Ask HN: Please review my startup for bicyclists | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Please review my startup for bicyclists

brightspoke.com

18 pointsspokey28 comments

I'm a big cyclist so definitely in your target market.

The big problem I see right now: What is your site about? I opened the link with a bit of excitedness and literally I spent a few seconds confused as to what this site is and what it does for me. Some specific points:

Your tag line "We love bikes", yes great, so? Tell me in a nutshell what this site is about.

Have a big heading that explains the site, a starting point for the eye if you will. Right now the only real text you have is a quote about poets and cycling, which is not relevant to me. It doesn't explain anything about the site, and it suggests that the site may be for poets who don't cycle and want to convince them otherwise.

Are you helping me understand how to buy a bike or are you selling me a bike?

The search bar at the top is almost invisible, and the hint that it should be by name is even harder to read (yellow on blue in an odd typeface).

So the key message is: I don't know what the site is about, and even a few seconds later I still didn't know. Now that I've played with it a bit, read the about page, I kinda get it, but I'm not sure. This confusion means I won't remember it.

Great name by the way. I love it.

Unclear if this is aimed at bike experts or bike newbies. Is this to help me find a bike? Then help me understand WHY the data points are important. Even your front search frame dropdown: alum vs. steel? I don't know, why should I pick one? This assumes I already know the reasons why these filters are important.

The data dump for each bike is nice, but again, no context, no comparison feature, nothing to let me know why each data point matters.

If you are going for an expert audience, then consider expert tools: experts all already have a bike, so they want to consider upgrades and alternative bikes for alternative uses. So why not allow users to search that way: Given that I have a, say, Trek 7.2 FX, what's the next logical upgrade level/search features from that? It would be differerent and new, afaik.

So, it's a fine data aggregator, but I would love to see some smarts via a more bike-thinking way to search, and a more useful display of the data which allows me to know that some frame angles are "race ready" and cause you to lean down while riding, or that some frame types are better for vibration but may not be necessary if you ride short distances on pavement, etc. That context can also be provided via on screen comparisons: 1 variable across 10 bikes, or comparing 2 bikes across all variables.

I agree with danteembermage around community features; these days, it's hard to get far without them, either built in or by allying yourself with an existing community.

This is aimed at helping bike newbies become bike experts, although frankly it has been easier to gain traction with experts. I try to imagine it as a bike expert looking over your shoulder while you're looking at bike specs explaining why you might want or not want feature X (the online equivalent of what good salesperson might do at your LBS).

There's a bit of that in place here and there on the site (for instance, the nascent "undestanding" articles, or trying hovering over the frame or fork parts of a bike details page). I guess it needs to be more in your face.

>This is aimed at helping bike newbies become bike experts

In that case, you seem to be going at it exactly backwards. Take the search bar - if I already know the make and model to search for, I'm definitely not a newbie.

Instead, the form could be something like this:

    1. Why do you want a bike (check all that apply)?
    - Commute
    - Recreation
    - Exercise
    - Environment

    2. How much money do you want to spend?
    - [low end]
    - [high end]

    3. Where do you live?
    [type city and country or click location on a map]

Then return a list of bikes that meet the criteria you selected in order by fit, with links to places where you can buy the bike.

Thank you.

That was my first thought as well, but in testing that's quite not the way people like to approach the problem. (In fairness, the form I have on the homepage currently also isn't quite the way people like to approach it.)

For example, here's a sampling of posting from a general purpose (not bike specific) forum from the past 24 hours:

* What is the best comfort bike/city bike for under $500? * Whats a light bike for city riding? * Recommendation for Cyclocross Bike for Winter Road Riding? * Whats a decent hard tail mountain Bike for under 500? * Suggestions for a $650 road bike? * I'm looking to spend around $2000 on a road bike. What should I get?

This is the immediate need I'm trying to serve with that form on the homepage.

I imagine I'll eventually have a bike "wizard" like you describe, but from my research (and watching others in the space) that's not quite an intuitive approach for users.

You're probably right that the form I suggested isn't quite right - it was off the cuff.

Still, I think the design needs to reflect the problems people are trying to solve. Given the sample questions you listed, the form currently on the site is still backwards - running from particular products back towards uses.

Here's an idea: have you considered pushing the expertise out to the site community instead of having to hard-code it? I'm thinking of something like a stackoverflow for cycling. That way the site will respond directly to the precise questions that users have, rather than trying to force-map the 'typical' question into a form at all.

That's interesting. I'll need to noodle on it some more.

Hmmm... I'm a bike newbie, and when I just bought my road bike, I never used the word Cyclocross or "hard tail". And I bet, if you looked at the answers to questions like "Suggestions for a $650 road bike?", they were all things like "It depends on whether you are commuting or riding for fitness, in what weather, what terrain, etc.?" That is, you get answers like "This Specialized is a great bike for..." where they provide the context around why they suggest it, or they ask for further details.

You have the data, you just need to provide interesting ways to get at it. The wizard may not be it... but how you provide the answers should show that you understand what the person is trying to answer.

My first impression was that I accidentally typed in the wrong url and went to one of those fake-website landing page sites that just run ads all over them. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with your color scheme and blatantly stock picture. One thing that might help is to soften up the background with either a gradient, texture, or just a more pastel color.

Would be helpful (for me at least) to have some sample search queries so I can get a taste for what I will get even without having to fill out the form. Show don't tell. Maybe a "popular" gallery or a "best deals" gallery etc. Filling out that form takes way too much effort for the "unsold".

Lastly I was pretty sad to find no pictures of any bikes whatsoever! Pictures are pretty important.

Your design really is not "bad" it just gives off the an iffy/questionable vibe as to the legitimacy of the site. So maybe just kill two birds with one stone and focus on getting juicy pictures of badass bikes in a nicely laid out gallery. I actually don't know much about bikes, but would like to, so I'll be rooting your site on.

HTH

I've been working on Brightspoke (part-time and bootstrapped) for a couple of months and while there's a lot more left to do, I feel there's enough of the MDP/MVP in place that hopefully you should be able to see where I'm headed.

For fear of tainting your first impressions of the site, I won't say a lot more right here, but I'd be happy to go into more detail later in thread if anyone has questions about the site, technology, vision, business model or process that led to here.

I would greatly appreciate any and all feedback, from design to copy to coding to features. I've been looking at some parts of this for so long I can no longer tell whether some changes are better or worse.

Note that some bike pages are a bit more robust than others (a function of the data currently in the system), for example:

http://www.brightspoke.com/b/2010/surly/steamroller.html http://www.brightspoke.com/b/2010/surly/karate-monkey.html http://www.brightspoke.com/b/2009/khs/flite-team.html

Also, this page:

http://www.brightspoke.com/t/bike-stem-calculator.html

has proven popular on some cycling forums.

I'm sort of a target user for your site (family of five, don't own a [working] car, bike everywhere, don't know much about bikes)

I like what you've got; your site would be much more valuable with a lot more information. Things that come to mind

1. Maintenance of all kinds, how to change a spoke, what is a chain whip for?, truing rims, adjusting rear derailleurs, etc.

2. Classified information for bikes; you might think craigslist might have this locked up but I bought my bike from there and the guy who sold it to me was really frustrated with people calling him with random questions he didn't understand. A convenient form with blanks for relevant stats would help us newbies.

3. Events page; cycling events happen all the time, an RSS of rides in my area would be nice

4. Forum: war stories, racing strategy, a clubhouse for cyclists.

5. news/blog cycling related legislation, celebrities on bikes

6. Bike mods page: DIY propelled, row cycles etc. showcase interesting inventions

Basically a community site with really great technical info and lots of pictures could be really compelling I think. To fly I think this thing needs more meat on its bones.

Thank you. This is great feedback. I've been thinking along some of these lines as well. In fact you've hit on two things that my customer discover research suggests as the right route to go down.

But there are a lot of basic community/forum sites in the cycling world. I've been trying to focus on a putting something new into the world. Do you think community features are a base requirement?

I just don't know what your product does for me as a user, at least not yet. As a serious bike geek, there's nothing I couldn't find at one of the better-stocked dealers, some of whom will provide very rich and specific data. I've spend stupid amounts of money on bikes, but they've all been carbon-framed, drop-handlebarred, with 20 gears, rendering your advanced search not nearly advanced enough.

Your tool could be incredibly powerful and useful for me if your database held information on weight, allowing me to shop on a dollars-per-gram basis. Comparison shopping features would be very useful and provide you with a substantial revenue stream in the form of affiliate fees. A database of parts and a wish list would allow me to configure a home-built bike or an upgrade.

If I were a casual cyclist, I can't see your site making me any less confused than the front page of the first cycle dealer I pick out of Google. If I found my perfect bike I'd still need to Google for a dealer that stocked it and potentially get tripped up by different model years, different specs etc. I don't really know what any of these terms mean, how many gears I would want or which material I want my bike made out of - I just know that I want a nice light bike for buzzing around town, or something plush and comfortable for pedalling round the park, or something that will carry my shopping. I see the mouseover popups that explain some of the terms, but they don't clarify things all that much and it seems like I'm stumbling around at random.

As it stands, I just don't know why I'd use your tool instead of going straight to a bike retailer. Your stem calculator is useful because it provides information I can't really find anywhere else. The rest of the site feels like you've built it because you can. I can't see the problem that you're trying to solve.

If you're interested in weights, you should check out http://weightweenies.starbike.com/

"Our mission is to put more people on bikes by creating informed consumers."

As someone who uses a bike as his main transportation (or maybe because dutch bike-culture is completetly different from american bike culture) I cannot understand how this website will put more people on a bike.

If you want to put more people on a bike, here's a few questions your website should answer:

- Why would I want a bike? (Cheap transportation? Faster than walking for short distances? 'Green' way of transportation?)

- For what distances would I prefer a bike vs. a car? (I use a bike for all distances < 10 km (that would be 6 miles), mostly urban traffic.)

If you want to put more people on a bike, your startup should be a tool that enables citizens to create local advocacy groups for bike lane networks.

I've actually done a tiny bit in the advocacy space and would like to do more, but I'm trying to move the casual cyclist, the once a month crowd, rather than the existing advocates.

Bike lanes themselves are a bit of mixed blessing: Studies suggest street-side, dedicated bike lanes may be less safe than simply treating bikes as traffic, e.g. http://www.bikexprt.com/research/pasanen/helsinki.htm. (Whether that's good or bad for actually promoting cycling is a different question.)

If you're interested, I've aggregated some bike advocacy folks on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeLoveBikes/bike-advocacy.

Thing is, if you wan to beef up the number of casual cyclists, you need to give them a bike network.

I used to be opposed to bike lanes (and I ride daily in mixed traffic) for the reasons you cite; but bike lanes are net far safer because the main effect of dramatically increasing the number of cyclists is that you dramatically decrease the number (not just the rate but the actual count) of casualties.

Just having more cyclists on the road makes it much safer. This seems to scale - Copenhagen is up to 50% trips by bike and their casualty rate is still falling.

At risk of duplicating things others have said here -

* If I didn't already know why I prefer steel to carbon, or aluminum, I wouldn't learn it from the site. It really doesn't give any rationale for different materials. It looks like you tried to explain the pros and cons of different handlebars, but it's a lot of text, and could be improved with pictures, showing different hand positions perhaps.

* It may be a good idea to keep commuters in mind, perhaps factoring this in to "Bike Type". The equipment trade-offs are different. In particular, there are incidental accessories - reviews of (say) bike headlights would be nice, and I feel more comfortable getting that sort of thing online than a whole bike. You also don't have anything about singlespeed / fixed-gear stuff, another niche that might be easy to add.

* You don't seem to have anything about bike size in there. "Clydesdale" riders (i.e., tall and/or heavy people) tend to need more durable parts, some people need extra-small frames, etc. This will complicate things tremendously, though, and being able to actually test-ride bikes in person is a huge advantage for LBSs.

From the front page, it's not really clear to me what the purpose of filling out the "Discover Bikes" form is. Am I going to be shown search results of bikes to buy? Or just general information about different models?

Some small observations :

In Firefox 3.0 (Javascript off) the drop-down menus do not sit next to their labels properly. Perhaps if you get it to pass W3C validation http://validator.w3.org/ it will look better.

It would be nice to browse the bicycles as well as search them.

I didn't really know what information I was searching until I had looked at the results. Is this a bicycle shop, or a portal to other shops, or a second-hand market place?

Since I am not very familiar with the english defintions for the handlebars I decided to click the 'Understanding Handlebars' link. Sadly there is an awful lot of text there but no images of the different types of handlebars.

Indeed. I'm sorry to disappoint you. That's a work in progress. The stem version - http://www.brightspoke.com/c/understanding/stems.html - is more complete and may be more in line with what you were expecting.

I think the drop downs should give totals of the number under that selection

The colours clash and there a too many different fonts used.

The Left hand side rounded corners on the white box don't look right.

You've got the quotation on the front page wrong, it's, "Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the human race.".

Thank you. Fixed. The other version is relatively frequently cited online, but this is a much better phrasing anyway.

The "Understanding Handlebars" page should have pictures, not just a wall of text.

Thank you. I agree. It's a mistake to have that as the first big link on page, as that's really a work in progress. As I as wrote below, the stem version - http://www.brightspoke.com/c/understanding/stems.html - is more complete and may be more in line with what you were expecting.

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