only problem is that when sorting by ages, I'm required to scroll way down before I find 3-6 or 6-9, etc. You should find a way to make those "tabs" or something on the top (it's OK to violate the physics of your metaphor, as long as its pretty). The search box is also too white - like the designer was lazy to finish.
- The book reader is lovely. The books are crisp and beautiful, in full elegant color. What I'd love is a fullscreen version with blacked-out background, the way I can watch full-screen YouTube videos. BUT: How can I get rid of the annoying "record the book" panel? I don't want to record it right now, I want to READ it with my kids, because these books look lovely and I don't have them all.
- Which brings me to the only really substantive point of this post. I think the true gem of your site isn't really the whole "video" aspect - it's delivering a truly beautiful user experience of lovely children's books which parents can read to their kids, together, even if they don't own the book. My MacBook has a gorgeous, luminous screen, and I'd love to sit and read these with someone. The "recording videos" bit feels tacked on the end.
- So I guess my only real recommendation is to split the site, or drop the videos entirely. But IMHO your clear route to success is to deliver a gorgeous, lush user experience of excellent children's books to parents who want to read to their kids, but don't know what to read, aren't near a library, don't have time to buy books, don't want to buy books that'll only get read once, etc.
- If you want to make a second site that allows one to record readings of these books and send them around, that might work too. Another option is to make children's books the first in a large number of online books that deliver a really excellent online book-reading experience, with bookmarks, notes, crisper-than-crisp fonts, and a soul-soothing design. I haven't really seen a books site that looks like this, with such a nice reader - if I could subscribe a-la Netflix to ebooks on your web-based reader, and you kept track of my bookmarks, made me recommendations, and let me date girls who like the books I like, I'd definitely pay you every month.
Those are some rambling thoughts, but I hope you find something useful in there.
You really have an awesome implementation and a real market. I agree with caffeine in that you might want to simply sell access to the children's books for parents to read with their kids, on their laptop or phone, in full screen.
The presentation of this is infinitely better than any ebook reader or a Kindle and would be worth a lot of money to a lot of parents. I think some sort of subscription model would work wonders here.
Also "let me date girls who like the books I like" -- haha I missed this the first time I read your post. Careful Chris Hansen doesn't mess around.
Yikes :( I guess the post wasn't clear enough, I'll edit it. I meant that I eventually want "Kindle in my web browser", with regular (not just children's) books .. followed up with some kind of social reading that doesn't suck (which has not been invented yet). I like their book reader and attention to detail, I think they could make a really luxury "coffee house" feel to a book-reading website.
That said - maybe you're right, and there's room for social features on the kids' level. Organizing play dates between our kids if they both liked such & such a book?
(edit: apparently I can't edit my previous post. weird.)
Most importantly, the people who are responding with "i don't get it" (like myself), are not missing the point of what they're trying to deliver. In fact, we might be potential customers. What the site is failing to do is impress upon me why this is a useful service. The bedtime ritual is about so much more then just reading a story, as stated here over and over, by gasp real parents. When I'm away, I could just call and tell my kid a story over the phone, and frankly, they'd prefer that to having a pre-recorded book (I just asked them).
With all due respect to the developers, (and I do wish them the greatest success, it's a well-intentioned product), but honestly, this feels like a solution in search of a problem rather then the other way around.
I think it's great telling a story over the phone makes your kids happy. Maybe their site can give you something different every now and then?
I spoke with my 8 year-old about this and he ultimately found it compelling if it could take place in real-time, at which point my 10 year-old jumped in with an "oh yeah!" And I guess thats the missing piece for me. It's the real-time element. I can see having a story kept as an artifact, but for repeated use, the personal interaction is a key ingredient.