

Ask HN: Review our Landing Page - michael_fine

We're a (pretty good) group of developers who have been working on improving our design skills. We'd love it if you could give your feedback on our design, layout and prose. www.musicmind.co Thanks.
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dgunn
Few questions not necessarily about design so feel free to not upvote. I'm
wondering why you're creating this. Who has asked for it? Really, myspace is
largely considered a failure and they are actually quite huge in this arena.
They have a ton of bands still using their service and they make money. You
can aspire to be as big as they are, but remember, they're largely considered
a failure.

Also, what's up with the gigantic team? You're building a bloated, slow
company from the ground up. If you're going after the social networks of the
world, you need a nimble team that can execute an idea within hours of
realizing it is necessary and a team this size will very quickly become
unmanageable. You already have 8 people and you're looking for two more! A
team this size makes me think you're planning to build this entire application
in a vacuum (devoid of any user input) and you think you need a lot of devs to
get it done quickly.

That's the end of my flame.

As for the design, I actually really like it. I like the general layout quite
a lot. Few recommendations: It's hard to read because of the text and you need
to clean up your english a bit. For example, "building relationships between
fans, musicians, all while allowing anyone to build a personal online library
of music." isn't a list of similar things. That's two similar things and
something completely different. Doesn't feel right when you read it. There are
a few examples of this.

Whether you're asking for advice on my first two paragraphs or not, I would
really appreciate you answering them as I am really curious. You can email me
if you don't want to answer on here. Email in the profile.

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dwynings
I think this is something that I'd like – but it's very hard to figure out
from the landing page copy. It's unclear who the site is actually for... only
try to sell to one person at a time.

The text is incredibly difficult to read, largely due to the text shadow being
set at -2px (try just 1px), but also because of the font.

The shadow of the text also isn't consistent with the shadow of the header
bar.

The icons look like they were picked from different iconsets, and also
pixelated in some cases.

The positioning of the icons isn't ideal to me, nor is only showing the
description text on hover. It actually took me awhile to realize that
information was there.

The footer links on hover also have an entirely different shadow not
consistent with the header or text.

Your site is focused on one of the coolest verticals, and yet the design is
sort of boring.

Hope this helps!

~~~
michael_fine
Thanks, I really appreciate this. The icons were a particular challenge. Do
you have any favorite icon sets?

~~~
dwynings
I prefer minimal glyphs like <http://iconsweets2.com/>

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anigbrowl
Who is this for - fans, bands, administrators? I can't tell if it's an end-
user service or a framework. If the former, how does it integrate with iTunes
or any of the myriad other music services? If the latter, how will this help
me build traffic over a competitor's offering?

Also, I hate the gray color. It looks like concrete with blue plastic tape.

On the positive side, I like the idea of social discovery via music and music
discovery via social networking, particularly the former. One way to highlight
this would be to let me search for an artist or genre and then offer contacts
with people who are already fans of that and can recommend other music in the
same genre.

Lots of luck!

~~~
michael_fine
Thanks, great constructive feedback. A point by point: It's for both fans, and
bans. The interactions will be fan to fan and band to fan.

Its a social network, not currently a framework.

It will help you build traffic because currently the only way to interact with
fans is either through face to face, or another network like facebook, which
is an imperfect medium because: a: It's not designed around music and
therefore is hard/impossible to share your playlist, or to have more
interactions with a band than simply posting on their wall.

b: Spotify is a stopgap service, which is doing kind of well on the social
front but not the artist front. For example, Lady Gaga recently took her music
off spotify after earning a grand total of: $100 dollars through streaming.

On the design, okay, I definitively see that. Do you have any colors/patterns
you'd recommend?

Thank you so much.

~~~
anigbrowl
That sounds positive, and I hope you'll keep posting progress! On the design
side, you need a pro - but I feel like start with photos and bolder fonts,
brand yourself more assertively.

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adityar
0\. I really like your background.

1\. I think all your icons should have the same color shade. I thought the +
sign was something special at first glance(functionally).

2\. The layout could be closer to how the page is traversed visually. to view
the benefits,i have to look at all four corners first. a sample ex:

< all your icons in one line with names below>

< pitch text>

<signup/call to action>

3\. I agree with dwynings that the text is hard to read due to shadow/font
choice

4\. Don't know which call to action is better: build a library or connect with
artists. having both dilutes the value proposition. Maybe some A/B testing
would be in order.

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kappaknight
Honestly, the default LaunchRock page would appeal more to me than what you
guys currently have.

<http://launchrock.com/>

Music is about passion, and this design doesn't convey any emotions at all.

Also, why are you building yet another social network for music? MySpace
failed. Apple's Ping failed miserably. Both of those have huge backers. What
makes this different? Did bands actually ask for it?

~~~
michael_fine
Wow, that's an interesting take. I'll assure you that we do have passion,
though maybe not much design sense.

~~~
kappaknight
I know coders gotta code, but I would seriously evaluate the need for such a
service before diving head first into it. You may be better off creating a
service that allows artists to embed music on the new Facebook Timeline and
charging artists for running that iFrame or something.

People really, and I mean REALLY do not want to join another social network
when there are already so many to manage. Google+ is learning this the hard
way.

------
michael_fine
Thank all of you for your comments. One questions. All of the commenters have
mentioned individual design things, which have been very helpful. But does
anyone like/dislike the basic layout of the page?

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JoshuaChe
Thanks for the feedback. We really are trying to design a great launch page.
This is not the application but we are definitely trying to attract artists,
users, and potential team members.

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michael_fine
clickable: <http://www.musicmind.co>

