Hi HN, my name is Rahul Sarathy and I built Homer (https://usehomer.app), a tool to allow creators to build more interactive digital textbooks.
Right now the software supports image based scrollytelling with a roadmap to add interactive components such as annotations, animations, backlinks, and more.
I'd recommend linking to one of the demos on your landing page. I get that you want to have a singular CTA (create an account), but it seems like there's not enough bait on the hook to get most people to create an account.
If you show people a demo or two, many more of them will consider signing up. Also, some of them might share your website with other people they know who would be interested. After seeing a demo, I'm 100x as likely to share this with professors I know.
Separately, I would suggest checking to see if the Homer reading app/platform [1] presents a trademark risk for you. They're in a similar/adjacent market (more on the K-6 side) and may have broadly-drafted trademarks. Worth checking before you build up too much goodwill in your current name!
Agreed. The description on the site itself is also quite different from the description in the comment or title here. Asking people to sign up to even look at the app, let alone try it out, is basically telling us "go away". I think you should have a demo of the editor with a basic example in it right on the home page. The home page also needs demos of the output embedded or linked.
Interesting! I looked at the demo, and found myself scrolling back and forth to see how the map/text changed. That was a valuable interaction for me.
Would love to see more demos about more popular world events.
The current demo is interesting, but its content sports an "odd" writing style. That is - until the reader realizes this is a translation from ancient Greek.
On iPhone X, Safari, with the Google option, it opens a new window to complete the login flow, but I have to manually return to my original window, where it is logged in.
I found using the editor confusing and not at all following my expectations for what an editor should do. (To start with, a displaying cursor or some sort of cue of where to start typing, would be nice.)
I would suggest spending more time polishing the writing experience because that matters a lot to writers and when it’s not there it can be an immediate turn-off. Look at tools like iA Writer or Gingko for ideas.
In the demo (https://usehomer.app/demo) on desktop, I can't scroll down enough to trigger the last paragraph "and they had to send out colonies to Ionia." Similarly, the first paragraph is never triggered and clicking on it doesn't help either.
Cant view my post without setup before username? (account created with google, write post without username, publish, click "view", nothing, click-click-click, nothing, setup username in settings, it works)
You might want to implement some kind of import/export feature.
I would have liked the idea if the front page would have linked me to more info, since I understand the idea of the front page is to generate a call to action (which I like, to tell the truth)
Perhaps this has been changed since you visited the page, but what I'm seeing is sign up with Google or email. Much less bad than having to choose between G and F.
Right now the software supports image based scrollytelling with a roadmap to add interactive components such as annotations, animations, backlinks, and more.
You can check out a demo of an interactive history book here: https://usehomer.app/demo Here's another short example of how a personal finance related book could look like: https://usehomer.app/rahul/8
If you're interested in checking out the UI used to build the demo above, feel free to sign up at https://usehomer.app/signup and create a book.