

Delete your homepage - emilepetrone
http://housefed.tumblr.com/post/6690059612/delete-your-homepage

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elbrodeur
I guess I'll wait to sign up until a user refers me to your website. As it
stands, I read your article and then visited your site; I was curious about
what kind of service could get away with not describing what they do.

I think relying solely on a positive k-factor is a bad customer acquisition
model. Everyone wants their business to grow virally but the reality is that
the reason turntable.fm grew quickly is _not_ because of their lack of a
homepage, it's because the service lends itself to virality.

I do, however, agree that you should focus on building an awesome thing that
people want to use, but if you're serious about building a business you should
be serious about broadening your customer acquisition channels.

~~~
emilepetrone
\+ 1 Thanks for the comment. I think the way I am building it will help it
sufficiently spread. But I guess everyone will have to wait and see about
that..

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wvenable
This assumes a certain type of user: someone who will signup first and ask
questions later. I'm not that type of user. You might think, well it's so
_easy_ to signup and play around, who wouldn't do that? But I'm actually a lot
more cautious about giving out my email and signup with yet another password.

I like to research the services and products that I'm going to use. If I like
your text, price, and screenshots then I'll signup and try your demo. If you
have no content, I better have gotten a really good referral otherwise I'm
just got going to bother.

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akulbe
Hmm... I think I disagree with this approach. This assumes $USER already knows
what your service is about, before they get to your home page. If that's true,
then no problem. If not, how do they know what they're signing up for? How do
they know what Housefed even is?

~~~
emilepetrone
My assumption is if you came to my site, you obviously were intrigued enough
by the service to visit. I want to put as little between you & that service as
possible. Without taking a signup out all together, this as close as I can
get.

~~~
dkarl
You're actually killing part of your virality, because part of how word-of-
mouth works is when you hear about something offhand. You aren't always being
directly pitched, and you don't always have a chance to press for specifics.
For example, if a service is mentioned in someone's Twitter feed, or if I hear
that one of my competitors, enemies, or heroes is using it, then I might have
no idea what it is for and no better way of finding out than going to the home
page. In that case what's standing between me and signing up is ignorance, and
you're leaving that barrier in place. There's nobody out there so similar to
me that it's worth my while to sign up for any web site they use, but there
are a lot of people out there with enough taste and intelligence that if they
use your service AND I'm interested in the same kind of service, then I'll
sign up.

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akulbe
This assumes that you're doing more marketing of your service than you are
coding of it. Otherwise, how will the general public know who you are, what
you're about?

Putting this info on the homepage almost seems like free marketing, in a
sense.

Are you assuming that if you build this "product" (housefed.com site) that
people will come? Is there a market for what you're making? It seems to me
that you'd have the greatest degree of success in finding your market _first_
, and then building a product/service to meet that need that you've already
vetted... instead of making a product and trying to convince people they want
it.

~~~
emilepetrone
It assumes the opposite - more development, less marketing. My point is I'm
not trying convince you to want it. If I do my job properly by building a
great site- my current users will do the marketing for me.

This is exactly what great restaurants do. When was the last time you saw an
ad for your favorite restaurant down the street? I have never seen an ad for
the top three restaurants I go to. Their food is awesome, and my friends told
me to check them out.

~~~
akulbe
I couldn't disagree more. Only because of the fact that those restaurants more
than likely didn't just open their doors and people came. They had to do some
marketing first. You will, as well.

If you think if you simply build the site, and people will come... I think
you're going to be sorely disappointed. Right now, you're a tiny tiny fish in
the Pacific Ocean. If you want people to come, they have to _know about you_.

Chances are the site is viable enough already. If I were you, I'd focus less
on the code, and more on the marketing efforts. :)

When you have more customers, and product is moving (so to speak), your
priorities will change, and the code will be more of a priority.

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schrototo
This is ridiculous. Due to this HN link I visited housefed.com for the first
time, having never heard of it before. I guess that was a waste of my time,
since I still have no idea what it is.

~~~
PagingCraig
I think a good homepage is a part of a good product.

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booleanCA
"And I go to the site, and I still have no idea what the hell it does. I'm
just hit with an ugly login page, and no incentive to sign up at all."

What he said. what the blog is suggesting is what Dropbox does amazingly well
(which his site does not)- Explain what the service does on the front page
with little to no navigation, show how your day could be improved by using the
product - and then split second the user thinks "mmm, maybe I'll give it a
shot" they should be registered and using your product in less than 5 seconds.
Super quick registrations with no verification emails and those damn
password/email 'type your email again' boxes will sell me every time. Hell,
let me just type in a username and email, log me in and shoot me the password
later. If it's worth using, I'll come back and use the password you sent. So
while the blog has a good point, it's just applying it to the wrong area.

~~~
cdcarter
Also worth noting that if I go to connect with facebook and hit don't allow
because I don't want your wall posts, I get faced with the weirdest rendered
page in the history of today, that simultaneously has all and none of the
info.

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huckfinnaafb
I'd like to see the stats on that.

~~~
emilepetrone
People are signing up :)

~~~
akulbe
Probably mostly/only because of curiosity (due to this HN post) and not
because they're there from hearing about your project/story/product/service
(take your pick - since as the site currently stands... it's very unclear)...

In my opinion, you don't just want numbers, for numbers sake. You want people
who are genuinely interested in what your business has to offer.

You want other foodies, who are passionate about being involved. Know what I
mean, Vern? :)

