I just had my iPhone "scanned" at MSP at security as my boarding pass... So it's doable.
328 karma · joined May 11, 2009
I think it's only dirty if you're not upfront with the customer about what you are going to bring in from your competitor and/or what you're going to do with the data.
Maybe a smaller tagline on the homepage not in a banner? The other thing is that banner is carried throughout the site design (and used as extra navigation in other areas) so it would be a bit inconsistent without it.
I hope that the submissions will be community moderated soon. Downvoting them "enough" will remove them now. The Bollywood/template/static sites are leftovers from before I added the reputation system.
I would certainly pay for feedback on my sites. I have in fact done so with feedbackarmy in the past but was not impressed by the mechanical turks' responses so I made launchly to get real feedback from real people (like we get on HN). I've also used usertesting.com in the past and they were great but aren't really the same thing (although that's one of the upsells I'm planning to add to launchly eventually).
The banner text is there to try to tell people what the site is about on the landing page. I didn't want them to have to go to another page to figure that out since normally I believe that is considered a bad thing if they HAVE to read an about page. You're right though that the information is a bit disjointed. The "What's a Launch?" link is meant to be more of a feature tour (maybe I should just call it that). The About page is supposed to serve as a standard about page that tells what the idea is, why it's different, etc etc. Is it not common to have both these days?
I have seen the problem with the voting widget before and will look into it, thank you! The pop-up is for category voting, the big up/down arrows are for overall.
To clarify, the site offers a few things:
a) Iterative (multiple rounds) of feedback. The site was basically created because this seemed to be frowned upon on HN. Maybe I won't get boo'd off stage this time since it's been two months in between! b) Analytics. We track a number of specific things pertaining to your launch and then graph them for you to track how your launch is performing over time. c) Exposure. Your launch is actively pushed out to our primary audience (and anyone else watching social media streams). You also get front page attention on our site and depending on your launch's quality you could make the hottest launch or highest rated lists as well. If your app is especially standout (like Guestlist and TweetBlocker) I'll also give it a full review/write-up on the blog.
HN and an "Ask HN" post are great ways to get feedback and exposure for your site but I think we can do better!
1) HN's primary function is not to serve as an app review forum so by using Launchly in addition to HN (all you would have to do is follow on Twitter or RSS, not visit daily like HN), HN can go back to being about... well... Hacker News! I'm not saying review my site posts do not belong here but I think there is room for a dedicated community. 2) Launchly offers analytics that are not offered here and a comment system that is better-suited to feedback (screenshot attachments are just the first improvement, more to come). 3) Many times app launches get lost in the madness that is HN and go without any (or very little) feedback. Sometimes they end up with very little exposure as a result (heavy news day for example). That won't happen on launchly so if you really want feedback, we would be a better option.
At this point in time, Ask HN may still get you more exposure than you get on launchly because of sheer numbers but we're growing and if people start participating in the community soon that won't be the case.
The pricing is still in flux and I'm not sure where it will end up. It's always easier to go down than up though! There is a Basic, free plan as I'm sure you saw. The Plus plan adds guaranteed feedback plus the full suite of analytics. I plan to add further differentiators as the site grows.
I will work on decluttering the site, thank you!
I have been playing with the tagline quite a bit and you're right, I don't think I've found one that works quite right yet.
It took quite a bit of work for me to make all the necessary changes to get that reputation system in place last week and I really hope it has the positive effect that I think it will. Hopefully the amount of feedback will start creeping up.
Also note that registered users can provide additional profile details now on launchly such as a bio and link to a website. This is another possible way to promote your own startup by giving quality feedback to other startups. If people view your profile (either from your feedback or the leaderboard) they may just click through to your site/service!
Even your navigation is in Flash so while the huge thing loads there is literally NOTHING to do.
That's your biggest problem for sure. Fix that before you even think of anything else.
Second, is it CribSpace or CribScribble?
Third, even after waiting that painful time for it to load I'm not sure what exactly I'm looking at.
We had an app launch on launchly awhile back that was basically trying to be the iPhone version of GetSatisfaction or UserVoice. You could plug in their code into your app and it would handle feedback and bug reports for you.
Maybe there's a market for something similar for A/B testing on iPhones. If it's a tricky problem to solve, even better cause then people will pay you for it.
Initial thought w/out knowing anything about the security model is can you set up config files or even remote code on a server somewhere and then access it from your code on the iPhone using an API key? If you can then you could maybe set up multiple config files on the server and have your code load different versions randomly and report back statistics...
Of course that brings up an interesting point. What would you be A/B testing in an iPhone app? The user has to have already downloaded/installed your app. At that point there's really not any landing page or funnel to test like there is on a website. Obviously you can still A/B test internals just to improve the app which will affect ratings which can affect downloads (conversions).
Anyways, just thinking out loud here.
What would you say if they instead used some form of OpenID system (RPX Now or something) so you didn't have to give them your password? Would that help?
You should add your site to my startup launchly (http://www.launchly.com). I started launchly (with a HN launch as well) to try to help other startups get the feedback and exposure they need to succeed. It also comes with some powerful analytics to track how your launch is performing. Oh and it's free too so that helps!
*Edit. ROFL... "it seems like this is taking awhile... maybe you should grab a sammich"?? Ok that's the first time I think I've had a webapp suggest I go eat while it spins. Awesome.
Also you have a typo here "Upgrade to PRO now to lock in current pricing (over 50% off) for as along you have your subscription." Should be "for as long" not "along".
Site looks pretty nice. Slick UI. Seems like a useful product to me but I think there are others apps out there that handle this sort of thing. I don't have any clients so I can't really say how it stacks up for sure.
You might want to mention to them that they can add their app for free on my startup, launchly (http://www.launchly.com), to try to get additional feedback and some analytics on their launch.
Currently the only "employee" so I guess I'm CEO, CTO, CxO too!
After that I'm a bit partial to launchly but that's probably because it's mine. :-)
You might want to consider adding your site to my new startup, launchly, for additional feedback. It's free - http://www.launchly.com