Ask HN: Re-review my startup - ProspectVista.com | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Re-review my startup - ProspectVista.com

16 pointsleftnode12 comments

Hello HN,

About a month ago, I asked for reviews of my startup - ProspectVista.com. I got some good feedback, but didn't get much exposure because it wasn't upvoted much.

I've done a tremendous amount of work to it in that month, and I'm asking again for more suggestions.

The idea behind Prospect Vista is that businesses can create a public profile, upload video commercials, connect with other businesses, and advertise for free. Businesses can create marketplace ads to describe specials they are having or to advertise their products or services.

Consumers, after creating a profile, can create Requests for Proposal's for businesses to find. For example, if a consumer needed a plumber or a home inspector, they would create a request for all plumbers in the system. Businesses that have associated with the plumbing industry will be able to respond to the request, and from there, the consumer will select the plumber that matches their request the best.

All functions to use the site effectively are free to use.

Businesses can optionally pay $10 a month/$100 a year to upgrade their account. The upgrade:

* Gives them 10 videos of 50mb each rather than 2 videos of 20mb (videos can be swapped out at any time). * Detailed demogrpahic statistics on their account (what other industries are viewing their account, genders, total views, and we're adding more). * Requests for Proposal delivered directly to their email, rather than having to manually search for them. * A public forum to promote themselves and talk with their customers. * Are allowed to create an unlimited number of Marketplace Ads, whereas free accounts can create 1 per week..

Because I'm interested in getting good feed back, I've created two dummy accounts for HN readers. If you want to sign in as a business:

username: hn_business@prospectvista.com password: hnbusiness

If you want to sign in as a consumer:

username: hn_consumer@prospectvista.com password: hnconsumer

Here's an example of my simple profile - http://www.prospectvista.com/profile/view/4 And a profile with a much better video - http://www.prospectvista.com/profile/view/87

http://www.prospectvista.com

Thanks!

I reviewed before, and I'm afraid I can't say much different now. My review before was that I thought the profiles were not at all compelling, so I signed in with the business account to see if I could do better. I can't. There isn't enough flexibility, and there's way too much focus on stuff no one cares about. I said it before, and I'll say it again: No one cares what your address is, what your primary, second, and third industries are, or what your office hours are. Most people don't care what your phone number is either since this is a website and they probably expect to use the web to contact a business on it.

There are also quite a few design issues. Sometimes bold blue text is clickable, sometimes it isn't. Something things listed in the left column are clickable menus, sometimes they aren't. I find it all very confusing. I thought for sure on the home page, I'd be able to click on "Find what you need" to go to some sort of search page, but I can't. The search box at the top gives no clue of what you should search for, and if you search for something that gets no results (or results you don't like), there's no indication of what you should do to improve your results. If search isn't your thing, oh well. There's no way to browse on the site, only search. In my opinion, the ability to search without the ability to browse works for exactly one website, and I think you know which one that is.

You mention plumbers as an example, but until you reach a huge critical mass, searching for a plumber on your site will not be practical. Craigslist is one of the only websites in the world where it's practical to search for local businesses, and Craigslist is huge. You are tiny. It is not practical to search for a local business that only lists 10 businesses in your entire country. What are the chances of actually finding one? One in a billion? Worse?

I think you would do much better to focus on business that don't have a "service area" (conveniently eliminating even more from the site that no one cares about). Freelance tech people would be a good target audience as far as businesses go. Software companies are also good. And then you need to give people a chance to actually show themselves on their profiles rather than a bunch of information that, I want to reiterate again, no one cares about. For comparison, this is what a good profile for a designer looks like:

http://www.ganato.com/index.php

It is simply not possible to make something that compelling on your site. On your site, it would look like:

    Location: Santiago, Chile  
    Service area: Worldwide  
    Name: Lidia Gana  
    Primary industry: Web design  
    Secondary industry: Interface design

Then there would be a comment area that contains a few good testimonials, perhaps the only thing compelling that could be worked into the profile, a list of business contacts that no one would care about, a discussion board that would not have a enough critical mass for anyone to care about, and a fans section that no one would care about.

Finally, there would be one single solitary chance for the designer to show what she can do: the video, but given that the attention span of users is very short and that there was nothing in the profile to compel them to care, many probably won't bother watching the video, especially if it's longer than say, 30 seconds. With 30 seconds, the designer could show only a ridiculously tiny portion of what's on her website. She certainly wouldn't have a whole page that exudes her design skill. She certainly wouldn't have a section where she gives away free stuff to show off her talent.

Think of it like this: eHarmony commercials complain that other dating sites give you just a picture and a paragraph and how useless that is. Your website gives businesses and customers just a picture and a paragraph.

Agreed with all of this. You need to figure out how this is useful before 100,000 businesses sign up (which may never happen).

Plus that value proposition: "Prospect Vista helps you connect in the marketplace" - what does that even mean?

Finally, have you actually spent the money to trademark "Go Commercial"? If not, don't use the tm sign.

Honestly, I think you're in way over your head.

Technically, you can use the TM sign on anything that is covered under trademark law. That indicates that the logo, tagline, etc. is a distinguishable visual cue unique to your business. To gain the most legal protection, however, you must register it with the USPTO and use ®.

Surprisingly, I couldn't find an existing trademark on "Go Commercial" so it appears the OP is in the clear.

Thanks again for the great feedback.

You make a lot of excellent points too. Ok, what about the new app from 37Signals, Haystack? Design issues on my site aside, Haystack lets a (specific type of) business advertise for free with 1-6 images of their portfolio, and a link to their site. Thats $99 a month. I would assume you would like Haystack better because of its minimal design and focus on the company.

Looks like its back to the drawing board, but I do honestly appreciate your feedback.

If my understanding is that you want to build a website like "yelp/local business"...then I think you need to go out and talk to local businesses about how their needs aren't being met by craigslist, yelp, etc.

Also from the description, it looks like you might be going after too many things. For instance - if I am a small town plumber, chances are that I am not going to have a commercial to upload. This will make me look less professional on your website and I won't like it so I won't use you. On the otherhand if you had statistics like the number of "jobs" that I have done in the last month at or under the price quoted, then this would be helpful for me as a customer.

Perhaps the way to go is to make a website that lets very small local business construct advertisements that don't suck. Make it painfully easy for them to do this and they will pay money.

I do like Haystack better, but not because of minimal design, and I'm not sure what "focus on the company" means.

I like Haystack better (this is very first-impression for them too because I hadn't heard of Haystack before) because it gives you right up front in a bold way exactly and only what you care about. To put myself in the users shoes, I want to hire a designer. What do I care about? Who's out there, what can they do, and how much will it cost me. Haystack answers this is 3 seconds. It also keeps the contact information simple and web-based. If I need a phone number or address, I can always email and ask.

Haystack has some problems of its own, but I think as far as the profile pages go, Haystack is much better.

Perhaps you could have different profile templates which are catered to various types of businesses if you don't want to go completely freeform (and it's probably a good idea not to because then it will turn into Myspace and be scarily bad). Or perhaps you could have widgets that users could add like a portfolio or like a contact info or testimonial box (instead of putting these on all profiles). Or, since templates and widgets have been done to death, perhaps you could come up with something different. Who knows. I just know that what you have right now is very phone-book-ish and not particularly compelling to the user looking to hire someone for some job.

Your contact information isn't in your profile, but you've given me some great ideas. Would you mind emailing me at vmc@leftnode.com so I could personally contact you in the future?

This is a good website. It appears that this service does what redbeacon does, in matching requests to businesses, except your website is also a social network in addition to free advertisements for companies. I think the value propisition is good and if you can get enough people to upload a commercial it could be a very resourceful website. This is certainly attainable in that there are thousands of videos uploaded to youtube per day, some of which are for people who are uploading business "commercials". I can see that prospectvista.com allows much more control for branding than youtube. Youtube obviously provides more immediate coverage since everyone knows about youtube, but if a company is trying to brand itself on youtube the next link could be a kid lighting his fart on fire. I could see why companies would opt for prospectvista.com where they can have more control over their profile and what is shown on it. I logged in via the password you supplied and the "request center" looks to be a very solid deal. So, in essence I see this as a website for companies to advertise on, brand their emails with a link to their own commercial, as well as get business leads from the request center. All in all, I like it. I can see some of the points from the reviewers, but again, as a whole I think your website is good and if you can get traction on people using it, it could be big.

Honestly, I really really feel for you. It's very clear you've put a ton of hard work into this. I think it's great that DanielStraight spent a lot of time to provide feedback. I honestly don't have as much time to give you the proper technical or user experience type of feedback that you need. I will, however, give you some more overarching feedback. I just don't believe you have enough experience at this point in time to really understand the problem with your product. It's hard to resist trying to "go for it" to make riches on an internet service. But given time and learning, anyone can get that experience. If you can find work in the Advertising industry, that would be the ideal learning place. It's the only industry that marries strategy, branding, interactive, marketing, user experience, and visual design, plus PR to boot, as the lines between what is PR and advertising is becoming non-existent. As a matter of fact, there are blurred lines between all mentioned above. But the greatest thing for you to learn about is how for a web service, the user's experience is essentially your brand. I cannot teach this to you. It's something that will probably take you a while to learn how to implement.

Clickable links:

http://www.prospectvista.com

http://www.prospectvista.com/profile/view/4

http://www.prospectvista.com/profile/view/87

Right off of the bat there is too much stuff to look at in the front page. I think get rid of the sign up page on the first page and put a bit button link to it and spend more time explaining why people should care and what problem you are solving for them.

One extra note, not a good idea to use the word "vista" in your product, as it recalls the obvious Windows Vista which everyone pretty much ties to "failure".

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