

 Is my splash page lame? - supermanwillfly
http://www.kapuno.com

======
mbyrne
yes, mostly lame. The owl is cute. Why would someone sign up if they have no
idea what you are doing or offering? What kind of person do you think would
sign up? Is that kind of person your business target? Slowly spoon-feeding
info to the reader with animation is disrespectful. If you have something to
say, put it out there so it can be read as quickly as the reader is able, or
at least clicked through. Under the logo you have text in four different
colors and weights. If everything is a different style, how do you know what
to focus on? Is grab an invite a link? Compress. How about" Enter your email
to get an invite" Do people really need a green example of what an email
address is? the animated text is amusing, are you going to be a comedy site? I
question the premise of this splash page. If anything, you should post a blog
with some of the posts from your personal page about the process of putting
together the site and go from there. I just don't get the "I am doing
something so secret I can't tell you, but give me your email" concept. Go for
the blog of your progress, at least that has something. Best of luck on the
project.

~~~
supermanwillfly
I appreciate the candid feedback. I'm not going to say, "I know," although a
lot of what you've been saying was bothering me as I put it together.

Re: collecting email - that's not actually the goal. However, I'm collecting
WAY more than I would if I put the logo and a general tag-line.

The goal was to just let people have some experience with the brand. Be it
amusing or fun. I was hoping to garner a smile. I actually didn't think it
would be considered disrespectful, and I question whether you'd feel the same
if you stumbled upon it via my Twitter, etc.

Nevertheless, I really do appreciate the time you took to write up your
thoughts and appreciate your well wishes.

------
cracell
Ditch the animation and present the teaser clearly in a way people can control
their consumption of. Most users want to quickly skim over new pages to
determine if it interests them.

With your animation I spent 20 seconds staring and still have no idea what
your product is even related to. Leaving me frustrated and completely
uninterested.

------
jeffmould
Looks nice, but I don't like having to wait through the description text.
Also, there really isn't much of a description of what it is or what it does.
Without knowing anything about it I wouldn't give my e-mail address to you.
The link to the Facebook page doesn't work yet so I would take it off until it
is functioning.

~~~
supermanwillfly
thanks for the feedback. fixed the FB link to my fan-filled page.

Re: the length, I realize it's a tease.

Re: trusting us with your email. I get where you're coming from. If I put a
static page I knew I had little to no chance. I've got a few people and I'd
assume it's because the conversation intrigued them. I haven't reached out so,
I guess I'm in the "better than nothing" ship.

------
xd
Very nice, I like that you opted for HTML5 instead of Flash. However I've no
idea what you do or are trying to offer so why would I sign up for an invite?
For all I know it may be an invite to spam.

~~~
supermanwillfly
Yes, that's the dilemma. I didn't want to have a blank page, but I'm not ready
to chat about it -- well, unless you are liquid and want to share some wealth!
Thanks for the feedback.

------
jaskerr
You need to get to the point _much_ more quickly. The animation violates the
"10 second" rule-of-thumb for attention span.
(<http://www.useit.com/papers/responsetime.html>)

The graphics and layout are nicely done ... but I'm not sure to what end. (I
realize that's part of the problem of announcing stealth projects.)

The layout will have to change if the teaser is presented all at once.

------
gokhan
I guess it was loading slow for me, so all there was a grayed bird and email
box. I waited and waited, than the animation started. I was about to leave.

Then, the text was fast (for me, at least) and I was totally distracted by the
animation and missed lots of text in the beginning.

Now I'm under the impression that it's social network site for pets, and I
guess I misread it, but won't refresh to find out :)

Please don't do this.

------
moge
Yes. I see where you were going but having watched the full animation I still
don't know what you are teasing. I glanced away right as the text said
something about social network-something-something. Get to the point. If this
wasn't a request for feedback I would have bailed almost instantly. solution.
Keep the 'fun' speech bubble on the right but put another on the right with
the <140 character tease text.

~~~
supermanwillfly
Appreciate the honest remarks. Problem with my HN post is that I thought my
comment (below) was the description for the link :) Probably gives you a
better idea of where I was coming from. Quite a noob I am!

------
aeurielesn
The email box seems unnecessary big and the example email can be place inside
the box.

Regarding the submit button, you did not put too much effort on it considering
all the work you did in the html5 animation.

More importantly, I will not give you my email without knowing _what_ it is.

~~~
jaysonelliot
A little usability feedback - the large email box can be a good thing, what we
call a good Fitt's Law object.

Placing text inside of input fields lowers the response rate, and creates
issues when the user looks to see if they entered the correct type of input,
yet the instructional label has been replaced by their own text.

~~~
supermanwillfly
Thanks for the tips. Always nice when you have two contradictory statements in
the same thread. Because your feedback requires me to do no work, you're
definitely my hero.

------
ahemphill
Cute mascot. I initially didn't see the text because I opened the page in a
new tab, so I would definitely make something a little more static unless it's
triggered by a user action. (Even then, try to provide a bit more incentive to
sign up.)

~~~
aeurielesn
I would not have seen the animation unless I read you. I opened in a new tab
too and by the time I got there everything was over.

------
jaysonelliot
Objects the user is meant to interact with (like an input field) should not
move once they appear.

I'd say just tell people what it is and let them decide if they want to sign
up. The animation has zero information value.

------
pohl
I confess I was hoping that this was one of those domains like
<http://islostarepeat.com/> where the answer is always "Yes".

~~~
supermanwillfly
Hahaha. That's brilliant. I'm questioning whether my business can succeed in
such a thrilling competitive market.

What a great affiliate play :)

------
mjterave
Yes. Why have animated text? I'm bored by the time it shows up. I see a sign
in bar, but don't even know why the hell I would be interested in this.

------
bennyk
I have to agree it's a good start but I am still not sure what it is you are
doing

~~~
supermanwillfly
I guess that begs the question, what should you put up when your business is
stealth! The hope was people would enjoy the experience enough to "trust" us
with the email and a follow-up down the road.

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it.

~~~
ewjordan
_I guess that begs the question, what should you put up when your business is
stealth!_

You should be working on your product instead of futzing around with a
placeholder web site that you don't actually intend anyone to see.

If you actually want to gauge customer interest and collect e-mails, then put
some content on that page and worry about the presentation (and I actually
think that's a really good idea). As things stand, if you won't give any real
info on the page then you're just dicking around, and it won't make a bit of
difference to your business whether you put up the site you have now, a text
only "Under Construction" page, or a trollface with a hand drawn penis chewing
on its ear. Even any e-mails that you _do_ collect are essentially worthless
because they're not targeted at all to your product, so any signups just
indicate that some people will inexplicably sign up for anything at all...

~~~
supermanwillfly
Agree with your sentiment which is why I only allowed an afternoon to put it
together and out. My reason for posting was, honestly to see if people
actually felt it reflected so poorly that I should replace it with the
standard hand-drawn peni chewing on ear.

Re: focusing on the actual product. This was the first "hello world" deployed
with the dev-environment setup. SCM, scripts, and all that BS that's annoying
to setup after you haven't done it in years was where the majority of the time
was spent. I'm pretty sad how long it took me to setup everything.

Re: random emails, great point. The majority of the people who sign up are
people I speak to directly or are in my network.

You may be interested to know that today I've only had about 36 non-garbage
looking sign-ups and seems like around ~630 page views. So about 5% of views
today resulted in a sign up.

Appreciate the time/effort/honesty.

------
csandoval
nice logo, nice design, good domain, witty text. Now you have to deliver ;)
You have to do more to get my email, though.

~~~
supermanwillfly
Appreciate the support. Your email isn't the goal -- just wanted you to have a
decent experience.

------
supermanwillfly
Hi HN. I'm working on a new project, but wanted to have a splash page to send
people. I wanted it to be a bit different -- hopefully more engaging. The
other key limit was I refused to spend more than an afternoon putting it
together and getting it live as I never expected too many folks to randomly
stumble and go to it.

Feedback, suggestions, slander are all welcome. I realize folks have strong
opinions. Happy Sunday.

