

Ask HN: Does my startup suck? - man_bear_pig

www.reppio.com<p>honest opinion&#x2F;feedback would be appreciated.
i want to know what i can do to make it better.
======
tehwebguy
Did you make 2 fake accounts to comment on this? Both accounts that commented
here were made 3 hours ago and have only commented on this post and your
duplicate here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6781847](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6781847)

~~~
minimaxir
Most likely yes. One of the two comments on this post was deleted.

This is the weirdest attempt at reverse psychology growth hacking ever.

~~~
man_bear_pig
have you had a chance to check out the site? any advice there? 7,000 sign ups
since we launched at noon but conversion ratios not that great. wondering what
i can do to improve that (i.e. where should the sign-up modal pop up)... maybe
that should be it's own thread.

~~~
minimaxir
1\. I don't believe you received 7,000 legitimate signups in 4 hours. Not even
startups which launch on TechCrunch receive that kind of engagement that
quickly.

2\. I would not recommend making another thread, since that is bordering on
spammy.

~~~
kevinrpope
He was also featured on Beta List's blast this morning, so some of the signups
are likely from that. I don't know how big their list is, so I can't say how
many signups that would account for.

~~~
man_bear_pig
beta list - i don't think helps that much. the founder told me himself not to
bump up servers for him bc it'll come over 3 days and first day not that
much.. less than 80 so far but i guess there still is an email blast coming.

there's also publications that's specific for local lifestyle magazines that's
more relevant for me. for example, chicago mag is part of modern luxury and
they have l.a. ny miami "mags" etc... you can pay to have it blasted to their
user base which is a double opt-in newsletter subscription (risky move that
worked for us bc its so targeted - chicks that like lifestyle sht). what i did
was get that blasted to approximately 150,000 people (60,000 in chicago) with
majority of reader base residing in la, ny, chicago. their average click
through rate is 2-4%. the email ad was cleverly designed with a shopping
giveaway so when people click through they come to the landing page and then
the viral coefficient kicks in to get their friends to also register to get
notified when we launch. if i had to do it again i think one can optimize the
sht out of this to make it so much better. my was a half-hack job but still
worked great.

also our current landing page was optimally designed so that it would
naturally get good upvotes on stumbleupon. we had 3k people per month hitting
our site via stumbleupon.

reppio being a social commerce player can leverage off of other social
commerce sites pushing to svpply and even tumblr to get users baited with
pictures and then come to the landing page to give us email addresses. all of
those combined plus on the ground and various other tactics led to a
significant amount of email addresses ahead of launch. that set we started to
blast.

maybe i was premature in saying that techcrunch/tech sources wouldn't be that
relevant since there are writers who write in this space and we did hundreds
of hours of work on this but to no avail (we also didn't want to hire a pr
person to run this and in hindsight i don't think i know pr that well).
however, i didn't want to leave it to chance and so i hedged all positions for
launch. now i'm sure the real hard work begins in trying to find product
market fit / see how i can get re-engagement up from my core set of users. i'm
in the business of engagement; that is the single most important variable for
my business. just ask that chick who cut a check to pinterest very early on
even thought they had a couple thousand users.

this is why i'm going to HN to get feedback from a variety of people. i know
that my demographic will be geared toward women. that's natural way for my
business to shift focus. but there is a player who has succeeded in balancing
a 60/40 split in user base in the lifestyle category. and asking men who
probably don't like shopping and seeing if there is any way i can make it cool
for you guys to want to engage with my site was the goal of this post.

------
bbissoon
Pro User Interface Designer/Hacker Here: If you want to increase engagement,
ditch the viewing of your catalog by way of sign up. There's tons of
techniques to allow your users to browse what you offer and limit purchasing
to members only.

1\. Having to sign up to see what you all had turned me off from the jump.
Just skipped it. If your product isn't a necessity - don't make registering to
use it one.

2\. Kill unnecessary fade ins and outs like on the menu structure at the top.
Give me a solid look that's as short and fast as a typical user's attention
span.

3\. As many others have stated, kill the facebook only registration. It's
there for a convenience, but making that mandatory is a buzz kill. Facebook
isn't for everyone.

When those 3 things are addressed, I'll happily create an account and survey
the rest :)

I can't comment on the usefulness because GILT and Fab and the flash sale
craze has finally killed itself, but if you market yourself to the right
hipsters, I don't see why this venture wouldn't grow in those locations. Think
Hyperbeast.

~~~
man_bear_pig
Amazing feedback. Thank you so much.

1\. social commerce sites typically have a fraction of the conversion rates to
normal e-commerce sites. e-mail re-engagement is very effective for return
visits. even a simple best of the week gets high open/click through rates. I
do agree with you right off the bat is not ideal. However, given the space I
play in, I cannot be in the etsy transaction phase to get sign ups --> see
fancy (they now have 10m users - what is your opinion of their strategy)? when
i showed the first click through page for 10 seconds , my bounce rate dropped
to 60% from 70%. do you know what i should be shooting for?

2\. great. thanks for the insight. will do.

3\. what's interesting is that i have the email sign up option but i guess
it's not clear enough. only thing is fb is great from a social user
acquisition standpoint. there's embedded virality aspects within the site such
as collection and commenting that works great in acquiring super targeted
users (their friends). 70/30 of our users opt with the facebook sign up. but
you seem to say that we should make email sign up much more prominent bc sign
up is better than no sign up. maybe like a wanelo.com look? do you know the
efficacy of having google+ / twitter as well or stick to the most effective
one on my platform and then just give email.

i'm not in the flash sale business. i'm in the discovery commerce business
(what i want to do is create a platform for local retailers to properly market
their products/stores without having to get into a groupon scenario to get
discovered. gilt/fab naturally has to move toward a marketplace concept
because of growth and market conditions: need to move bigger amount of
inventory and in a booming stock market scenario, inventory with good deals is
not that readily available.

thanks again so much for your comments and i hope to incorporate a lot of the
changes as fast as possible. btw do you know anyone who is a pro
tablet/mobile/cross browser interface guy that can make my site usable in
other states than just laptop on chrome/firefox? my guys do not have that
experience.

also if you would like please use the username: rebecca@reppio.com password:
guest to peruse the site.

your feedback has been super helpful so far.

~~~
bbissoon
GILT originally had the same approach but changed it as curiosity grew. By
locking out purchasing to registered users only - my wording was vague. Allow
users to see what you have, even if it's faded out with a box above showing
users how to gain access to what they see behind the "Registration Wall." GILT
did this best.

3\. I didn't see it. Using lazy registration is better viewed through the lens
of "What information can I use to grow." With Google+ , Twitter - what
information does it give you to help you grow?

Facebook gives you a large amount of information about the user, their
connections and more - but the network isn't as hip as it once was -
therefore, make both forms of registration equally accessible. \- Promote
connecting with Facebook after registration for those who chose not to in the
beginning. Show the benefits such as connecting with friends, showing what's
popular etc to help. Also, beware of relying on facebook data as email address
are now "@facebook.com" by default and others have unreachable college email
address. Give them the option to change their email address while keeping
their Facebook UserID intact.

I'm a designer/developer. My email is in my bio, if you need help just hit me
up.

------
epc
Seems pretty much every link which would tell me something about your
inventory/stores/whatever leads to the signup page. I don't sign up for
services which don't tell me _anything_ of value of why I should sign up for
them.

Your photo of NYC on the homepage seems to be ~18 months out of date. WTC1 is
finished as is WTC4

~~~
man_bear_pig
that is a pretty fking good observation on wtc. wow.

the value is that you get to see inventory that you can't find anywhere else
and all consolidated onto a single platform. 500 shops. all in 1 place from
ny, la, chicago.

is it better to show the inventory? or have a deeper landing page with more
info? we have 10,000 curated lifestyle products with a catalog and guide.

what is the best way to communicate that without getting to wordy?

when i had the signup modal two steps in, noone wanted to sign up bc they can
get most of their daily dose of cool items fed to them on 1 page. would it be
better to have sign up modal pop up after x time? would that help even if it
was 10 seconds?

~~~
epc
This is an extremely personal opinion but: I truly detest the trend towards
the page-obscuring modal dialog box, whether it's an account creation signup
or get-this-newsletter or whatever.

Just my $0.02.

However there's extensive UX research that the "you must create an account to
continue" step in e–commerce is the single greatest reason for shopping cart
abandonment (it's not quite apples-to-apples for your site but consider it).

As far as communicating: I just so no reason to interact with the service, it
seems like a splash page with a sign up. I get no sense of the sorts of stores
you represent, the inventory of items available. Why should I trust it? Why
should I do business here?

I'm probably not your typical user, I live in NYC and frequently travel to
Chicago so the other question in my head is: why would I use this when I
probably can walk down the street (metaphorically) and shop direct? What's the
value add to me? What do I get by adding your service as an intermediary
between me and the store?

Put another way: if I were to come across this site outside of HN commentary,
I see nothing that would cause me to interact with it. You don't have much if
any press to go by to judge reputation. Your twitter feed is mostly launch
promotions.

Your tumblr feed could be interesting but all of the images link just to your
homepage, so even if I had an account I'd have to rummage around to find the
item I just clicked on.

I went ahead and created an account and what I find are: \- yep, the tumblr
links just go to your homepage \- you have my gender but still display dresses
to me \- I clicked through both stores and items and: meh, I don't see a
strong value here to buying here.

A final comment: you don't have an SSL side set up on your site. There is zero
chance I'll "add a credit card" to a site running without SSL.

~~~
man_bear_pig
Thanks for you candid commentary here. lots to chew on.

1) you must understand where i will be getting a lot of sign ups. if it is
through press - then the press already spins the story... these people show a
VERY high conversion rate [http://www.luxandconcord.com/launching-today-
reppio-new-way-...](http://www.luxandconcord.com/launching-today-reppio-new-
way-shop-local/)

now the problem is while we may get press, there's people coming from fb or
tumblr or svppLy who get hooked on the items we feature, but don't know the
whole story. so that's an iffy crowd; SOME SIGN UP SOME DON'T. there are
techniques to solve that problem i.e. make sure click through from those
channels link to the product page that is public. then word of mouth referrals
are also super high conversion rate even with the wall right up front. but the
last one is of course the toughest: someone like you who has no idea what this
site is about. it's obvious that we have't done a good enough job in
explaining the type of product / stores and what we're about. thanks for the
insight.

2) i respectfully want to point out that you may be missing the point (or
maybe i am so you should let me know if i am). you're focused on transactions.
i'm focused on discovery and engagement. the transactions will inevitably
come. your writing implies that you are a typical male shopper / or engage in
"purposeful shopping behavior" and looking to always think about shopping in a
utilitarian form. that means you prefer using filters and the search bar. this
is in direct conflict with most of my beta users. most of them never use a
single filter or search bar. that's funny because the way women shop is for
the most part, not utility-driven at all. what you do on hacker news, they do
on my site or pinterest or on wanelo. kill time. shopping is a hobby and they
love to browse for long periods of time via tangential discovery mode. -->
pinterest, polyvore, keep, wanelo.

wanelo proves that generic categories with mixtures of composition in items
keeps engagement rates high for women population (just this month they finally
came out with actual subcategories). my goal is not for purchasing
optimization but engagement maximization. (the bad part of that focus is that
it would be hard to make you happy - inherent conflict to your utility
maximization - antithetical to most males' online shopping behavior. mens'
goal of successful shopping is to get in and get out whereas for women it's to
get in and get lost, hence why pinterest and wanelo is 80+% females... and
investors in the valley were like "wtf. why would anyone use this pinterest
thing"). ironically pinterest and wanelo both had walls to sign up for well
over the initial inflection point (albeit i admit much better transparency
than what my site provided - so maybe the solution is i allow users to get a
glimpse of the site. the way i define business = why would you come to my site
to continue to browse each and every day for cool unique lifestyle products
(similar to browsing a magazine). if you do that there are numerous way to
monetize besides transaction especially as i am focused on providing an omni-
channel solution to local shopping experience. online discovery is just the
beginning steps.

3) this brings me to "non-targeted product pictures." i can easily create a
STYLEseek DNA game and set you as a certain type of user and give you exactly
that type of items. you definitely don't have to be MIT kids to figure that
simple algo out. however, FANCY with 10m users and 600m valuation has proven
that that is not what aspirational lifstyle/tastemaker types like to do when
they browse/shop. they like to a) sift through and collect their own, b) get
lost into pages c) get introduced to new things in lifestyle/fashion that's
happening. if you ask a girl to go on styleseek after 5 min they'll say i'm
bored. if you ask a girl to use urban daddy to find bars they'll say this
sucks bc "i don't get lost" that is why refinery 29 and bustle are all geared
toward women getting lost in content that is loosely connected. at reppio, we
connect by style tags. we've curated the initial set but if you want you can
filter by style tags. otherwise, my counterargument is what's the difference
between going on styleseek vs going to my favorite niche blog or just
nordstrom.com? too much targeted discovery actually diminishes value to
certain type of shoppers (majority of women and trendsetting men).

it's becoming clearer and clearer how hard the fusion is to accomplish and how
tight in consequence the curation has to get. so perhaps you didn't like it
because our curation wasn't tight enough. if you look at wanelo and why after
wanelo already conquered social commerce for young females, keep popped up
(this founder is not stupid by any means), you can tell that the curation is
tighter on keep.

4) i would like to explain important of discovery. yes you can walk down the
street. nyc has 2,000 mens' shops by the way - 90% crap. are you sure you know
all of them? my partners and i spent over 10 years reading every fashion
lifestyle magazine bc that is what we love doing and so yes i do know most of
them. the chicago shops on our platform - they are not on michigan ave. they
are spread out all over the city but still regarded as some of the best mens'
shops in the country. there is opportunity cost of time and convenience built
into the value proposition whether it online/offline shopping.

also the vision is not 3 cities. we're rolling out SF and Miami in 3 weeks.
The goal is to aggregate all of the major cities around the world that's
amazing for local shoppping. so how would you shop at tokyo's best paper denim
jeans boutique or sao paolo's best sunglass shop? you can't. only at reppio
will you be able to. that's exclusive access. that's convenience afforded by
hyper local aggregation at a global scale. london, paris, hong kong, buenos
aires, syndey, and montreal, and all the major shopping cities are plugged
into a single platform with a single checkout process / no language
translation and integrated user experience.

5) lastly, great point on SSL. very helpful.

hope i was able to answer some questions you had about the platform. let me
know if you had any counter-points / other faults you saw with the product.
thanks!

------
Geee
Ditch that members-only bullshit.

~~~
man_bear_pig
haha. i've been thinking about that. what do you suggest i do to get users
registered?

did it really make you not sign up?

~~~
darylfritz
If your product catalog is good enough, users will sign up. Don't force
Facebook authentication either.

Also, I can't tell if your site is like Pinterest, where I flag things I'm
interested in, or like JackThreads, where the store's product selection is
nicely curated.

~~~
man_bear_pig
it's like a mixture of both. it's more like a local version of fancy. we have
to curate bc to be honest 90% of local shopping is crap. so we do the hard
work of finding only quality vendors. then from there users can collect and
share the things they like and follow stores (to get updates on new arrivals
and exclusive deals). vision is to link this browsing when bored model to geo
location mobile device so whenever you want to go shopping you can see the
shops you liked, items you liked (as well as your friends) and then be able to
go into them.

we give options for both fb and email but i guess it wasn't clear. power of fb
is that one can easily share with each other (product pics as well as comments
- if you look at our comment box - you can @mention and it'll get communicated
to that person so it reduces the friction to sharing).

thanks so much for your input. last question: did you think that the product
catalog was unique and well-balanced? what did you like or not like?

~~~
blueicelt2004
Agreed remove the member only stuff. I went to your site, clicked and found
only member stuff and that I needed to signup and bounced.

~~~
man_bear_pig
hmmm thanks for your input. if you want, you can check out the site using the
following login info: login: rebecca@reppio.com password: guest

i would still very much appreciate if you can provide your feedback in regards
to what you liked and what you didn't like about it.

------
ereckers
Browsing from an iPad is a hair pulling experience. The login is bad enogh,
but the fact that your login/signup modals simply dont work doesn't inspire
confidence. I could see never returning.

~~~
man_bear_pig
thank you for your honesty. i haven't had time to optimize for mobile /
tablet. just wanted to get it to market as soon as it was laptop friendly.

if you don't mind, i would really appreciate it if you would give it another
try on your laptop as i respect the honesty in your answer.

please use the site using the following login info- login: rebecca@reppio.com
password: guest

thanks.

------
matttheatheist
Uhhhh... clearly I'm not in your target demographic. But as someone whose
girlfriend spends hours online browsing for the latest fashion crap, I think
you might be on to something.

~~~
man_bear_pig
"latest fashion crap!" i love it. your gf must be hot then.

btw. can i ask you if you were deterred in signing up bc of the modal that
popped up? other people here seemed to be pissed. i've tried to test so many
different ways. it seems like if there is a story written about us (pr piece)
conversion skyrockets. otherwise, conversion goes down. but if i show
inventory and other parts of the site, a lot of people are lazy bc we have a
forever scroll function on the shop page so people just browse what they want
for 5 minutes and they leave.

any insight would be super helpful. thanks for the compliment!

------
davidsmith8900
\- No it doesn't suck.

~~~
man_bear_pig
thanks. what would it take to go from "not sucking" to you wanting to
recommending it to someone... what do you think is missing?

------
uchinerd
I'm not much of a shopper, but this stuff looks cool. What's the process for
inclusion on the site?

~~~
man_bear_pig
inclusion? you mean onboarding vendors? a lot of hard work and sales efforts
as well as some easier affiliate models.

