iamjonlee

Like you, I also don't sign up for a lot of sites until people start talking about it. If I keep hearing about it, it must be good right? All I can say is that I'll probably start signing up for more of those sites now that I've realized how difficult it is to get conversions ;).

Thanks for the feedback on the tagline! I agree, it needs to be more concise. Definitely helpful, thank you.

Your examples hit the spot. We definitely need to spice up some of the copywriting on the site. Thanks for the feedback!

As a note, your b example works. I ended up googling 'Zappino' :).

Now that you mention the >, it does seem like it's connected to the email submission. We'll definitely look into making it easier to navigate or redesign it to not even have to scroll at all. Thanks for the feedback, very helpful!

The app was directly intended for users to have a need or want to meet people so it might be a little different in your scenario as you've mentioned in your first sentence. We don't have any solutions as to getting past the social anxiety of leaving the house and making friends with strangers because that's something that needs to be personally overcome by the individual. Here's an example: If John Smith considers himself overweight and would like to loose weight, he needs to mentally prepare himself to begin dieting and working out. Nothing will work if John himself refuses to make the first step. If it helps, users can also have their friends RSVP for the event and attend the event together.

We realize that the event list that we have on the first page seems pretty generic and so doesn't trigger a lot of excitement. We'll see if we can do something about that. Our next revision will probably be to get rid of the circles completely- it seems that there's just too much information right now. Thanks for the feedback!

Hi DanBC. I hope I can clarify some questions.

So, who are these people? Where do they come from? What's the "pool of people"?

These will be people around your local area that likewise have an interest in meeting up.

Wait, what? I have no idea who these other people are. Are they all just randoms that sign up to your service? How do I know they're not crazy axe-murderers? Are they taken from Facebook or some such? Do we pay to join? Do we pay to send messages? Let's say I set up and event: Do I just ping people and ask if they want to go? Or does my event get listed and other people say they'd like to turn up? What happens if Bob (a made up name) has been to an event and I HATE HIM? Can I not let him see events I create? Can I filter events Bob goes to?

We have no selection criteria when it comes to signing up for the service. Just like many of the public events you might attend such as concerts, HN meetups, bowling leagues, Reddit meetups, or even church groups are consisted of randoms that sign up for that service. As for crazy axe-murderers- there's no way to know for sure. But the same could apply to your landlord, your roommates, your local barista and even your next-door neighbor.

Users have an ability to connect via Facebook but it will be optional. It's free to join, free to send messages via the message board. Your event automatically gets listed in your local area where other people RSVP for it if they're interested in meeting you.

As of our first version, we don't plan on having any blocking or filtering features in place. Like any other service such as meetup, grubwithus, or reddit, you can't control whether or not other people show up to your event. If you have concerns about your safety and privacy, it would be best to apply common sense and notify your local law enforcement. If it is still a concern, you can choose to participate in events farther away from your local area or limit the number of people who are allowed to join your event(decreasing the chances that Bob will be one of the attendees). Bob has no way of knowing what events are created by you or what events you have joined unless Bob personally checks each and every event made in all the cities in the database.

I hope I've answered your questions and resolved your concerns. Thanks for the feedback!

I know I don't have as much experience as some of the other HN users here, but I think it's definitely possible to succeed with no experience as long as you're willing to try.

My cofounder and I have a similar story. We are building our first iPhone app with no prior design or programming experience and it's taken us 11 weeks so far. We've improved leaps and bounds and we've rewritten parts of the code over and over again if we find a better way to do it. There's bound to be some bugs here and there like all apps, but I'm confident we'll launch a solid product. We've had our first startup already where we hired freelancers and it was a flop, before we decided to finally do everything ourselves and force ourselves to learn to design and code.

I just started a blog about it today (blog.grooovy.me). Either way, I wish you good luck.

I'll go first:

The page seems a bit bland. The design is clean and clear but it doesn't have the "pop" that makes it stand out from other landing pages like the camera plus app. Maybe it needs more color to brighten up the page

Cool concept, clean interface but extremely buggy. Uploaded 3 images under 1mb and upload was broken. (I assume this as it went from 2%, 5%, 10%, 14%, 16% to download link). Downloading the attachments gives me a corrupted picture with only part of the photo showing.(another reason for the assumption that the uploading was broken). I don't like the fact that I couldn't copy and paste the link the normal way. Selecting the download link forces me to drag that link (While it's a neat feature to have, the original should be available as well.) Other than that, it's pretty awesome and I can't wait to use it!

:) I've read your blogpost early on from day one. Incredible writing.

Steelcase think chair

http://www.smartfurniture.com/products/Think-Chair.html

price range is around 699+ depending on how you customize it.

I was able to score 3 though on craigslist for 260 each so you might get luckier depending on where you are.

Thanks for the honest input! I'm not too worried about the extra o' in the domain name at this point. We're bootstrapped so we need to make sure that we're dedicating our resources towards the more critical areas for now. But i'll definitely look into it soon.

Does the domain dribbble.com also make you want to enter dribble.com at first glance?

Point well made. I'll see if I'm able to contact blogs and see if they would be interested in writing an article about it when the beta's out. I'll offer early testing of the beta so if they do decide to talk about it, they can. I'll start gathering a list. Thank you for the great feedback- very helpful! What's your blog about? Any links?

Do you not like it just because of the name itself, or are you also having a problem with the o's? If you don't mind, constructive feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!

It might only be a landing page- but I still find it important to generate as leads as possible. We're the type of app that requires a decent number of registrants in order to be fully utilized.

Launchingwise, we're already working hard on that. This landing page will also convert to become the product page after the app launches so feedback would still be appreciated.

Marketing is much harder than I ever imagined. Not even sure where to begin as tweeting and sharing all day hasn't really done much.

Fantastic advice. Never thought about the step 1 of 5 at all.

I was hoping that the "Join and Create Events" paragraph would have sufficed for the condensed version with all 5 steps. I was running out of space in the design as I decided to provide support for 1024x768 browsers.

I'll make a note of the html title tag- nice catch. Thanks for your feedback!

That's a terribly stupid mistake on my part. Typo in the domain name. Thanks for the suggestions, those are the ones I'm already currently trying.

Yes! I feel the same way- there are a lot of good posts that never make it to the top 200. I think time really plays an issue here. If the post is submitted at non-peak hours, not enough people read it, causing the post to be forgotten about somewhere far in the HN archive.

I'll definitely take a look at the indentation. Anyone else feel the same way? I'll be running a lot of A/B tests to figure out what exactly works out as this is my first real landing page. Thanks for the feedback!

I'm sorry for the duplicate submission if anyone sees it. I figured that this post would be well on his way to oblivion (was ranked beyond the top 200 posts on HN) so I made a similar submission to this one but now it's back towards the top again. Either way, thank you HN!

I don't think I even hit past 90 on most days..

Thank you for taking extra time to check it out on your laptop! I apologize for the slight problems you had on Android so far. Since this app is bootstrapped by my cofounder and I, we don't have enough resources out of working on the app to create a completely mobile-friendly site yet. I know it's no excuse, but we're working on it! Thank you for letting us know though- we plan on buying an android sometime in the future to test with.

Thank you! I'm glad you think it's good. It's not criticism, but definitely helpful. I'd take compliments any day ;). It's my first time learning design since 11 weeks ago so didn't think it would turn out as well as it did.

Text aligning on blue stripe is left for me on my firefox, chrome and IE. Could you specify which content and browser where it's not left? Much appreciated!

Spot on on the bullets, will look into making that more user friendly.

Thanks! I'm no designer, so I had to put a lot of hardwork in to make up for it. It's great to know someone admires it!

Thanks! I'll make a note of this and see what I can do. Maybe I'll add a slight background glow behind the phone or something.

One lesson I learned form my hunt for logo designers was to hire by hour. Maybe coincidental, but I tend to hire freelance designers from Europe at hourly rates of $30-$70. While I did encounter mix results, all the design work was still considered very high quality.

For 5 basic concepts, it ran me around 7 hours, after which adding another 5 hours for coloring, textures, shadow, typography comes out to be around $500-$700. For 3 "unique" logo and business card concepts, it seems too good to be true.

Sorry about your bad experience, better luck next time!

Your feedback was really helpful!

I'll look into the social media links and rearrange the layout a little better.

I'm relatively new at photoshop so didn't know how to tilt the image the same way as the iphone template. I'll just use a normal iphone image instead of trying to tilt it.

I've changed the tagline to "Connecting at your own pace" by your recommendation-thanks

I agree that the link to the blog article shouldn't be the main convo on this page. I'll change it out and clarify what the app really does.

Thanks! I've changed the tagline to "Connecting at your own pace". I'll fix up the rest of the landing page shortly. Thanks for your feedback!

I'm only giving one away per user so to make it fair :) shoot me and email at jon@grooovy.me and i'll email you the ticket later tonight. Have fun!