
We lost a customer. This is how we found out - wickedcoolmatt
http://blog.ramen.is/design/we-lost-a-customer-this-is-how-we-found-out/
======
RyanZAG
It's pretty common on a lot of recent startup landing pages. Great looking
design, nice little touches like animation - but very little detail on how the
product actually works. The assumption is that someone curious is going to
sign up to find out. Lots of people won't do this and will just bounce. I
think every landing page should try to answer these questions:

    
    
      What is your product?
      Why would I use your product?
      How does your product work?
      What does your product cost? 
        ("Still working on it" is fine, but say so)
      What countries are you available in?

~~~
danielweber
Many times I see a link on HN and click on it, and they act like everyone
knows exactly what is going on.

It gives me a nagging feeling that I am completely out of touch with HN, too.

The way moderators edit headlines doesn't help this at all.

~~~
mhewett
This happens almost 100% of the time with product updates. You are taken to a
page that says "We have released version 3.1.5 of Gizmo. Download it here."
with not even a hint of what Gizmo is.

~~~
dredmorbius
Updates and bugreports are two communications I specifically had in mind when
writing my "Tell me what the fuck it is EVERY GODDAMNED TIME YOU COMMUNICATE
ABOUT THE PRODUCT" above. Major peeve.

------
rowyourboat
"I failed to explain the benefits Ramen can provide."

No, I think those came across quite clearly. He wants to know how it works,
i.e. what is required of him, and what will the process of getting funded look
like. That's a difference.

~~~
wickedcoolmatt
Our wording is a little off there. Appreciate the feedback, and you're totally
right.

~~~
namenotrequired
Do you have anything that does explain how it works? I'm very interested and
would love to learn about it.

~~~
wickedcoolmatt
We have outline of how Ramen works here (we actually funded Ramen on Ramen):
[https://ramen.is/projects/ramen](https://ramen.is/projects/ramen)

We're currently working to boil all that down and bring it right out in front
to fix this problem. Basically what happened here was this version of the home
page was somewhere between a teaser and functional homepage. We've been
working on so many other parts of the business, we let one of the most
important pages slip. We're hoping to fix this with our new design coming out
soon.

~~~
tommorris
Here's a free stab at some copy:

"Get funding for your software project from early adopters who care. Ramen
lets you raise money from users who help test and develop your product."

Your homepage lacks clear instructions for either startup projects or
investor/users. Have a clear look at the frontpage of ramen.is from the
perspective of a user, then look at sites like YouTube, Soundcloud, BBC
iPlayer, Kickstater and so on. These are all trying to seduce people in to
look at things that are new and fresh.

Then look at it from the perspective of the startup entrepreneur. Business
users want to see both clear instructions on how to use the site and what
they'll get out of it, as well as seeing activity of existing projects, case
studies of companies that have used it before.

You aren't doing that good at providing either.

Just some constructive criticism, I hope. Interesting project.

------
jaredandrews
Interesting comment on the bottom of the article:

    
    
      This random user is a prick.
    
      1. Why didn’t he scroll to the bottom of the page? I noticed an “about us” link in the footer.
    
      2. When I’m curious about companies, I look at their blogs. Sometimes they use a blog CMS system. Why didn’t this guy check the links in the header, like the link to your blog?
    
      3. This guy has a baby babbling in the background. Maybe he was distracted?
    
    

We do a lot of user testing at work and it has really opened my eyes. This
sort of attitude really bums me out though. You can sit around all day and
complain about customer incompetence. Meanwhile they are out using a different
app/product and you still aren't making any money/conversions.

~~~
angilly
FWIW, I thought for a while about whether or not to approve that comment due
to it's flamewar-factor, but I approved it so I could write this response:

"Ehhh I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a “prick”. Yeah he certainly could
have gone through our blog and read up on Ramen. He could have clicked on our
project page and watched our video. I think the point of Peek, though, is that
you can’t tell a visitor that their first impression (and/or their first
confusion) is _wrong_. I think he brings up a lot of completely valid points
about our homepage. We haven’t put enough energy into making our homepage
something that succinctly describes what we do. He called us out on it. I give
him kudos."

~~~
shakethemonkey
Those projects appear to be your clients. Clicking on a project video is
absolutely the wrong answer.

Why isn't "Fundraising Platform" in the left column clickable? That should
lead to expository text, but it isn't even a link.

------
adrianhoward
Everybody seems to be missing the biggest lesson from this. No matter how
obvious you think the problems with the OPs site was you should...

DO USABILITY TESTING

Often.

Because if those problems were obvious to the OP - they would have fixed them.
By definition. I guarantee that everybody here has there own blind spots with
there own application or service.

I've been doing usability tests for nearly twenty years now - and the number
of times we've found nothing that can be improved can be counted on
approximately no hands.

Use online services like peek (there are many, many others too). Do them
yourselves. Do them regularly. If I could pick only one thing to help folk
improve their product - usability testing would be it. Even above customer
interviewing. Nothing beats watching your customers try and fail to use your
product.

Here's three books to get you started:

* Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-it-yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems, Steve Krug - Does exactly what it says on the tin. Short sharp guide to getting you started.

* Handbook of Usability Testing: Howto Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests, Jeffrey Rubin & Dana Chisnell - The last book but in much more depth. The first edition of this was my bible when I started doing usability testing.

* Remote Research, Nate Bolt & Tony Tulathimutte - A great guide to how to approach getting the most out of remote usability testing services like peek. The tools are a few years out of date now. The advice isn't.

Seriously. If you're not already doing usability tests go spend an hour or two
reading 'Rocket Surgery Made Easy' and then go test your product with some
actual human beings. You'll thank me.

~~~
userium
I agree with the importance of doing usability testing. I made this usability
checklist ([http://userium.com/](http://userium.com/)), which can be used to
catch common usability problems before user testing. By fixing obvious
usability problems you get more meaningful feedback from users.

------
dredmorbius
So much this.

A few bits I've noticed over 25+ years in the industry:

• Tell me what your product is. What it does, where it works, how it does it,
what it requires. Is it a physical product (or is it shipped in one), an
interactive application, a Web service, a programming language / tool?

• Tell me what the fuck it is EVERY GODDAMNED TIME YOU COMMUNICATE ABOUT THE
PRODUCT. It doesn't have to be long or detailed, you can link to your detailed
description in the communication. But your press releases, emails, Tweets,
blog posts, marketing collateral, etc., are going to get passed around, word-
of-mouthed, and/or pulled out of drawers (or browser history / searches) for
weeks, months, and years to come. Make them work for you.

• The Economist's practice of briefly introducing _any_ individual, no matter
how famous or obscure, is a wonderful practice of microcontent
contextualization. "Using the Economist house style offers an elegant
alternative, wherein virtually all people and organizations are identified
explicitly, no matter how prominent. For example, you might see 'Google, a
search giant', 'GE, an American conglomerate', or 'Tim Cook, boss of Apple'."
[http://redd.it/1x8yky](http://redd.it/1x8yky)

• Tell me how to try it out. Preferably for 60-90 days (a 30 day cycle can go
_far_ too fast. I've been very, very impressed with New Relic's "use it for
free, convert upmarket for additional features" model, and it's apparently
worked well for them. For small accounts, their cost of sales is effectively
nil (and for large accounts, COS is _always_ a PITA). But for those large
accounts, you've got a proven track record with the prospect, and they really
know what they're getting.

• Put your tech docs front and center. As a technical lead / director, my
questions are "how the fuck do I make this thing work", and if you can't tell
me

• It's been observed many times that those who have the best appreciation for
how a product works are those who use it directly, and secondly, those who
either service it or support those using it. John Sealy Brown's _The Social
Life of Information_ addresses this with both Xerox copier repairmen and
support staff. Use this to your advantage two ways: let these people share and
collaborate, even if informally For the repairmen, this was a morning coffee
break turned out to be a hugely valuable cross-training and troubleshooting
feature. For phone support, after an "expert system" and changes in technology
separating phone reps from technicians, researchers noted two reps who
consistently provided good advice: one was a veteran from the earlier stage,
the other a recent hire who sat across from the other and learned from her.
Similarly, user support groups (mailing lists, Web forums, Usenet groups), in
which _users interact and share knowledge with one another directly_ (Hacker
News would be an instance) are often (though not always) far more useful than
direct tech support.

• Provide clear pricing information. This has been noted from Jacob Nielsen on
forward as the information people are most interested in.

• Make damned sure that whatever process or workflow you've created online
_works_ , and for as many possible end-user environments as possible. Keeping
interfaces as simple and legible as possible is a huge bonus.

• Remove distractions from your transactional webpages. Once someone's homed
in on a product, focus on that, though you may mention alternatives or (truly
useful) related products. Every additional piece of information on the screen
is an opportunity to confuse and lose the sale. I've been restyling many
websites simply for my own use (1000+), and simply _removing distracting
elements_ produces a _far_ more productive environment.

• Ensure your pages are legible. Backgrounds should be light, foregrounds
light (and where, with extreme reluctance, you invert these, separation should
be clear). DO NOT SCALE FONTS IN PX. On far, far too many devices this renders
as unreadable, particularly from older (e.g., more senior w/in the
organization) readers. Grey-on-grey is just cause to fire whomever suggested
or required it. See ContrastRebellion:
[http://www.contrastrebellion.com/](http://www.contrastrebellion.com/)

• Don't organize your website according to internal corporate structures. Your
website is an _outward_ facing tool, and should address the needs of _users_ ,
not of internal departments. Lenovo's laptop site organization would be highly
typical of this: I want a Linux-capable, large-display, full-keyboard,
trackpoint device. The rest I generally don't give a shit about, and its
product line confuses me _every fucking goddamned time_ I try to buy something
there (usually every 2-3 years). I'm _not_ a sufficiently frequent customer
that I keep up with every last change, but I've spent thousands of dollars on
IBM/Lenovo products, as an individual (hundreds of thousands to millions as an
enterprise customer).

And of course: test all of this, don't simply take my word for it. But yes,
I've walked from far, far, far too many product pages, from free software
projects to Fortune 10 companies to edgy app devs.

Life's too fucking short for that shit.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
> Tell me what your product is.

I'm glad you led with that one, because I'm constantly asking that very
question. Note to website designers: DON'T MAKE ME USE WIKIPEDIA TO FIGURE OUT
WTF THE COMPANY DOES!

Unfortunately, quite a few companies aren't even in Wikipedia (of course they
should get themselves added). That's the point when I simply give up. Life is
too short.

~~~
untog
_Unfortunately, quite a few companies aren 't even in Wikipedia (of course
they should get themselves added)._

It's not as simple as that. You have to meet notability requirements or your
page is just going to get deleted.

~~~
greggman
The fact that some companies aren't in Wikipedia is irrelevant. The point was
you shouldn't have to go to Wikipedia to find out.

------
Malarkey73
Jeez. That is like sooooo many modern websites.

What is this site? What is thingumajig.io? Its a webby thingumajig? Sign up?
Sign up for what? Oh it's a website for web something.

nice font.

~~~
tormeh
Haha, spot on :)

------
webwright
If you do this, it's best to do it in clusters of 5-10 testers in your target
demographic and try to identify _patterns_. It's dangerous to say "UserX is
confused, so all of our users must be confused." No matter how perfect your
design, it will be confusing/frustrating for someone.

~~~
sgarman
Totally agree. You don't need 100's just 5-10 like you said. It will be really
obvious of the issues because many people will suffer them same ones.

------
jrochkind1
I had not known about the Peek service, that's pretty awesome.

Does anyone know of anything like that, but that's _not_ random, where I could
actually send volunteers from my current users to my sight, and have their
clicks and voice recorded and sent to me? Is there such a business that works
well at a reasonable price?

~~~
robby1066
usertesting.com has this in it's main product (which Peek seems to be just a
scaled back, lead-generation version of), but I think supplying your own
testers is one of their enterprise features, which is more expensive than the
normal service.

------
mauricio-OH
Great post but it sounds a lot like trying to sell that peek service. Would've
been great to see what actions were taken to improve the site rather than wait
to the new design launch.

------
harrystone
I don't do web design but that Peek thing just looks brutal to me. It's
probably a good tool though, I'd just hate to have it pointed at my work.

~~~
lumens
Ha, funny - as a startup founder
([https://www.mightyspring.com](https://www.mightyspring.com)), I immediately
went and signed our site up for a review from Peek. Seemed insanely valuable
to me.

~~~
keithpeter
Post the video link here if you decide to go for publicly accessible feedback.

I _think_ I can understand what your company is about fairly easily just
glancing at the first page.

------
wickedcoolmatt
Hey y'all thanks so much for the support!

UserTesting (the folks behind Peek) shot us over a promo code to get the first
100 of you to the front of the line if you want to give it a whirl:
ramenreader

~~~
carrotleads
not sure where I should enter the promocode.

Have submitted my site carrotleads.com for a test though. It free anyway, so
what was the promo code for???

------
rurban
Come on, this guy is not everything. The first link I clicked was at the
bottom left: Project which brought me to
[https://ramen.is/projects/ramen](https://ramen.is/projects/ramen) which
explains everything in detail this guy did not find and searched for. Overall,
looks a fancy new kickstarter site. I care about projects not kickstarter per
se, so I like the idea how the projects are presented in ramen.

~~~
vacri
Primary information should not be put in a low-contrast footer, the place
where you usually put things like the privacy declaration, or which company
made the theme, or which CMS is 'powering' the site. The footer is a blind
spot which plenty of people mentally block out because it's usually full of
meaningless information.

~~~
sliverstorm
Suffice to say, my eyeballs literally do not process the footer unless:

1) I am looking for "Contact Us"

2) I _need_ some piece of information so badly I am willing to dig around the
website for 10+ minutes, after which I will start looking at the footer, at
the HTML (in case there are collapsed menus), searching Google with
"site:www.thesite.com"... This level of dedication is reserved for financial
institutions, and government.

~~~
vacri
You've nailed it for me, too. "About Us" and analogues for contact
information, or true desperation :)

------
joshvm
The information may be there, but if the user has to scroll to see it then
that's poor UX design. I did wonder why he didn't scroll to the bottom, but
still "About Us" doesn't scream "how the service works" to me. And indeed, if
you click on the link you get taken to a page of smiling founders.

I got the impression that the designers were trying to be clever by
integrating the tutorial into an actual project page - and going to the Ramen
project explains a lot about the process. However, that's intuition from using
the web a lot, not a logical step. It's the same kind of intuition that gamers
have when crawling a dungeon and you know that taking the short route will
almost certainly be a Bad Idea.

This backfires in another way: I also wonder if there are only four projects
on the site? Can I search for more? It makes me think that the projects there
are just dummy pages to demonstrate how the site works.

~~~
angilly
Regarding the last line: Ramen just launched a few weeks ago, so the projects
you see are all we have right now. Good feedback on the scarcity giving you
the impression that they are dummy pages. They aren't. Ramen, Benefit &
Velocity Kick are very real projects. Great feedback though. We need to get
more projects into the system asap. Thank you!

PS. If you wanna submit a project:
[https://ramen.is/project_submissions/new](https://ramen.is/project_submissions/new)
:-D

------
htk
Great post, the video is as simple as is enlightening.

What I like the most about it is that the user is genuinely interested in the
service. But he acts natural and realizes he doesn't see an easy way to get
more info on it.

He could try to read the blog, or search for small print, but that's not what
the average user is going to do.

I'm going to try Peek soon!

------
carrotleads
Well their main problem was they had a 2 sided market and catered to both half
heartedly.

Dropbox caters to a single market and the message is more simple for them.

A "How it works" with subsection for both target market would help.

multiple sided products always have trouble selling effective messages and
would like to see examples if you guys know of any.

I am doing a redesign of my site
[http://carrotleads.com](http://carrotleads.com) on this topic. Was targeted
at companies earlier and now I will have trouble converting network'rs. I can
see the problem, but solutions need more deep thought. Working on it.

Submitted site to Peek. Want to see how it turns out.

~~~
bjeanes
Did you get back a video from Peek? Was it useful? I'm curious about your
experience.

~~~
carrotleads
I did get the test back and I have already made a few changes to make
discovery of companies easier.

See test link below, turnaround of less than 12 hrs.
[http://peek.usertesting.com/result/969590386309](http://peek.usertesting.com/result/969590386309)

Still my site will undergo a proper redesign with 2 seperate workflow's. Well
that how my thinking is for now.

------
fallinghawks
There's this one link at the very bottom of the page, which the Peek user kept
missing, and would be the first one I would go to if I couldn't find what I
was looking for: Product/Project Page. That appears to be the page that would
have answered many of his questions and kept him as a customer. That should
totally be at the top of the page.

However, even that's a little confusing because it is itself a project -- so a
user might wonder what the heck they are looking at, site info or some other
project?

------
bpodgursky
It's also odd that there's no "browse all projects" or "find projects to back"
option, only a few hand-curated options. No discovery options at all.

~~~
angilly
One of the Ramen founders here. We just launched a few weeks ago, so that's
actually all we got right now. Feel free to submit a project if you'd like :)

------
tdicola
Are user videos from Peek supposed to be public? I would be a little creeped
out if I was the random user from this study and suddenly found my video
plastered in a blog post.

~~~
calvino
Yes, the testers are paid and understand/agree that the videos can be shared
publicly.

------
arnklint
Another solution to _this_ problem might be to get your site reviewed by a
conversion specialist or using some sort of heuristic review. In many cases my
experience is that a combination of more qualitative methods such as user
testing combined and heuristic evaluations and heatmaps and with Google
Analytics solves _most_ of the issues you have with your site.

------
nedwin
While you're getting all this traffic you should definitely put a couple of
calls to action to check out your product.

Even just linking the word "Ramen" in the blog post would be a great start to
get more conversions happening.

------
beejiu
The 5 W's is something taught to all school kids at an early age -- who, what,
where, when, why (and sometimes, how). Your tagline should address all of
these in one simple sentence.

~~~
wanderingstan
The "where" is often totally forgotten as well. Sometimes it still matters if
a company is in US vs Europe, South America or New Zealand!

------
throwaway112233
There is a website where I can put a website and watch people's reactions?

....well, I have an idea _what kind of websites_ I will try to submit...

------
uptown
They've got three well known investors. How'd one of them not catch this
problem?

------
lingben
sorry for the tangent but I remember seeing a usability site where you could
get usability testing for your site by 'pay it forward' by taking other sites
for a test drive

anyone know what I'm referring to?

thanks!

~~~
robby1066
Were you thinking of usabilityhub.com? They have a couple of different
products for 'micro-usability' tests ('look at this page for 5 seconds and
list things you remember' and similar). And I remember them using that model.
You could pay, or be a tester to earn credit for your own tests.

------
borski
Just got our peek for
[https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com](https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com)

It was surprisingly good! No negative feedback, and only positive feedback,
though the tester wasn't our target market.

------
Siecje
Where do the testers for peek come from if it is free?

~~~
calvino
UserTesting pays members of their plan to take the test in the hopes some
people find it useful enough to try out their enterprise offerings.

------
jusben1369
You lost a prospect not a customer. Big difference.

------
JanezStupar
I like how a guy records a video in which he talks about how he has no idea
what they are about.

Then they write a blog post about it. Submit it to HN, get to the front page,
get lots of potential customers...

And there is still no information on their site about who they are and how it
works...

~~~
xur17
Yeah, I actually ran into the exact same problem earlier today when I was
looking at the Ramen site. It sounded interesting, and I was considering
submitting my site to it, but I wasn't (and still am not) clear on how it
actually works. Is it for fundraising like Kickstarter, or can I use it to
promote an existing site? I went as far as creating an account, but I gave up
when it required me to use my Linkedin account (even after I signed up with an
email address).

~~~
aferreira
> gave up when it required me to use my Linkedin account

Exactly.

------
edem
I __LOVE __this post. I actually did not read it since it contained something
which I miss in __every other __blog: a _TL;DR_ section. +1!!!

~~~
edem
I don't understand the downvotes. Did everybody just had a bad day or
completely lost their minds?

