

Ask HN: Please review my startup (fantasy sports mashup) - aderaynal
http://app.pickemfirst.com/

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jsm386
Love the idea. A mobile version would be killer.

Some SEO suggestions. Turn your primary text into text. What are you: 'The
ultimate fantasy sports assistant.' That should be your H1 text. All your
subheaders should be H2s - or whatever, but not multiple H1 tags.

If you can, all that text up there should be text if possible. It will go a
long way. As a recently addicted fantasy football player, I can tell you
people are searching for words that you've turned into graphics. On a small
marketing budget nothing beats free traffic. SEO shouldn't be a focus, but it
is worth the small time investment to do the basic things - the terms NHL,
NBA, MLB, NFL or words baseball, football, basketball, hockey never appear on
your index!

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aderaynal
mobile apps are on our roadmap indeed. I'm just not sure if people research
fantasy sports on their cell phone that much... Plus Yahoo and ESPN already
have decent iPhone apps.

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jolie
Facebook Connect, anyone?

It'd eliminate the account creation hurdle _and_ allow you to get more users
involved right off the bat through discriminating sharing of data on users'
Walls/Profiles.

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teej
I hear this advice a lot and I've implemented FB Connect on dozens of sites.
But I have yet to see hard data that FB Connect increases signups. I'm not
convinced that this is the best use of effort for early startups.

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jolie
Do an A/B test... and definitely let me/us know what the results are, if you
decide to do that. Hard data on this issue would be good for the whole
community to have!

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andrewcooke
maybe the one place where you really shouldn't follow a strict grid is when
you are using overlays. the darker box that contains the video is seen as
being "on top" of the main title area. but the top of the video is aligned
with the end of the title area. that makes the lower edge of the title area
"carry across" into the overlay, which is confusing.

if you move the video down slightly then it will look more convincing /
natural / real. you might also try moving the dark area right a little, so
that the title area "sticks" out to the right. moving the entire dark area
down slightly would also give the descenders in the title text a little more
room (there's the same problem on the left below "better picks today" - are
you trying to squeeze too much in "above the fold"?). you could gain some
space by moving to a white background and losing the middle (white) layer /
frame (yeah, like everyone else - but perhaps that's why...)

to me it looks very much like you / your designer has been following "grids"
without thinking about when they make sense (although otherwise it does look
pretty good / clean - just the small details that look odd).

also, why the huge footer (ff)?

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aderaynal
great feedback, Andrew! Thanks, I will definetely make some changes to my home
page. You are correct about the "home grown" feel. I am a developer and didn't
have any budget to invest in outside help. This might change soon.

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marksbren
This looks useful for hardcore fantasy sports fans. However, I have always
felt like Fantasy Sports need a lower barrier to entry for fans, not tools to
make hardcore fantasy players better. As a casual sports fan I can definitely
see the appeal of Fantasy Sports, but whenever I enter a league with friends I
still get dominated, which is no fun. I think there could be a huge market for
simpler, social Fantasy Sports games.

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aderaynal
I agree with you. New players have no chance when facing experienced fantasy
players. This make them more likely to drop out during the season and make
everyone in the league unhappy (including the experienced players). BUT if the
beginners had tools (like Pickemfirst;) they will be able to compete right
away... I feel that Pickemfirst does lower entry barrier, at least that's waht
we had in mind when designing it.

~~~
marksbren
That is interesting and I think Pickemfirst could be useful for beginners.
However, from the video I got the sense that the product was tailored more for
the hardcore crowd (those who have multiple teams and read articles across the
web). As a beginner, I don't invest that much time and usually do my player
analysis on the provided site (ESPN, Yahoo, etc). Just my thoughts.

~~~
aderaynal
agreed. Ideally we would have more than one video. And each one would target a
specific audience. One thing is sure is that the only way to become good at
fantasy sports is to do a lot of research. Both on the provider site and on
others sites, blogs... This is obviously very time consuming.

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baran
Really like the idea. Will be a great additional to cheat sheet sites like
<http://www.fftoolbox.com> (I know the owners, which is why I use this
particular link).

I cant tell you how many hours I've spend going through Waiver Wire lists to
check and see if they are available in my leagues. Will definitely be using
this when fantasy football starts back up again!

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aderaynal
please suggest fftoolbox to contact us... Our goal is to aggregate content
from as many sources as possible.

about the time lost you lost checking waiver wire lists: that's exactly what I
experienced, and why I decided to create Pickemfirst!

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jpalmer
I like this a lot. I built a much less polished version of this for my use
last year which only supported ESPN fantasy mashed up with footballguys.com
ranking data. I didn't immediately see but are you planning on charging for
this?

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aderaynal
The video does not show it but we've started to insert ads inside our browser
extensions. We'll try to keep our product free, that's our goal.

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imp
Congrats on the launch. I saw the presentation for this at the FSTA conference
and thought it was a great demo. I'm glad to see that the add-on is as good as
it looked on stage.

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ironblunt
i see that you take our credentials for yahoo and you take us to the url to
add a player. Can you actually, post the transaction for us as well? Or are
you giving the users the chance to review the change before submitting?

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aderaynal
I don't really want to perform add/drop transaction in the add-on. The main
reason is that I don't want yahoo (or others) to complain that I am taking
page views from them. Giving the user the chance to review the transaction is
also a plus.

~~~
ironblunt
Has Yahoo actually complained? I heard that they were opening an API for their
fantasy sports products.

~~~
aderaynal
No complaints from anyone yet. but better safe than sorry. Yes the Yahoo APIs
are coming soon, but it will be a long time until the other game providers
follow...

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johns
Working on a Chrome extension?

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aderaynal
actually, yes! it will be available next week.

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jolie
Awesome! That was one thing I was going to ask for, too. =)

~~~
aderaynal
follow us on twitter @pickemfirst to et a notification when our Chrome
extension is released.

