Comment by cschwarm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cschwarm | Hacker News Reader

Congrats, it sounds like that's a great product!

Unfortunately, it took me 14 page views and 1738 seconds to find the product tour on the page. In general, I found the organization of the different product descriptions to be confusing.

I also missed an answer to the 'How?' question. Of course, it depends on your preferred target audience but if it's smaller start-ups, it wouldn't hurt to get a bit more technical.

There's just one real negative point I could make: The site lacks credibility, in my opinion. There's neither a clear "FREE" message nor is there a "Plans and Pricing" page. I also missed a note about the status of the service. The word "solutions" has a negative connotation for me. There is no privacy policy, terms of use or 'About Us' page. Also, there's nothing with a more personal touch, no link to a blog, for example. The link to the Twitter account is hardly noticeable. Since 'Get started now' leads to a contact page, it just makes it look less trustworthy. You want me to contact you, but you don't say who you are.

If I had found the site by some other means, I would have been very warily.

Hope this helps.

Thanks a lot for your comments.

Well, the website was exactly opposite to the current one a couple of weeks back. Earlier, we had lots of technology description on the site and a very prominent product tour. After getting feedback from the target market (small-middle sized B2B and B2C publishers and marketing consultants/agencies), we realized that technology means absolutely nothing to them. In fact, it was scaring them off because of the perceived complexity of the product. So we put away all the tech stuff deep in the website and talk in simple terms on the most frequented pages.

Your point on credibility is extremely valid. I cannot agree more how important is to have a proper privacy policy and terms and conditions, especially in online advertising market. We are working on it and it should be on the site soon. Do you think making 'Get Started Now!' subdued can make it look more credible?

To be honest, I don't think you've got it simple enough. There's still a buttload of jargon for someone to wade through. Think about the customers, what benefits they get, and push those. Although, talk to prospective customers and users (do we on HN count?), maybe this is a field where jargon is simple - but the first thing I see on the site is Realtime Conversion Optimization Suite, and I don't know what that is, so I'll click away.

I'd probably replace 'Get started now' with 'See plans and pricing'. On the 'plans and pricing' page, I'd write something like:

"We're in private alpha now, so there are no pricing plans yet. But we'll try hard to make it fair and affordable! If you'd like to participate in our alpha test, get in contact with us. Here's how: ... " (Offer some incentives here, if you want to: 'FREE' during alpha, cancel any time, '3 free tips by our conversions experts that you can test right away', 'Get our FREE white paper "How to increase your conversion rate by up to 143% with behavioural targeting"'... you get the idea.)

If your private alpha/beta tests takes longer and you expect to get some traffic meanwhile, you may also like to consider a notification form at the end of the page. It may get some additional leads when you're ready to launch.

I understand that too much jargon scared off your potential target audience. On the other hand, someone has to integrate and use the service after a prospect signed-up. Why not make something like "Documentation" somewhere on the site? Maybe, instead of 'Resources'?

I agree with jlees: It may still be too much jargon.

Btw, I've just visited the page for a second time. It's funny to note that I didn't see the Twitter link on the homepage, because I immediately clicked somewhere above the fold. :)

Overall, I think you are quite close. It's just a lot of minor details that may improve the impression of the site.

Funny, we do have Product documentation and a tutorial: http://www.wingify.com/product/documentation/

Actually, looking at all the comments I think at this stage using the solution requires a lot of interaction with us - for product usage and implementation, consultation. That is good because then we are accountable for the ROI and that is bad because it is somewhat hard to scale

Wouldn't say so. Maybe, you're just trying to sell to the wrong target audience?

To be frank: Your design doesn't look 'enterprisy'. Your size (as a start-up I assume) is not 'enterprisy'. I guess you have no 'enterprisy' sales force who spend half a year negotiating with CEOs.

You will waste lot of time if you try to educate CEOs that have no clue about the web and who probably never heard of you before.

Your best prosects would be smart, web-experience guys who know what an A/B split test is -- web marketing consultants or web designers/copy writers who can install Wordpress on a server. Why not go for them?

Drop the 'enterprisy' language (solutions, resources, etc.) and give them a reseller account and maybe an affiliate program. Don't try to compete with them by offering services. Let them sell your application to their clients, integrate it and administrate it.

Just a thought. ;)

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