

Released my startup MVP Outpost, begging for feedback - appscript
http://outpostp2p.com/#####

======
jonathanjaeger
Your "About" section is more clear than the descriptions on your homepage.
Perhaps you can find a better way to convey your value proposition. Your
homepage doesn't tell the average user what you do very clearly. Below are
some small copy issues.

"Ride, Rent, and experience a new way to travel." -Either capitalize the word
"experience" or lower-case the word "rent". Right now it's not consistent in
punctuation, in my opinion.

"With Outpost you can check out many person to person services into one spot!"
-change "into" to "in".

"Pick a ride share to get to your destination or just walk there." -You need a
better way to convey the value of your site in these small descriptions on the
homepage.

~~~
mrtbld
I would add: “person to person services” → “person-to-person services”.

------
relix
So other than the link snafu (maybe quickly code something up to redirect
/##### to / in javascript), this seems pretty cool.

I clicked "What's around me?" and immediately I liked the feedback
"locating...", felt really snappy for some reason. The geolocation was good
(within 200m which is plently for what you're selling). The results were
interesting ("Oh there's someone offering a ride to Finland, how cool").

Only at that point did I figure out what you were selling, so you definitely
need to work on your copy on the landing page ("Ride, rent, and experience a
new way to travel" doesn't cut it, more like "Find rides for sales and
appartements for rent from multiple sources near you").

I'm not familiar with the space, so I can't comment on how good the idea is
(i.e. what your competition is), but it sounds like a good idea and nice
execution.

A suggestion: maybe make it automatically locate me, and show something like 5
results on the landing page already, without the map but just in a nice list,
to "show" what you're offering instead of telling through copy, and with a
link "See overview" or "See more" or something.

An interface thingy: The flash messages in the bottom right didn't catch my
eye at all until I scanned the map and saw them. My eyes were in the top left
so they don't even appear in my peripheral vision to catch my attention

------
mmv
I like your home page design and color scheme, but:

\- the centering is broken: your information source sites are a bit to the
right compared with the 3 steps

\- you give me a search box and hint a location, but I don't really know for
what... I guessed it should be a destination for a travel but was pretty
unsure

\- I read P2P as "peer to peer", and I can bet others will too

When I searched for Lisbon, Portugal, I got a ton of results about people that
are planning on going there from Madrid, Spain, and offering rides. Clicking
on them sends me off from Lisbon to Madrid and got me lost for a while. You
should remove the rides from the searches and rework them completely,
otherwise they'll provide too much noise and confusion.

Searching for things with spaces presents a lot of labels with the space
encoded as "%20".

Overall I like the idea, good work.

------
dpolaske
Information and search is usually easier and more comprehensive on the
original site. With that said, there has to be a good reason for me to visit
an aggregation service to view that information. For me this site doesn't do
it for me. All your doing for me (in the housing category) is plotting Airbnb
& 9Flats on a map, which since there are only 2 sites doesn't add a ton of
value for me. I would rather go directly to Airbnb to find potential housing
because more owner information and more powerful search options.

Again, I think aggregation adds true value to consumers when you save them
from visiting 10+ websites, but not from 2 or 3.

------
enjo
I'm finding the locations for rides to be very confusing. I searched for
"Denver, CO" and there are a number of people offering rides.

It says "Los Angeles -> Denver", which would seem to mean it starts in Los
Angeles and ends in Denver? I don't think so, but that's certainly how I read
it.

Also I want to just click anywhere on the item (in the map view) and have it
take me to the details. I find getting to the details link itself to be kind
of frusturating.

Overall I think it's really cool. Love the map interface. Seems very polished
already.

------
PedroCandeias
Really like the What's Around Me button. It's a good way to immediately show
people what outpost can do for them. Before clicking it I wasn't sure, as the
homepage copy is a bit vague.

~~~
relix
It's definitely one of the selling points. Op should make it a bigger button
and put it front and center.

------
mgoeppner
Route numbers and street names are missing from the map -- you just see the
outline of where the names and numbers should be [1].

Cool concept, but I'm not exactly sure what your service is trying to do from
just a quick glance at the home page; as corylehey said, you may want to
change your call to action to something that describes the main benefits.

[1] <http://i.imgur.com/wr3FGSY.png>

------
appscript
Sorry, that's the link, I can't seem to edit the post:
<http://outpostp2p.com/>

------
dannyp32
You linked to <http://outpostp2p.com/#####> which shows nothing. I clicked on
the outpost logo and it took me to the home page, but I don't think people
will bother giving you feedback if you link them to a blank page.

------
hluska
You might want to look into how you filter the tourism results. I'm from
Regina, Canada and the tourism tab gives me tours in Rome, Boston and
Bucharest - they seem to grab every listing that contains the keyword
'Regina'...

------
rmason
You've told me it's a new way to travel and that it's easy. But you haven't
told me what it does and why I would want to use it. Lacking that it's pretty
easy for me to hit the backspace key without ever trying it.

------
masukomi
I agree with the points about the "about" screen being much more clear as to
what you do than the front page, and that the styling on the maps is
horrible... really REALLY don't like looking at it.

------
flipchart
It would be great to display the prices in the local currency, especially when
selecting the "What's around me" link. Otherwise just having a currency
selection option would be good

------
eitland
Feedback: With nocript I got no info on the screen at all until I allowed
parsecdn.

Maybe leave some kind of <noscript> thingy?

------
mikescoffield
I like it! I though it had a simple, smooth, and intuitive interface. I tried
my local zip code.

What is your business model?

~~~
wololo_
Ideally we want to take a small fee per transaction we send to affiliates and
not from the user (so the user always pays what he's offered)

------
corylehey
that link appends four #### to the URL which seems like it causes it to break.

Also after looking at your landing page I have no clue what the service does.
You say "Ride, Rent, and experience a new way to travel." This doesn't tell me
much, other than it does something cool, why not just tell me the #1 benefit
to using this service?

~~~
Meai
I was confused as well. I typed "Austria" since that's the country that I live
in. I pressed "enter" too quickly and it brought me to Austin, Texas. It also
only has a single match in Austria, which is Hallstatt. I'll tell you exactly
how I experienced the website: I entered text, it opened google maps, it
showed me destinations on the left and when I click on one it shows me a
price. That's where I didn't know how to proceed. What was that price? What
does it include? How pay? Which of these routes matter to me? I don't have any
idea which one is good or bad, which one is relevant to me. Is this site
supposed to be for general holiday planning, or hitchhiking or what?

------
captn3m0
This is what I get with Ghostery installed: <http://imgur.com/RBRny9r>

------
appscript
I added a quick fix in javascript for the /##### error. Thanks to relix for
giving me the idea.

------
natch
Comes up completely blank for me. All white, no error, no nothing.

------
walesmd
I have no clue what any of this shit on the front page means.

------
adventured
Smart concept, I really like the premise. Two negative points.

First, once it found results for my location, it just sat there with the
loading circlet spinning perpetually. Some other locations didn't have that
problem (eg San Francisco results loaded after a short while).

Second, the Google maps styling is absolutely horrendous. It's so bad that I'd
never use your service because the maps are terrible to visually consume. It
reminds me of the flat design style (for GMaps) that someone posted here
recently.

Also, figure out a way to get yourself a better domain (as challenging and
expensive as that is these days).

Outpost.com used to be Cyberian Outpost, back in the early dotcom days. Fry's
owns it now, but they're not using it and there's little traffic still flowing
to the domain (and they're probably never going to use it). Maybe they'd sell
it.

------
rokhayakebe
So this is a Kayak for P2P services. In one place I can book a room on ABB, a
car with RideJoy, and maybe a tour with Vayable. Genius.

