Re:Review my Startup's Front Page
by maxklein on Thursday August 21, 2008 @03:52PM
(#283085)
- Online Collaboration Tool should be an anti-aliased image
- Don't sell a tool for experts to idiots
- Feedburner icon is messed up
- font size of 'here' is bigger than the text beside it
- Do not let .php show in the address above. You may change your technology in the future, you will lose all your google strength because all your pages will change location
- Create your own wiki now should be stronger and in the middle. It's the main action you want
- Support wiki sounds like you want people to support wiki. Like support africa, support tibet, support wiki
- Your ul under blog updates has a too large space at the top
- "Check out TicTakToe our support and information wiki". This sentence is too long
- those circular arrows on your triple feature could be mistaken for clickable items
Let me give you an idea:
Once you can get a person to start using your wiki, he is unlikely to ever change, because it's just too much hassle. So your PRIMARY goal is to get people to start using it and put their data in. My suggestion is to offer a special offer 3 Months for $5 offer, only available for the next 5 days. Use session tracking to customize it per user. Now, after the user has put some data in (BEFORE he gets tired), you POPUP a new special offer saying IF YOU register now, you get 6 Months for just half price!
Once they pay twice, they are yours, and will hardly change again.
Re:Review my Startup's Front Page
by martian on Thursday August 21, 2008 @03:41PM
(#283070)
I'm stoked on your concept and loving the logo.
Vertical spacing overall should be a tidied and made consistent. Maybe push the second line of your logo up onto the first line to compress the header?
Also I'd suggest you put some more constraints on the design. Pick three colors max. Also maybe limit font choice. You have at least four fonts (two in the logo, and two more in the text of the page), shifting between serif and sans-serif with all sorts of colors and weights and sizes that all add up to looking like clutter. Similarly link colors seem to be very different (the light green on a light blue background looks a lot different than the light green on the dark blue bg).
Font sizes in the three boxes at the bottom are too small. Also, headers on those boxes should be clickable (since there are little arrows on those headers).
You could try looking at one of the many CSS frameworks (I personally enjoy Blueprint) to add some cross-platform consistency to line-heights and font sizes.
Regarding content: It seems there are two places on the page to learn what ScribbleWiki does. Once in the light blue box and once in the space right below it. Maybe put all this text into one place?
Hope my comments don't come off as too negative -- just trying to provide some constructive criticism.
Re:Review my Startup's Front Page
by brm on Thursday August 21, 2008 @03:21PM
(#283042)
you really should center everything on the vertical axis. the main paragraph is just kinda hangin out to the left.
Look at maybe applying a little more vertical padding to things like the logo (looks crunched).
Should probably also place more emphasis on the things you want people to do like "sign-up" and "try it out" even if its just making them bigger or bolder than their surroundings.
conversions are more important than aesthetics but you're off to a decent start balancing both
Re:Review my Startup's Front Page
by ScottWhigham on Thursday August 21, 2008 @01:56PM
(#282935)
I like that design and I think it's a very popular template style. It's popular for a reason - people like it.
I would suggest increasing the line-height and font-size of your main text.
Re:Review my Startup's Front Page
by tstegart on Thursday August 21, 2008 @02:14PM
(#282962)
Yeah, nice grid. I would make the boxes at the bottom the same size, it seems odd that one is larger than the others. Also, its very grid-like, but that one section of text in the middle is centered. Looks odd.
Re:Review my Startup's Front Page
by STHayden on Thursday August 21, 2008 @03:42PM
(#283072)
Not to be harsh but I think you really need to work on that logo. your page design is pretty strong but the logo is the weakest thing on the page.
It's very hard to get a logo to look both freehand/scribly as well as professional. Either you need to do a mot more research in to how other have done good freehand script well or just stick with a typeface.
Perhaps the name could be all one typeface and you could have a more hand drawn icon to go with the logo.
Re:Review my Startup's Front Page
by jpd on Thursday August 21, 2008 @10:10PM
(#283393)
"A "wiki" which is basically an editable website that allows people to easily collaborate. You can use a wiki from anything to organizing a camping trip to replacing your water cooler discussions at work. See some more uses of a wiki here."
If they don't know what a wiki is, they probably don't want to create one. Secondly, if you must keep it, make the font bigger and easier to read. I had to zoom in it just to make it legible.
Re:Review my Startup's Front Page
by snorkel on Thursday August 21, 2008 @04:55PM
(#283152)
Hi, I'm your typical lazy web surfer with the attention span of a squirrel on speed. I want to see screenshots or some other visual example of the product before I signup for a trial, which I could not find on the first few pages I clicked so I left.
Re:Review my Startup's Front Page
by gojomo on Thursday August 21, 2008 @03:43PM
(#283074)
Too many colors, and many of the color pairings wash-out against each other -- white on lightblue, lightblue on darkblue, white on lightorange. The scribbled 'Scribble' is almost unreadable.
- Don't sell a tool for experts to idiots
- Feedburner icon is messed up
- font size of 'here' is bigger than the text beside it
- Do not let .php show in the address above. You may change your technology in the future, you will lose all your google strength because all your pages will change location
- Create your own wiki now should be stronger and in the middle. It's the main action you want
- Support wiki sounds like you want people to support wiki. Like support africa, support tibet, support wiki
- Your ul under blog updates has a too large space at the top
- "Check out TicTakToe our support and information wiki". This sentence is too long
- those circular arrows on your triple feature could be mistaken for clickable items
Let me give you an idea:
Once you can get a person to start using your wiki, he is unlikely to ever change, because it's just too much hassle. So your PRIMARY goal is to get people to start using it and put their data in. My suggestion is to offer a special offer 3 Months for $5 offer, only available for the next 5 days. Use session tracking to customize it per user. Now, after the user has put some data in (BEFORE he gets tired), you POPUP a new special offer saying IF YOU register now, you get 6 Months for just half price!
Once they pay twice, they are yours, and will hardly change again.
One note though - the choice of coloring on the plan pricing page is not as desirable. Dark gray text on dark blue is not easy on the eyes.
Vertical spacing overall should be a tidied and made consistent. Maybe push the second line of your logo up onto the first line to compress the header?
Also I'd suggest you put some more constraints on the design. Pick three colors max. Also maybe limit font choice. You have at least four fonts (two in the logo, and two more in the text of the page), shifting between serif and sans-serif with all sorts of colors and weights and sizes that all add up to looking like clutter. Similarly link colors seem to be very different (the light green on a light blue background looks a lot different than the light green on the dark blue bg).
Font sizes in the three boxes at the bottom are too small. Also, headers on those boxes should be clickable (since there are little arrows on those headers).
You could try looking at one of the many CSS frameworks (I personally enjoy Blueprint) to add some cross-platform consistency to line-heights and font sizes.
Regarding content: It seems there are two places on the page to learn what ScribbleWiki does. Once in the light blue box and once in the space right below it. Maybe put all this text into one place?
Hope my comments don't come off as too negative -- just trying to provide some constructive criticism.
Look at maybe applying a little more vertical padding to things like the logo (looks crunched).
Should probably also place more emphasis on the things you want people to do like "sign-up" and "try it out" even if its just making them bigger or bolder than their surroundings.
conversions are more important than aesthetics but you're off to a decent start balancing both
Good luck!
The first block like that is a link, and the other three are not - it's not very consistent.
I'd recommend making the rest into links too.
It's easier to hit a block like that, instead of a much smaller text link to whatever the block is already advertising!
It's very hard to get a logo to look both freehand/scribly as well as professional. Either you need to do a mot more research in to how other have done good freehand script well or just stick with a typeface.
Perhaps the name could be all one typeface and you could have a more hand drawn icon to go with the logo.
either way the logo needs work.
good luck!
If they don't know what a wiki is, they probably don't want to create one. Secondly, if you must keep it, make the font bigger and easier to read. I had to zoom in it just to make it legible.
Also in general its a good idea to keep all three boxes Red, Yellow and Green header one of the same dimensions (height is different in your case)
I think consistency is generally great to have
Always post at least one screenshot.