amccloud

As an artist, why would I sign up? What value do you bring? I would only sign up either if there was a big audience of listeners and potentials fans on your site or if you bring something else to the table.

If i'm a fan or listener looking to discover music, why would I sign up? Usually because you either have a wide variety of artist to browse, or you're bringing something else to the table.

The same could be said for A&Rs etc. Seems like the chicken vs. egg problem. What are you doing to attract your initial user base?

Because those using a framework do not dev directly on the server. I dev locally and then push full projects to my servers when complete.

Now if your question is why isn't there a one click install for local dev... i'm sure it exist in one form or another. For example Python has easy_install and pip. (pip install django)

Depends on your industry. A designer would have a completely different page than a programmer, marketer, or plumber.

I can't see why you shouldn't start off with a free plan available. Like you said, a free account is a great poe.

If you're having low conversion rates from free to premium accounts, you could always experiment with hiding the free account registration - http://basecamphq.com/signup - or completely removing it. Ruben Gamez has a wonderful write up of his experience on this topic http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/08/18/why-free-plans-dont-...

"impressive, isn't it!", what? You haven't shown me anything, why would I be impressed? I'm not sold on why I would want to open a shop on shoply. What do your shops even offer, e.g. can I customize? You should add a quick tour or bullet point list of important features on the front page.

Lovely design. Though your goal, the "Get started for free" button, is slightly below the fold for me.

Parsley is great for this. http://github.com/fizx/parsley For Python: http://github.com/fizx/pyparsley

There use to be a website for sharing "parselet" scripts.

I almost used a SaaS design from http://themeforest.com

Though I ended up biting the bullet in the end and making my own design.

I think http://showmedo.com/ is what you have in mind. It's not really sexy. Then again, programmers don't need sexy design.

I have tons of ideas on hand. I'll email you one or a dozen.

Have you seen http://scrapblog.com/

It's essentially what I imagine your idea is, but across many verticals, including wedding prints.

Switch to Braintree

I just had a phone interview with Zappos. I mentioned this. Thanks.