

My startup. Comments? - joe
http://www.scriggle-it.com/
Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?
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SwellJoe
Nice looking design. I've been involved in the music industry, and I grokked
pretty immediately what you're selling--so you might not need to take the
comments to the contrary here too seriously. It might be a bit wordy for
musicians, particularly bass players, though, so you might try to pare it down
a bit.

Any musician knows about the merch table, and they know they want the
customers name and address fast and in a format that they can read (probably a
quarter or more of paper mailing list signups are illegible and lost). They
also know they've got a laptop on the road with them. You might make it clear
that the installed software doesn't need internet access (because clubs don't
consistently have wifi). I assume that to be the case, since I know you'd have
no other reason for making an installable app.

URL is a bit long and tough. Couldn't get "scriggle.com"? Maybe try a
different name, instead of adding a special character (hyphen is hard to
remember, and scriggleit would be hard to read). Just a thought. I don't think
it'll kill you, but word of mouth will suffer--and word of mouth is how this
thing will spread. Musicians talk before and after the show with the bands
they're playing with...someone will ask, loudly because clubs are never quiet,
"Hey, what's that software you're using? scribblit? wiggleit? fizzlemit? Oh,
squiggleit! I got it. Cool, I'll go check it out when I get to the hotel
tonight." If you send stickers and cards and other logo-encrusted schwag to
your customers, they might remember to hand them out when people ask...but I
wouldn't bet on it.

~~~
joe
Awesome. Thank you for the suggestions and commentary. :)

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zach
The Scriggler is what's money. Show it off first, middle and last. Don't hide
it after a bunch of text. Put the ad copy over background images of the laptop
with the Scriggler on it. Honestly, it would be better if you had one of those
images as your header instead of the album-cover satellite art. Which is
great, and yes, it lets us know you're cool, but you're not in the satellite
business.

Also, I now have 2 in a Room stuck in my head.

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jsjenkins168
My one suggestion comes straight from the mouth of Steve Krug:

"Take out half of the words on the page. Then whatever is left, take out half
of that"

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champion
Cool idea! Couple thoughts:

\- Agree that the front page is very busy and wordy.

\- I expected that you could click on any of the icons on the left (Code,
Mail, Kit, etc.) to learn more about the offerings. "About" has more about the
products, but I usually expect About to describe the founders or contact info,
etc.

\- I would leave off all the "coming soon" features. Announce them when they
are ready.

\- Agree with the poster that news.yc isn't your target market. I'd find some
bands, buy them a coffee, have them look at your laptop & get their opinion.

\- Bonus comment ;-) Bands must get sick of trying to get their gigs listed on
all the different sites (myspace, purevolume, etc.), having a solution that
could push that info to all those different sites would be interesting part of
promoting shows.

~~~
joe
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. They're definitely appreciated.

> Bands must get sick of trying to get their gigs listed on all the different
> sites (myspace, purevolume, etc.), having a solution that could push that
> info to all those different sites would be interesting part of promoting
> shows.

In the works!

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henning
Go easy on the egregious Flash animation.

Also, realize that you're getting feedback from Paul Graham fanboys and people
who read "productivity blogs" and "startup news" websites.

~~~
wastedbrains
Yeah the flash with the moving words on the circular background actually gave
me a bit of a head ache, seizure like...

Besides that I really like the site and the product I know a band that had me
write a similar one off app in rails so they could have a laptop and have
people sign up at their merch table.

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some
I went to your website. I read it all. I have a question:

What is it about??

This is not a joke.

~~~
joe
> What is it about??

That is the kind of feedback I was looking for. One of the things we struggle
with is good information presentation.

It's a mailing list management system for bands. Or it was. Now we call it
"fan management and data collection", and we have client-side software that
lets fans sign up for bands' mailing lists at concerts. And there's more
snazzy stuff in the works that we'll be unveiling in (hopefully) a week or so.

~~~
falsestprophet
It is important to note that a pretty design (and yours is really beautiful)
isn't necessarily a good design (frankly yours is almost useless). I think
your site fails to communicate what you do quickly enough. I lost patience
with it; the only reason I lingered was considering your site as a design
exercise.

I think that you are squandering almost all of your front page. No one cares
about your news; lose it. You are not in the satellite or civil engineering
business; lose the logo graphics. No one looks in flash animations for core
messages; make it text.

As far as I can tell your business is charging bands fees to make it easier
for them to collect fan contact information and helping them contact their
fans. I think you should communicate this boldly in the center of the front
page.

I have not thought about the copywriting at all but I think you should say:

>Easily collect contact information at the merch table without an internet
connection >Contact your new fans with our email, (snail mail), and text
messaging software.

You should not distract your users with anything else.

But, I suspect it may be difficult to sell press packs for $6 a month. I think
you could make more money from charging them for snail mailings and sms
messages (and you better they aren't free). Further, I think you can
additionally monetize your users with affiliate programs for t-shirt printing,
cd pressing or whatever else bands need.

As far as I can tell, your team's core competency is graphics design. I think
you do a fantastic job and I bet a lot of bands would be willing to pay for
you to design their logos or websites or t-shirts or album covers. You can
leverage your userbase to find new clients.

I wish you the best of luck and I think you have a good shot if you change
your front page.

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dfranke
The typography and the white-on-gray color scheme hurt my eyes. The animation
is annoying: every time it changes, my attention jumps back to it and I'm
distracted from whatever else on the page I was reading. Oh, and
<grahambot>take half the text off your front page</grahambot>.

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limeade
My attention span is far too short to understand what this is.

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indie01
Nice! The only thing it lacks is a groovy favicon. Favicons can be one of the
most memorable features of a website . . . and keeping with your target
audience, I would suggest something like a music note.

Otherwise, very nice site design, and a great idea. I so want to hide behind
my code right now . . . way to make people like me feel all kinds of amateur.
:)

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Alex3917
Looks great. It's immediately obvious what it does, and the site design is
attractive and clean. One suggestion though would be to rearrange the
features. "Code" is more of an advanced feature since not every musician will
understand how to embed code into an HTML page, and so it shouldn't be the
lead item.

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staunch
Congratulations on the very nice idea and beautiful site.

Critique: The top logo area is so tall that it pushes down the rest of the
content down to half the page at lower resolutions. Definitely check it out in
1024x768 if you haven't.

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thinman
Hey, scriggleit.com designer here. Thanks for the incredible feedback,
seriously.

I agree with 95% of you.

Thanks for the complements.

Feel free to drop me an email if your interested in some of my work
bluecommons (at) gmail.com

~~~
joe
Fwiw, this guy works with me and designed the Scriggle-it site. I'm the
programmer.

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webwright
TAGLINE- Say what it does right next to the logo. Or as a headline.

SCREENSHOT - Show what it does, first thing. Show a screenshot of the data
collection screen at a table. Next to that (not in a flash sequence-- two
pics), should the admin interface, etc. Something like BlinkSale's home page,
mebbe? <http://www.blinksale.com/home>

Overall tho-- nice niche, pretty design.

Congrats!

Speaking of the logo, I'm not sure how much the "it" part of it is clear. I'd
go with a simple wordmark.

URL with a dash isn't wonderful, but I know how painful domains are.

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dottertrotter
Gotta get a domain name without a dash.

~~~
joe
We do have one. As I noted elsewhere, I linked to the dashed version for
clarity's sake, but it was probably a bad idea. The non-hyphenated one is in
"production" use.

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mattmaroon
Scriggle it. Just a little bit.

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pistoriusp
It would be interesting, and possibly profitable, to take the user information
provided to you by the bands and figure out which combination of bands would
do well in an area if they did a concert together... __shrug __

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daniel-cussen
Get a good domain name, even if you have to pay a hundreds for it.

~~~
joe
I think we have one.

~~~
daniel-cussen
The name made sense to me. I just feel your domain name is hindering word of
mouth in noisy environments. That doesn't seem like it will matter much
because you will do business directly with the bands. It could be better,
though. Look at octopart and weebly; their names are easier to spread virally.

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david
I have trouble reading the tiny text in the "what you get" boxes.

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sammyo
I know what it was about instantly, but software geeks are not your customer.
Your demographic probably needs some flash glitz but get to the point quicker.

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samb
i'd cut the initial sign-up form to the essentials.

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r7000
Have you had any luck at underground marketing/promotion?

~~~
joe
Some. Word of mouth has worked really well. We also get quite a few signups
from people who see it in use and check it out.

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twism
scriggleit.com is way better than scriggle-it.com

~~~
joe
Yeah, we own both addresses. I linked to the hyphenated address for clarity's
sake. But you're right. We use the non-hyphenated version in all email
correspondence and the like.

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portLAN
Is this a YC applicant/winner?

~~~
joe
Nope. Actually we've never taken/sought VC, and we've been working on the
thing for about a year.

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rokhayakebe
Remember that album promoters who will use your site are most likely the one
who promote their own work. So i would make that clear and loud. Instead of
spending time and $ running around with posters and Flyers, this is the one
place where they can do it all. I like the SMS thing in it. You could add
another simple feature where they can upload a piece of mp3 and distribute
their own ringtone too. Good job man.

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curi
Drop the verification emails, then drop the text about them which is the only
thing on your site I read besides the word "music".

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sweeper
Scriggler is DEFINITELY the money. Guy who wrote it must be AWESOME. >.>

