

Show HN: Bootstrapped for 11 weeks - landing page (want feedback) - iamjonlee

Grooovy is a bootstrapped app in its 11th week. We came from a non-technical background and about to launch Grooovy as our first iPhone App. Would like to get all the support and feedback we can get.<p>What would you change about the landing page? 
Thanks HN!<p>link:  www.grooovy.me
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jnfr
Change the appearance of "GROOOVY FOR IPHONE" and "WE'RE LAUNCHING SOON." at
the top there. It's a landing page which is supposed to advertise your service
and get people excited. You have a neat logo, maybe consider putting that up
instead of mimicking the Arial all-caps font you have displaying your main
content.

I actually didn't realize at first you could "scroll" from step to step ... I
thought the '>' arrow next to the e-mail input was supposed to mean "input
your e-mail, then we'll show you the rest!". People like to know what they're
signing up for before giving away personal information, right? So my
suggestion is make the steps more obvious, i.e. put them all on one page or
have a way to scroll through the steps with the e-mail input always visible so
potential users can sign up the moment they are interested!

Hope that helped and best of luck!

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mjs00
You 'buried the lead' in the html head title tag -- "Create friendships in 5
steps" isn't on any of the pages.

You might consider a condensed version that has the 5 steps on one page, with
just the headings (not all the explanation text), and the call to action.

This seems more like a guided tour for someone that wants more information,
when you've perhaps got their interest, it will be great for that on your
launched website. Even then, you might want to change "step 1" to "step 1 of
5", etc, to let them know it isn't open-ended, and maybe emphasize your 5 step
value proposition.

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iamjonlee
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!

~~~
mjs00
>I was hoping ...

OK, I can see that now -- I think as highlighted points instead of a
paragraph, this would be clearer.

And "Grooovy - Create Friendships in 5 Steps" is more impactful and piques
more interest (my opinion) as a headline than "Grooovy Lets You Meet New
Friends Comfortably at Your Own Pace."

Good luck!

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LaunchAlready
Design wise, it's very clean and clear. People know what to do when they get
there. I think it's ready, now comes the hard part. Marketing.

~~~
iamjonlee
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.

~~~
trienthusiast
Contact relevant blogs (up to you to find which ones) and offer them a reason
to post about it. A guy created an iphone app that was relevant to my website
users, contacted me offering a few free downloads for my readers. I made an
article about it (because I thought the app was cool) and then went around
forums/reddit etc telling people the first 5 who would comment on that post
would get the app for free.

It's a large numbers game... from my blog maybe 1,000 people read the article
and of those maybe 20 bought the app.. but the ones who bought it probably
recommended it to their friends etc..

contact 50 blogs, it's time better spent than twitting IMHO

~~~
iamjonlee
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?

------
benologist
It's a landing page, the only thought you should give it is what is the
fastest path to deleting it and launching.

~~~
iamjonlee
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.

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fezzl
Get a new domain name.

~~~
japhyr
Agreed, I went to groovy.me, and didn't notice the third o until I saw the
groovy.me site.

~~~
iamjonlee
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?

~~~
mjs00
This was pretty good on naming, the resources:

[http://thenextweb.com/2008/10/13/the-15-dumbest-names-for-
we...](http://thenextweb.com/2008/10/13/the-15-dumbest-names-for-
web-20-startups/0/)

I agree with the comment above on the name, I think many will simply not see
the third letter mid-word in both cases. It's probably something with visual
perception where you see what you expect, not what is there (... maybe related
to how folks miss their own typos ).

