

Ask HN: Feedback on my product's pre-launch page. - jamesotron

Hi all.<p>My expertise lies in networking and development and not in marketing and business development. I'm probably not best suited to the life of an entrepreneur, but with the help of friends like @peterc, and keeping HN in my feeds I have learned an awful lot over the last year or so.<p>I am launching http://splinch.it/ in July.  Splinch provides automatic router and switch configuration file versioning and collaboration using git. It will also provide log file analysis for the very same allowing me to autodetect configuration changes and read in the new config.<p>I'd really love some feedback from people here about the landing page as it is now and suggestions on how to improve it. Also, any ideas on how I can reach my target audience would be great.<p>Thanks!
@jamesotron.
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elbrodeur
Hey James,

A few things:

\- Heavy use of text shadow and box shadow makes my browser chug to a halt.
Latest Chrome build on a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo with 8GB of RAM.

\- Get rid of "What is splinch?" The paragraph there is enough, and there's no
need to guide the user's eye to that.

\- Header/logo are huge... I'd consider making that section 50% of it's
current height.

\- I'd get rid of social stuff for now: Your target audience is savvy enough
to share in a smart way.

\- I'd change the button text to [ Join our mailing list and get your first
month free ] and make the color of the button distinct from your background
color. Your button should be in the foreground, and using a similar palette as
the background is visually confusing.

\- The items at the bottom look more like a footer -- typically where you'd
look for things like menu, about, etc.. -- and less like features/important
information. I'd consider bringing them up into the lighter background so that
they are visually grouped with the product

\- I'd try a little bit of a different layout. Typically the top left of the
screen is the most valuable real estate. I took a couple minutes and did this:
<http://cl.ly/3l0y1w2G2p2y1P2M1p3u>

\- The container is a bit weird.. Unfortunately chrome developer tools is
super slow with all the text, so I'm not sure quite what's going on. What I
would do is have a container with a fixed width (880px-960px) with a margin:0
auto; to center the entire page.

Great idea, and while I'm not your target audience, I think that a lot of
people will get value out of what you're building.

~~~
jamesotron
Thanks! I've already made a few of your suggested changes to the site.

------
pedalpete
You've done a good job of outlining your product, what it does, why it's
needed etc. But I'd recommend some design tweaks.

I think you should get rid of the shadows. They make it difficult to read, and
it doesn't look very professional, crisp or clean.

The white on brown isn't super easy to read. Maybe go for more contrast in
that section on the bottom.

Why is the socialize at the bottom so HUGE?? What is that? Why is it there?
Why is it detracting from the opportunity to say more important stuff about
splinch?

Your page content should have a set width. You're resizing your 'splinch
provides' text which is making it too long to read.

Give yourself a limit of 980px or something like that, and squeeze all your
content into that box. Take a look at the homepage for <http://basecamp.hq> \-
you can get some ideas for layout from sites like this.

Makes it very difficult to read.

~~~
jamesotron
Thanks.

All the text shadows or specific ones? I used it only in places where I
thought that it made the text _easier_ to read because it helps increase
contrast. I'm probably mistaken :)

I'm really surprised by people telling me to make the site fixed-width, all
the work I have done with accessibility, etc has taught me to make it scale
nicely and avoid using absolute units wherever possible. I'll modify it to
include a fixed width on my dev environment and take a look.

Sociable is the name of my company, Splinch is the product. I note that
basecamphq.com has a great big 37 signals at the bottom of the page too, but I
take your point and will reduce the size and add text explaining what it is.

------
sgentle
I am confused about "Splinch Pro" - is there going to be a non-pro version? If
not, perhaps it's worth removing that distinction.

As for your pricing, is it based on research? Corporate IT is one of those
magical environments where sometimes more is more - ie, your service won't be
taken seriously if it's priced too low.

I think it would be worth your time creating a second page with more details.
I don't know what "collaborative maintenance" means, nor "community
extendable", so having some more information would be helpful. Specifically, I
would point out the advantages of your service over the existing approaches.
Keep in mind this won't just be read by network admins, but by non-technical
managers to whom the benefits may not be immediately obvious.

~~~
jamesotron
Hi.

Thanks for your feedback. I will be adding more details about the difference
between free and pro over the next week or so. I am hoping that I can get
engineers to use splinch for their configuration management for free and then
find a reason why it is essential for them to upgrade to a Pro - ie more
devices or multiple environments (production, DR, etc). You're right, the
pricing is based entirely on my gut feel, and unfortunately my guts are wildly
oscillating between "people pay hundreds of grand for one of the existing
solutions" and "if I price it too high no one will buy it."

I was planning on waiting until I had some screenshots and maybe a screencast
available before putting too much effort into the sales side of the site but
I'm waiting for a few of the features to be a bit smoother around the edges
before I do that.

Thanks for your feedback, I'll give a few network operations managers I know a
call and see what the think about pricing.

------
jeffepp
Clickable: <http://splinch.it>

------
rikramer
Run spell-check. Your page has 'receive' spelled wrong (recieve). This will
kill you credibility-wise.

~~~
jamesotron
doh! thanks for the catch.

