

Should I launch my site now? - kuasha

Hello,<p>I have been following this for some times but this is my first message-<p>It seems very funny to launch after just working about 4 weekend days (~64 hours) - But I hear people insist on early launch-<p>So here it is- I am designing a small service to verify phone numbers (and use it as 2 factor authentication among other things). The service supports two factor authentication, it has a working openid provider (so 2 factor authentication enabled openid - you can grab one, its free :)  )- users can create application from developers section and using the API on their site  can verify phone number of anyone claiming to be his/ her number or do whatever with phone verification (like use it as 2FA for their own registered users)- That’s all what is done for now- Is it too early?  Shoudl I start buying a high resource server and install the service and launch this weekend or should I use this time to implement more features (I have a ton in the list) and wait for few more weeks?<p>If you suggest launching what should I do when the servers are ready to take traffic? Tell friends? Buy some ad? Start writing blogs or what?<p>You can find the service at http://auth2.com – [fully functional but can serve only a few requests per second]<p>Also what feature you think would be useful?<p>I have no idea about product launching and I appreciate your help.
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bchess
I'm with you--it's hard to put the idea of upside risk out of your mind. (What
if you tell the world and the world loves you so much your server turns into a
pile of slag?) But try to put it out of your mind anyway.

You need a landing page that helps your target customers know that they're in
the right place. That's a sentence or two that explains the problem you solve
and how you solve it. It looks like you want attention from developers. I
think a lot of developers would like to get a feel for the API without
registering. (I went to the "developers" tab thinking I might be able to give
you specific feature-related feedback.)

With that done, I'd think you don't need or want attention from the whole
world. For a first round of feedback, 5-10 like-minded friends would do fine.
If they're really friends, then they'll have encouraging words for you, but
look for common points of confusion or concern. After that it's a matter of
refining your message and finding wider and wider circles for gathering input.

~~~
kuasha
Thank you for your time and advice!

I am removing the login required annotation from developer page- And
redesigning the index page to say clearly what it does-

About the risk -You are right- I am going to get more than 10 visit per day
and most will be my friends :)- But I still want to remove it from my test
server 600 MB RAM- because the robot voice quality seems bad on this- and I
can not test and call this production server at the same time-

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wittjeff
I have been thinking about the need for something like this, but a bit more
menu-like. Suppose I am running a high-security site that needs more than 2
factors? Shouldn't that be as easy to set up as 1 or 2? So I image having a
bunch of fields, any number of which may be required or optional:

\- Real Name (if you can verify against public records that might be worth
something) \- account name \- mailing address \- home address \- phone#1
[voice? text?] \- phone#2 [voice? text?] \- question #1 \- question #2 \-
question #3 \- select an anti-spoofing graphic \- RSA key -...

Some levels of security, such as RSA key may be worth paying extra.

It would be particularly sweet if you provided a simple UI (checklist as
above) that writes working client code for me. Oneall.com does something like
this.

Overall though I have a few impressions: \- Not a good color scheme; doesn't
sell it. I say this as a non-visual person. \- Include a bundle of sample
code, and some docs with diagrams showing the flow of typical use. Yes, we can
figure it out with a minimal explanation but your business model is making it
super-easy to do what we could do on our own. \- I think your site (due to the
nature of the problem space) may benefit greatly from iterative A/B testing.
\- I like the domain / service name. I would actually remember that. I think
it would be worthwhile to partner with a good site designer.

~~~
kuasha
Created a functional sample python django project
(<https://github.com/auth2/auth2_python_django>)

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maebert
Launching early is always a good idea, and there's nothing like real
customer's feedback to help you prioritize your quadzillion ideas.

However, I strongly suggest you spend some time on copy and structure of your
landing page - without reading your post here I would have no idea what your
service had to offer me, and my motivation to whatch youtube videos on landing
pages has been rather low lately. :)

~~~
kuasha
I sincerely thank you for your sugestion- I'll add some text on the page- And
add an image instead of the video and keep the video as a javascript soft
window that will activate on click of a link-

