

OverTrainer.com update, thanks HN - ejs

I thought I would make this post after seeing mixmax's comment in the BreakkUp.com story post. His comment was “Thanks for the feedback. It would be great if other people that got feedback here posted their results.”<p>Well, I posted here about a site I was working on (overtrainer.com) a few months ago in this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=297054 looking for some feedback. I was pleasantly surprised at the feedback I had gotten at the time, thanks again to the people that provided comments. I figure I would give an update to how the whole thing is turning out, and some back story for those interested.<p>When I started OverTrainer.com I was employed full time as an electrical engineer, it was a hobby. I had done several other web apps that either never really made it anywhere or I sold. I wanted to get away from doing sites only for money. So I started overtrainer as an idea I had to log my workouts. The idea was simple:  design a workout plan on a PC, then log the results with a phone, or on paper. So I started plugging away at it starting earlier this year. At the time I was completing my masters thesis and working full time so it was only getting a few hours here and there.<p>Then I left my job and headed back to school to pursue a PhD (this Sept). After thinking things over very hard, I decided this return to school was not in my best interests and I would not be returning next semester. In this time I put a good amount of effort and time into overtrainer as it was enjoyable to work on.<p>So here I am unemployed but with some cash in the bank. So I have decided to do what any normal person advocates against and what the HN community embraces. I have decided not to get another job and just focus on overtrainer and some other ideas (web and electronics stuff).<p>So with this I have decided to take the advice I read often on HN and release overtrainer without really feeling its ready. There are a great many features I plan on adding, along with subscription based services that several people have been very interested in. So it will be a full time endeavor for the current time. And I would love to hear what comments people have, I know there are still rough edges so let me know! It is all still beta, but getting it out there should help me understand what is most important to focus on.<p>Since any links I put here will not be clickable I will follow this post with a link to the site (there are screen casts on the front page too).<p>I wanted to again thank the community, this site has been one of (if not the most) helpful site I frequent.
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markessien
I think your site is excellent, your idea is good, and you can easily build
this into a real business. So I'll give it to you straight, mix and match what
you like.

If you are serious about turning this into a real business, there are some
things you absolutely have to do:

1\. "Dashboard", "routines" and "workout" show me the exact same page

2\. Video is cool, but I'm not going to watch it because it's so linear. I
just want one particular feature, and I don't have the time to sit and watch
10 minutes or whatever of video to find out if you have that feature. (I don't
know how long the video really is, because it's not written till I push play,
which I don't want to do)

3\. Content is king. If you want to make a site, you need to struggle for
every single user! Getting linked from techcrunch is an utter waste of time,
because they are not your target user. Your target users searched google
40.000 times today for your site. If you had 5.000 pages of content, you'd get
a percentage of those searchers. And easy way to start is by making your
routines public

4\. All you're interested in is one user. You need to continuously examine the
flow of that one user - when he hit your page right up until when he signed
up. Do you know EXACTLY where he clicked and what he was looking for? If you
don't, it's like having a car factory, and you're not sure what steps the
assembly line goes through to product a car

5\. I have an iPhone, and your app actually sounds interesting to me. But
there are no screenshots and no description of what this iphone app could do.
So I'm going to close your site and forget about it instantly

6\. Go to delicious.com/popular/fitness for inspiration

7\. Categorize your users. I don't know the natural categories for fitness,
but maybe something like "people who want to lose weight", "people who want to
body build and are doing it regularly", "skinny guys who want become somewhat
muscular". For each category, look at your site again. Does it seem
attractive? Are this category of interest to you? Then examine each category -
which is the most profitable?

8\. Remember that any idea you have is just an idea, and you don't know if it
works. If you implement it and it works, this does not mean it was right. For
example, let's say you have the idea that green may be the best color to
encourage people to sign up. You change the color to green, and you have 5%
more sign-ups. You'll sit back and feel satisfied that your idea worked. Big
mistake, because red may have caused 50% more sign-ups. So when you have an
idea or hunch, make sure you test the alternatives, even if it seems to you
that they won't work.

That's all I got for now. Good luck!

~~~
symptic
A great example of a good use of screenshots is HN member pxlpshr's company
Salt Lick Labs ( <http://saltlicklabs.com/> ). He is only marketing the iPhone
apps, but there is a level of polish that makes you want to see more, even
though you know you don't actually need to read about peoples' horrible
relationships or to catalog your own relationship endeavors.

The gaming company Blizzard is known for their delays in releasing games, but
they are also more known for having the sharpest, most intuitive user
interfaces and game play out there. Take this ideology into consideration when
preparing a service like OverTrainer (something I'm actually interested in
using). Build it to work, but don't show it until it makes people think, "Wow,
I need to get involved n this product/service/community."

~~~
ejs
Thanks for your points, I do agree that the saltlicklabs site is very well
done graphically.

Thanks!

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mhp
I'm sure you've seen the menshealth version of this: menshealth.genesant.com

Could give you some ideas... I use it and it's $5 a month.

They don't have an iphone version which is dumb, so you clearly rock their
world there.

But they also have prebuilt routines that you can just start with. That would
be easy for you to add.

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ejs
Hi I agree that adding prebuilt routines is a big feature, it would be
included very soon.

Thanks

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Derrek
You might want to consider a new name. "Overtraining" has a very negative
connotation in fitness circles.

~~~
symptic
It depends if he wants to focus on a more broad market or specifically at
people looking to get bigger and weigh more. Overt-raining is a great way to
build muscle fast without the use of drugs, focusing on a small amount of reps
that make you over-exert yourself, lifting to "failure" on your last 2 sets.

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aschobel
Looks good. Small thing, you want to put JavaScript on the bottom of your page
so that the page gets displayed faster.

YSlow is a great tool for this, <http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/>

I also see that you are hosting prototype yourself. Why not use Google's copy
to speed things up?

<http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/>

~~~
ejs
Hmm I am not usre why I never ran across this tool (yslow). Thanks for the tip
it is very useful!

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snewe
1\. I know it is probably too late, but "overtraining" is a bad thing in
training (at least triathlon) 2\. I assume that you know about
traingpeaks.com. They focus on cardio-sports, but still should give you an
idea about business models. I use them for my Ironman workouts...they have
great templates, but limited options for the free accounts.

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ejs
OverTrainer.com - <http://overtrainer.com>

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ibsulon
Well, the bad news (for me) is that you beat me to a very similar idea that I
was planning to do. :)

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richtaur
I signed up :) Good luck!

