
 I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project. - natgordon
http://babyli.st
======
natgordon
I'm 8-months pregnant. When I went to create a baby registry I was pretty
disappointed with what was out there (I ended up using Amazon Universal
Wishlist). I found myself with some time on my hands waiting for baby, and
decided that I'd build a better baby registry. I partnered with a great
designer I met on forrst.com, and this is the result.

I'd love any feedback, suggestions etc.

~~~
brfox
We should team up or something... I made this baby names website a couple
years ago when my wife and I were looking for baby names. I didn't like the
sites out there too much and made this to help search. (since then I've been
so busy with the kids and main job that I have neglected my baby names site).

<http://www.babynameclusters.com/>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=370745>

~~~
theparrot
Yeah, I did the same thing. The babynamewizard was a neat ooh, aah, tech demo,
but (as of early 2008 when it was literally nothing more than a dynamically
updating prefix-based stacked line graph) useless for actually helping choose
a name. My contribution to the genre, with the goal of being helpful in
choosing a name, was: <http://nametrends.net>

~~~
brfox
Nice job! I agree about the uselessness of baby name wizard. You did a great
job making it more interesting. Are you having any luck getting visitors or
higher in organic search?

~~~
theparrot
In Jul. 08 got links from Freakonomics and Kottke which led to a little burst.
Ongoing organic traffic (I essentially haven't update the site except to keep
the data fresh each year) seems to be about 1M page views/year. Squarely in
the no profit/hobby territory, but enough that I do keep updating the data.

------
bdclimber14
I love the site, although I am certainly not your market (male, don't want
kids).

However, a month ago someone posted an almost identical concept to HN. I think
it was for wedding registries though.

Overall, great concept, attractive website, and a real need.

My only criticism relates to it being fairly obvious. What hacker hasn't
bought a wedding/baby gift and thought "Wouldn't it be cool if there was a
registry for any store?" My point is, I'm sure this has been tried hundreds of
times. So you have to ask yourself, "Why didn't those become mainstream,
despite solving an obvious need?" and figure out how yours will execute
differently. I really don't know the answer, but it has a lot to do with the
ease of saying "I'm registered at Bed Bath & Beyond" (which everyone knows)
over, "I'm registered with a new universal registry, which shows you what you
can get at any online store, it's Babyli.st BABYLI.ST"

I'd really love to know your thoughts, because this same problem applies to a
lot of different ideas where large brick & mortar stores still reign king,
despite obvious inefficiencies.

~~~
natgordon
I hear you. I think the one thing that makes this different is that I'm not
going after the universal wishlist market, just the baby registry market. When
you go to create a baby registry you're not like "oh, i need a wishlist of
items for the baby".

I'm just starting to market this with people in the pregnancy/baby space, and
so far they seem to think this is a totally original idea made just for them.

~~~
nocman
I agree with at least one thing bdclimber14 seems to be implying. babyli.st is
a 'cute' domain name, but I think it is an extremely poor choice for domain
names you want people to remember. How are you supposed to pronounce that to
someone? Baby - lee - dot - ess - tee ? (I know, that's terrible -- I can't
come up with something better). I still think it is true, for better or for
worse, that for businesses the best choice is still a good .com domain (or if
you can't get a good one, a .net domain is a not-as-good second choice).

Unfortunately for you, babylist.com is taken -- but babylist.net is available.
I know it can be hard to find an available domain in the .com realm that
closely matches what you want, but I still think it is important. I think
those business domains which have succeeded despite having a .(something-
other-than-com) domain name have done so _despite_ that disadvantage.

~~~
natgordon
I just tried to buy babylist.net and it's taken :)

So there are 2 groups of people.

1\. registrants (people having babies) - branding here is important and the
name could bite me. Let me know if you have any suggestions for other names.

2\. people buying the registrant gifts - BabyList doesn't even have search
which is a default wishlist/registry feature. I think giving someone a pretty
url slug and letting them email it/share it/link to it, is not going to be a
problem.

~~~
subpixel
The url really doesn't matter. The name does, and it's great.

My advice would be to use the proper spelling ('Babylist') in general -
especially in your html titles - and in no time you'll be #1 for the term,
regardless of spelling:

<http://bit.ly/h5fizW>

~~~
axod
> The name does, and it's great.

People will go to babylist.com. They will probably copy the concept if it
takes off.

Bad idea.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
"People" will Google "babylist". Remember that the vast majority of the people
using the web have no idea what a browser is, much less a URL. Even when they
have a URL, that ubiquitous google box is the place it gets put.

~~~
axod
...and google "babylist" returns surprise surprise babylist.co.uk

It seems silly to try and compete with established players.

~~~
subpixel
1\. there's caution, and then there's 'thinking small'

2\. the owner of the domain is a single-location brick and mortar retailer,
with no e-commerce. that would inform my thought process, were in in the OP's
shoes

------
frossie
Here's my number one feature request that wishlists never seem to support:
partial contributions. This is even more the case with baby registries, where
families might want help with high-cost items (carseats, cribs etc) but where
well-wishers are generally going to contribute something in the $20 range.

Ideally, I want to be able to contribute $20 towards that $80 carseat. If A, B
& C also contribute, the item should be sent as coming from me, A, B & C. If
only myself and A contribute, you should be given the opportunity to put in
your $40 to complete the purchase.

Just my 2 cents.

[Edit: Basically I would like the lovechild of a wishlist with something like
<http://www.chipin.com/> \- do that and you can really differentiate yourself]

~~~
2arrs2ells
I like the idea, but doing it would involve a lot of payment processing
shenanigans (not an unsolved problem by any means - i.e. kickstarter - but
definitely a significant hurdle for a weekend project).

~~~
Keyframe
Maybe WePay has an API? I haven't checked it out since it doesn't work outside
of US, so I have no use of it.

------
sanj
One followon idea. If you know the approximate birthdate of the delivery, you
can contact customers a year later suggesting first birthday present ideas.

And second birthday ideas.

And third birthday ideas.

You get the idea.

~~~
fabiandesimone
Just make sure something like this does not happen:

"9 – BabyCalc.com – If you were about to have a baby you could go on this site
and punch in some numbers then it would email you as your baby was growing and
let you know what was going on… “like 10 days until you should be able to tell
the sex of your baby!” or “Babys heart beat starts today” ect.. stuff like
that.. I paid to have the backend developed and the site was about 95%
completed (about a 1500$ investment). Then a very close friend of the family
had a miscarriage about 15 weeks into her pregnancy and told us about how she
had signed up for all these baby websites and now they keep emailing her stuff
and she breaks down and cries every time…. I just wanted no part of that…"

[http://www.shoemoney.com/2006/09/04/my-top-10-worst-ideas-
to...](http://www.shoemoney.com/2006/09/04/my-top-10-worst-ideas-to-make-
money/)

~~~
phlux
There wasnt an unsubscribe?

I understand how that can make one feel - but I dont think that focusing on
miscarriage or SIDS is the right perspective.

~~~
jat850
I think (understandably) no prospective parent, upon losing their baby for any
reason, is going to have "oh yeah, cancel those website reminders" at the
forefront of their minds. Certainly, all it would take is probably the first
email from one of them to arrive, but subscribing after the fact doesn't un-
kick you in the teeth.

~~~
phlux
Of course I agree with you - but is that chance that one of the subscribers to
your service losing their child reason enough for you to NOT create the
functions described?

That was my point. I have a 6-year old and a baby currently loading with
delivery in July. I also have a very dear friend who lost her second child to
SIDS.

We are getting the "Your baby is currently the size of an avocado" emails --
We like the service.

The fear of a customer of such service's potential pain, while real and
however small, shouldn't deter the availability of the service.

~~~
scott_s
You're thinking of it from the perspective of a single user, in which case the
chance of miscarriage is relatively small. However, if you think of it from
the perspective of the entire user base, then the likelihood that someone who
receives an avocado email suffered a miscarriage is close to 1.

------
shawnee_
It is very well done.

Somebody already posted this on your suggestion forum, but I do like the idea
of allowing people an option to offer item suggestions. Expand that idea by
also allowing people to alternately "buy" something like a gift card
(redeemable credit) for the moms; this would be helpful for the people out
there who want to buy a gift, but who don't necessarily want to swoon over
baby items. (e.g. Target gift card)

Congrats for the mom-to-be!

~~~
fleitz
This is perhaps the best comment on this post. Gift cards should convert
really well and has a very good CPA.

Perhaps also allow gifting 'cash' via paypal and run affiliate links for the
paypal signup.

------
imperialWicket
We recently experienced similar frustration with the lack of a good universal
registry mechanism for babies. While this makes sense, in the same way that
most stores try to keep all registries internal, from a consumer standpoint it
remains quite lacking.

I think it's great. Color scheme and style are very appealing and appropriate.
The one awkward point for me is the "plus any other online store" tag after
the noteworthy logos. It seems a little too much like an add-on. Maybe
something a little bigger (to draw attention to the fact that your service is
universal), with text suggesting, "BabyList registry works with any online
retailer!" and then have an "including:" or "featured" listing over your
images?

Just my two cents.

~~~
natgordon
Great feedback. It was an after-thought because the first people who looked at
it were like "oh, i can only register at those 6 stores". Thanks.

~~~
klapinat0r
Seems very, very promising. It's simple, it's easy to use and looks both nice
and cute (as in, not some website from 10 years ago without a single retouch);
in a twitter'ish way, if you know what I mean.

I have a question about the logos, as this is a subject I myself always fear
when creating a new side project: Is it safe to have other companies' logos on
ones site (as listed on yours), or is it possible to face infrightment
allegations? Thinking about issuing a .us based project, I'm a bit afraid of
somebody suing me for something like that.

Thanks, and congratulations!

~~~
natgordon
I'm kind of worried about the logos. But a cease and desist would happen
before a lawsuit.

------
mildavw
Looks great!

When we had our first child, I couldn't find an online registry that I liked,
so I scripted a rudimentary one up one night. It worked really well. My wife
loved that she could register for intangibles like "Bring us dinner", or any
gift from any store. When the baby was born, I took a lengthy paternity leave
and, like you, thought I'd build a web app for others to use the registry. I
actually took the idea to a local startup bootcamp and it was torn apart by
the instructors/angels and left to die on the boardroom floor. Too hard to
generate sufficient revenue. Here are a couple of tidbits from my experience
for you:

1\. One angel had invested in a universal registry and said it took them three
years to find any revenue at all. What they did was pivot into a wedding
registry that enabled guests to contribute to the couple's honeymoon fund.
They made money on travel agent referrals to the couple.

2\. This is a crowded market.

A lot of the comments in this thread (like mine!) note how great your site
looks. When I showed my site to the bootcamp people, I emphasized my slick
design. They essentially said, "No one gives a crap! What problem does it
solve that isn't already solved by someone else!"

I thought, "But, but, but... everyone is like me right? Tech savvy and
appreciative of good design and UX?"

Check out <http://wishpot.com>. They are a universal registry. All web 2.0
with social integration. They've got some funding
([http://www.centernetworks.com/vc-funding-docstoc-wishpot-
kaa...](http://www.centernetworks.com/vc-funding-docstoc-wishpot-kaazing)).
Been around a few years now.

Here's a competitor: <http://www.findgift.com/Services/Gift-Registry/>. It was
founded in 1997 by a couple from Georgia.

And another: <http://myregistry.com>. Second spot on Google for "gift
registry".

Now check it out:

[http://siteanalytics.compete.com/findgift.com+wishpot.com+my...](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/findgift.com+wishpot.com+myregistry.com/)

Good luck!

~~~
natgordon
Thanks :)

I was aware of a lot of that at the beginning and I have no regrets. I would
use BabyList for my own registry and for various reasons wouldn't use the
others. We'll see how it goes.

~~~
mildavw
Yep. And you know, the guys who found that honeymoon revenue stream, I think,
are doing well with it. So congrats on getting an MVP of sorts up and who
knows where it will lead!

------
capstone
I had had the same idea when I was pregnant but there were several key
problems that I concluded were unsolvable. I am both curious and skeptical as
to how/whether you address these. (I am basing my questions on an
understanding that yours is a registry and _not_ a simple a wish list, as per
your own description).

1\. How to mark items as purchased. Relying on gift givers to "reserve" and
"unreserve" items may be a step up from restaurant reservations but that's not
saying much. I wouldn't be surprised if your honor system led to close to half
of every registry ending up in a black hole of forgotten reservations.

2\. How to keep up with out-of-stock items and price changes. Baby registries
usually span months, so how do you deal with outdated information or dead
links? From my own Amazon baby registry experience, about 30% of my wish list
went MIA by the time of the actual baby shower, when most of my friends and
family made their purchases.

3\. How do you deal with bad UIs. Drawing again from my Amazon experience, a
lot of older relatives almost bought the wrong item because of all the "you
might also like" items all over the screen. I wouldn't be surprised if a large
chunk of your purchases got diverted by bad 3rd party UIs.

4\. Varied URL standards. For example, some shopping sites get product options
from user session so non-logged in URLs link to an item's default color and
size. So once you are off to a 3rd party website, there is no guarantee the
gift giver would buy the correct item.

As far as I can see you've built a wish list that you are marketing as a
registry and I am not sure if that's a good thing. The key feature of a
registry is that a retailer makes sure that the correct items get purchased
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_registry>) so I think there is a broken
promise there.

~~~
natgordon
Obviously you've thought a lot about this. Once I've had users actually use
the site as their baby registry (fingers-crossed) I'll see what the actual
percentages of the problems you've described are.

1 - when you reserve you enter your name and email address. you then get an
email (that i currently don't make you confirm, but could) that says "you have
promised to purchase X"

2 - This is an issue with in-store registries as well. I am not currently
solving this issue, but it is technically feasible to do so.

3 - I'm depending on the older relatives to give us cash for baby's college
fund :) I'm definitely not trying to solve e-commerce for an older generation.

4 - That's a good point. Hopefully this is a small percentage or items/online
stores.

Thanks for the feedback.

------
codypo
Excellent idea and very nice execution! The design is great, plus it's
incredibly easy to signup and share your registry. You're definitely on to
something here.

In terms of suggestions, I'd suggest you tweak your index page a bit. When I
landed there, I was most interested in seeing what one of these registries
looked like. I assumed that clicking the image of John and Jane's Baby List
would show me an example, but it's not currently linked. To actually find an
example, you have to think a bit and either find the text link under your
Create button or realize that the Showcase link is what you're looking for.

Also, the Vendors page needs a bit of work. I'm sure that's number 7273 on
your priority list, but I don't think it'll be very successful in engaging
vendors as is.

~~~
natgordon
Thanks for the concrete feedback. Great, great, great.

I put up the vendors page after I saw a vendor create a list of their products
with a description "create your baby registry on this site to register for our
store". At least I can contact them once we have something engaging to tell
them.

------
brc
It's a good idea. The idea isn't new but I hope your execution gives it the
push it needs to become mainstream.

On a personal note, if this does start to have success, I hope you've got
plans in place for someone else to carry the workload once your baby arrives.
I'd be putting those plans in place now so someone else is largely running
things as you enter the final weeks. It's a cliche to say 'your life will
change' - but it will change so much it would be a shame to have a new project
die because you can't devote time to it in the first couple of months of your
other more important project.

------
rajeshrajappan
If I were you , I would give the users the option to login using Facebook
Connect or Twitter. I think People doesn't like signups anymore; Its another
password to remember. Also if they are Signed-in using of one of these sites,
its more than likely they share it and spread the word. Nice work by the way.

------
jsherry
I'd add Babies R Us and buybuy Baby logos to the site. Granted you say it
works for all online retailers, those are 2 huge ones that together prob own a
good % of the market.

~~~
natgordon
Really good advice. I think of toys-r-us and babies-r-us as the same but
they're not... Thanks.

~~~
varikin
Yes, Toys-R-Us is owns Babies-R-Us. They turned a local TRU into a BRU about 5
years ago. Same place, new look and new merchandise.

------
WesleyJohnson
I didn't read through all the posts here on HN to see if this was already
report (though I did do a quick search), but there is an issue with the "View
By Store".

If I look at the example registry and goto purchased items, there is 1
purchased at "etsy.com". If expand "View By Store" and uncheck "etsy", the
item disappears as intended. However, if I uncheck "Amazon" and then recheck
"Amazon", new items show up that weren't originally there. I'm assuming
they're from the "All Items" list even though I'm still under "Purchased".

As others have said, I'm not in your target market, but I think the site is
very well down.

~~~
mattmillr
I think there's also a usability issue with this control. I would imagine a
common use case is "Show me all the items at Store X, since that's convenient
for me to drop by." Unfortunately, instead of selecting Store X, I have to
deselect all the other stores. On the demo registry, that's 5 clicks where one
should do.

------
samdelagarza
I'm shocked that this hasn't happened yet. Good job, looks great.

~~~
bdclimber14
I commented above, but the concept definitely has been attempted before, it
just hasn't become mainstream.

The real question is why, how could this site execute differently?

------
blauwbilgorgel
Do you offer a simple input field for users, where they can enter a URL?

I think the bookmarklet is a bit high threshold for some (if not most) users.
Telling them to copy+paste a website URL and enter it into a field on their
control panel is not.

For SEO your site could use a little work. Perhaps a blog about pregnancy
could help get your domain ranking for some niche related terms. You are
probably aiming for social sharing here, and organic search might be a lesser
priority. Make sharing on Facebook and Twitter a lot easier (API helps) and
visible (icons help). I might not sign up, but still like or recommend your
app.

Also adding just that extra page to convince users to sign up, or a even demo
video, can help with user engagement.

Finally I'd have a small look at making your site canonical, by rewrite or
specifying canonical:
[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-y...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-
your-canonical.html) because /about and /about/ return the same content. And
to quote W3C "Always declare the encoding of your document" (declare a meta
charset like ISO or UTF-8 in your header
<http://code.google.com/p/doctype/wiki/ArticleUtf7>).

~~~
natgordon
Thanks for the advice. I've thought the same thing about the bookmarklet. I'll
probably create chrome and ff plugins before scraping web-pages server-side.

------
martinkallstrom
Design is awesome. First impressions last.

------
mendable
Interesting idea. Also like the natural virality of the service.

If the system does not support it already, something worth considering is a
function allowing the person making the list to upload a photo of themselves
to be displayed on their wish list page.

This will re-assure the "buyers" they are on the correct page, not just some
random list of products on the internet :)

------
araneae
You might want to think about a "size" field for clothing, maybe even a drop-
down, or allow people to ask for 1 of each size or something. This is a
general complaint I have about wishlists. In my fantasy world of wishlists
there would be a number field for each size so you could ask for 1 nb and 1
6mo or something.

------
bdclimber14
Question (and I apologize if I missed it): How do you track purchases across
multiple stores to show registrant purchasers' purchases? (say that 3x fast).

I can see how it would be done with exact matches, but a lot of stores don't
carry the exact same items, in order to remove price competition. The items
may look and function the same, and be under the same brand, but they will be
distinct models.

If I list a 4 slot, extra-wide, chrome toaster on a registry under one model
number from Target, how could I know if I should buy a toaster matching that
description at WalMart without scanning the list of purchased items? The model
of one store offers the convenience of being absolutely sure there aren't any
duplicate purchases since once an item is purchase, it is removed.

I just realized a toaster is a bad example for a baby registry, but you get my
point.

~~~
natgordon
Yeah, it doesn't support that.

I think the next step would be that when you add a product to the registry
there's a checkbox like "let people buy this from other stores" which is
default checked on amazon/babys-r-us and default unchecked on etsy.com. Then
in the registry display you would see multiple offers for one product. Then
there would still be the challenge you describe but it wouldn't be a UI
problem, it would be a data challenge.

~~~
bdclimber14
Definitely a data matching challenge, and especially one stores wouldn't want
you to solve :)

~~~
craigkerstiens
Our site, which was on HN a few days back actually does the price comparison
shopping, as well as integrating with traditional registries. There was a lot
that went in under the cover of how to import and push a registry to a
traditional registry, but allows us a complete solution of showing guests the
best price. (<http://www.registrystop.com>) We're more targeted towards
wedding, but would love to do the same for baby registries.

------
lurchpop
Beautiful design. Functions well,

As mentioned a few times here, the bookmarklet is a big barrier to entry. I
think a walkthrough video would help that substantially. I can't imagine a
regular person understanding they can just browse around the web shopping and
your site can pick it up. Browser plugins are also a big entry barrier to
people who aren't very savvy.

I wonder if you linked out to sites like amazon in a frame where you persisted
a top bar around those sites as the user browsed. Might be janky though.
*edit: just noticed amazon throws a JS error when framed. damnit.

Another thought is perhaps you cobble some api+scraping stuff together and
provide the user a simple search+add to registry function inside your site.

So is your business model based on affiliate programs for all those retailers?
How are you tracking whether or not something was purchased?

------
gyanguru
Great job! Site review :- * Clean and neat! * Easy to get started <1min to
create account to a baby registry.

Feature request :- * Would love more info about the item in line. * Who is
buying what (if it is socially acceptable!) as I might team up with a friend
but not with a stranger. * Baby journals et. al.

Other helpful info for you:- * Did you knew about <http://www.thebump.com> ? *
Thebump has reading info + baby name help + videos + registry.

A question to you:- Now that you know about a site which has already solved
same problem as you, would you still pursue this idea? If yes then what will
be the thought process?

With every idea I start hacking with I tend to over research and find a
solution and then steam goes off! I want other people's experience with this
phenomenon who tend to overcome this.

------
Swoopey
I just had a baby myself (2 months ago) and would have LOVED this service
during my pregnancy. I too tried using Amazon, but it sucked. So, I ended up
going with Babies R Us, wasn't pleased with their service at all.

Blogher would be a great source for you to find testers and get solid feedback
from a group of mommies and mommies to be :). Also, one thing that I liked
about Amazon and Babies R US however, is they had list recommendations. It may
be a good idea for you to add some cool lists to you site such as "Top 10 Must
Haves for Green Moms" or somethng like that. I was clueless when registering
and appreciated the guidance of the lists.

I'll be sure to promote it here in Tokyo to the American moms! Good luck with
your pregnancy!

------
roryokane
Your site never explains what a baby registry is. The example registry doesn’t
really help, nor does your About page. There is no Wikipedia article for “baby
registry”, and Google searching “what is a baby registry” doesn’t produce
anything helpful. I gather that it’s a wishlist of some kind, but that doesn’t
explain why one would want to have one, and why it’s called a “registry”
instead of a wishlist.

I’m definitely not in the audience for this site, so maybe all parents-to-be
learn what a baby registry is from their friends or something, but it would be
nice if you explained to random internet surfers what the site is for. Just a
sentence would suffice.

~~~
SHOwnsYou
Are you American? There may be a cultural gap somewhere.

When women (or couples) are having a baby, they have a baby shower. This is a
get together to celebrate and typically the party-goers bring a gift for the
parents-to-be and their baby. Sometimes clothes or a stroller or diapers or
other baby related items.

It is similar to when someone gets married and they create a wedding registry
of household items they would like as gifts.

~~~
roryokane
Yes, there was a cultural gap. Thanks for explaining it to me. I knew there
was such a thing as a baby shower, but I didn’t know that it was customary to
create a wish-list for them, or for weddings.

------
d0m
Usually, in the about, I find "we" to be better than "I". I did that, I did
this, I'm the founder, I'm the developer, I contacted xyz, I hope you like
it..

"We" would sound more professional.. Just to be clear, I'm not saying you
should remove that friendly tone which I find great, especially for that kind
of website. However, I'm not sure if it is worth it to put so much emphasis on
_you_ as _you_ are not the goal of the website..

We were looking for "bleh". Thanks to xyz designer who join our team and help
us create this [etc.].

My 5 cents, good luck :)

(I know it's kind of ironic that I suggest being more professional when I can
hardly speak English correctly, but anyway..)

~~~
goldmab
I disagree with this. It always makes me a feel little duped when a one-person
operation uses "we".

------
cookiecaper
I hacked together a quick and dirty wedding registry when we got married. We
didn't want to favor any retail store or vendor over another. Almost nobody
used it. :( I think people are used to going to stores and using their
registry programs, especially since stores with registries will often give you
a list and/or give the registrant a scanner to go through and scan all the
items he/she wants to add.

My experience was that it doesn't work out very well, but your thing is
definitely more polished than mine, and maybe with the right promotion you can
make it click. :)

------
xteemarie
It looks great, particularly when compared to MyRegistry.com. Is there a way
to pull in existing registries from Target and Babies R Us? That seems to be
where most pregnant ladies start, and then end up desiring more from other
non-registry sites.

If I put babyli.st on my shower invite, I imagine having some extremely
confused Aunts and Grandmothers... but if I can say "Babyli.st, Target and
Babies R Us" that would be more generation friendly. They can go to Target,
and it updates on Babyli.st for my savvy friends.

~~~
lukachnina54
My husband and I loved Myregistry.com. It easily allowed us to add items from
stores like Target and Babies R Us and keep them organized online.

------
TheCondor
Auto-register people. Circle back with people after 6 months and find out how
they would have registered differently. Develop some profiles, identify the
popular products, and you can allow expecting mothers to auto-register with
the recommended items.

And buy yourself some kid-o-potamus swaddles. We never would have picked that
out but someone gave us one and that was a life saver the first 6 weeks or so.
Never would have though being all straight jacketed was the preferred way for
babies to sleep...

~~~
wesgarrison
Swaddling is fantastic. I just used an oversized sheet after I got the hang of
it.

Get a toy doll and practice. Took me a couple hours to get the hang of it.

------
freerobby
Great execution and slick-looking site. Referral programs make this an easy
product to monetize.

On the marketing front, one way to pitch it is that a decentralized registry
makes life easier for your friends, too. I am so sick of having to pay top
dollar for gifts just to get them off of a registry, when better deals can be
had elsewhere for the same products. How many extra dollars have gone to Bed,
Bath & Beyond instead of Amazon simply for that reason?

------
jdp23
Excellent site, very nicely designed.

On the privacy policy, the principles you state are excellent. It would also
help to be a little more concrete, for example under what circumstances (if
any) will you share information with partners and advertisers?

I love the idea of creating connections between vendors. Is there anything
more community-oriented than a mailing list? A LinkedIn or Facebook group for
example if most of the vendors hang out one place or another.

------
thinkingeric
I'm sorry I don't have time to go through your app more, but here some things
that occurred to me (I have 17 month old and 3 yr old, so just out of your
target):

1) Try to collect data and offer up suggestions 2) Try to get a good Facebook
presence. (etsy.com). Your target market lives on Facebook now. 3) Can you
email your registry?

Gotta go. Good luck

------
olivolive
This is a great idea, and looks very nice! Several of my friends are pregnant
right now, and they are all registered at multiple places. This would be very
convenient.

If I'm buying a gift for a friend, do I need to know their mailing address in
order to have it shipped to them? It would be amazing if this took care of
that for me.

~~~
natgordon
They can add their address to their babylist. The list itself has no privacy
controls so I'm not sure if people will enter it. And there's no integration
b/t the address they entered on the site and online stores.

------
grannyg00se
Isn't the URL unnecessarily complicated? You can't say "check out
babylist.com" you have to say "check out babylist with a dot between the i and
the s" or "it's not a dot com it's a dot st so check out babyli dot st".

It just seems to be more difficult than necessary to verbally communicate how
to reach the site.

------
shortlived
As everyone else has said, it's a really nice looking site and a great idea.

How stable are the product links you use? Do you do any type of periodic
validation?

If I click on a link to view a product, it might be nice to open that window
inside a frame (or modern equivalent) with a babyli.st "reserve" button at the
top.

~~~
natgordon
>> How stable are the product links you use? Do you do any type of periodic
validation?

Right now no.

>> If I click on a link to view a product, it might be nice to open that
window inside a frame (or modern equivalent) with a babyli.st "reserve" button
at the top.

Great idea!

~~~
shortlived
A useful feature might be to clean well known site URLs (like amazon/dp/<prod
id>). I'm paranoid about sites leaking information.

------
richcollins
You might want more instruction on how bookmarklets work. Most people have no
idea WTF a bookmarklet is.

~~~
natgordon
This is the #1 thing on the TODO. So far all sign-ups (which are not many)
have successfully added products, which has surprised me.

~~~
araneae
But less surprising given that a lot of your traffic is from HN :)

~~~
natgordon
pre-HN :) (which was a small number)

------
naqabas
Great design - looks really good at first impression. One thing I would
suggest is an About page. Something explaining your frustrations and why you
created the company. I think the fact that you were pregnant at the time puts
a really personal touch to other pregnant women.

~~~
naqabas
oh, nevermind, I didn't see the about page in my first look. Disregard my
comment :) Love the site!

------
NEPatriot
One thought I have is when clicking to create a list you ask me to sign up...
I haven't used your product yet and am not sure if I want to sign up yet. Is
there anyway you could allow people to create the list first and thus be
committed and then get their email?

------
tjansen
Idea: to differentiate your list from Amazon's universal wish list and others,
make your list prettier and more memorable than theirs. Decorate the list,
offer several themes to chose from, allow users to upload photos of themselves
and to add some text...

------
wonster
Great site. What are some of the libraries you're using for this site besides
using Ruby on Rails? It would be great if you can share on a broad level. I'm
always intrigued by the speed of development with other solutions than using
.net.

------
markentingh
Your web site looks amazing! The colors go well and the storks in the footer
is a perfect addition to the design.

As far as usability goes, the home page is very easy to understand, and you'll
definitely get a high conversion rate because of this.

------
donohoe
Minor CSS/HTML quibble - on the example list when you switch between "Show
unpurchased items" and "Show purchased items" views the browser scrollbar
makes the main content jump. Minor issue - otherwise I love the look and feel.

~~~
natgordon
That's a JS bug. Thanks for finding it.

------
benedwards
Great idea. Great looking site.

------
gabaix
UI thought: list of items in the showcase section has a lot of white space.
While this is a good practice, you may want to allow more than 4 items per
screen by reducing top & bottom white space for each item.

------
nathanh
Looks great. One point of feedback: when I first looked at the logo, I didn't
know what it was. I had to sit and think about if for a bit. Granted I'm not
your target market (male, mid 20s, married but no kids).

------
Tichy
LOLs for using "Sophie" as demonstration. We don't have one yet, but I was
told a friend already bought one for us, as it has been a favorite toy for
decades. Apparently if you have kids, you also have Sophie.

------
araneae
I'm getting an error when I try to edit an item on my list: "We're sorry, but
something went wrong. We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a
look at it shortly."

But it's inconsistent; I can edit other items.

~~~
natgordon
Thanks for letting me know. I see the error in the logs and I'll be able to
fix the root cause.

------
run4yourlives
Market the crap out of this. This is a great idea, and you can easily extend
it to weddings, etc.

You need to get those stores on board in some way as well... big risk if they
decide that you aren't "needed".

Well done!

------
btipling
Not sure how much time you expect to be able to spend on this once your baby
is due. Probably 0 hours for the next few years! Congratulations though. Also
the site looks very nice.

------
djwebb1977
Great looking site and definitely fills a void for new or expecting parents.
My wife definitely would have used this when she was pregnant last year.

Congrats on your forthcoming arrival!

------
tansey
Looks great!

One quick note would be that the logo is linking to babyli.st/index when it
could really just link to babyli.st. That way I don't have to click the Back
button twice. :)

~~~
natgordon
That makes sense. It does that because if you're logged in and have a baby
registry i just redirect you there. By clicking the logo you can get to the
landing page.

------
adiamas
This reminds me a lot of www.isbornyet.com

Similar idea, but with the variant of your own domain and the ability to
announce to friends etc, when your baby is born.

~~~
whomba
Wow, yea it does. Although I will say that this site has a much better gift
registry. Is Born Yet has a much better notification system / baby
integration. You and those guys should team up and make an awesome baby site!

------
yock
Fantastic! My wife and I just found out we're expecting and I sent this to her
immediately. It looks great, I can't wait to try it out!

------
johnnyn
Natalie, love the site - it's one of those ideas I wish I would've done! Wish
this was around when my wife was pregnant.

------
dayjah
Keep an an eye on the domain, all too often people type 'bitly . com' when I
say 'bit . ly' - do you have babylist.com?

~~~
natgordon
I know. I contacted the owner of babylist.com (it's a mirror of
babylist.co.uk) and they never got back to me.

~~~
dayjah
once all the referral cash starts flowing you can just buy it :)

In the mean time work out a way to ensure as few people as possible have to
verbally pass the domain on, think about tools which enable you to let the
interested party notify their friends that this is their list; easy things
like publishing to facebook, twitter, email, etc.

(some of these may have been done, sorry if they are - I didn't take the time
to look it over to thoroughly).

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>once all the referral cash starts flowing you can just buy it :)

Looking at the company I think you might have to pay a hefty whack to get that
domain.

I'm going to guess that they didn't have anyone there who knew what to do with
your request, was it a money offer. I think I'd make a modest money offer (no
more than a couple of hundred GBP) - people generally know what to do with an
offer of money.

Make it very clear that you want to buy babylist.com name only, that you're
not competing directly with them and are based in the US.

I don't think you want a huge offer as this will ring a bell saying "ooh, I
better check with someone if I can get more ...".

YMMV considerably, grace and peace.

------
bryanallen22
You might want to consider allowing mothers to select items from a basic list
for first time mothers.

------
narad
Awesome design. I have not heard about forrst. Will try to find someone for my
projects.

------
flexd
Cool project but your 'works with' icons are all in a big bunch here on
Chrome. :-)

~~~
natgordon
Could you send me more details about your system? I don't see any issue with
the works with icons on my Chrome. (natalie@babyli.st)

------
slowpoison
Where are you hosted? Development environment? And other similar details?

~~~
natgordon
Hosted at slicehost. It's Ruby on Rails with Passenger. Product images are
stored in S3.

------
hellweaver666
Nice - you should create a similar site for weddings at weddingli.st :D

------
geekfactor
What rev share percentage is reasonable for an arrangement like this?

------
imajes
nice job - will love to use this soon!

------
what-to-do
1\. Keep it simple. Do not add features like people ask!

2\. Your domain name sucks. Look for something better. This is impossible to
recall.

