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Amazing work - This is a very inspiring story, and I hope things continue to look up for you. Just my $.02 as a user who came to your site: The landing page is

Amazing work - This is a very inspiring story, and I hope things continue to look up for you. Just my $.02 as a user who came to your site: The landing page is still unfortunately very confusing - what I wanted to do most is to just try it out really quickly to see how it looked. But, it took me a while (after I had scrolled through to the bottom of the site) to understand that I had to click the start learning. Then, thre was the sign-up modal that showed up on the other page; From how it came up, it felt to me like I had no option but to sign-up, and I would've turned away at that point. BUT, because I had read a couple of your posts, I knew it was possible. So I tried clicking outside of it and then it worked. Then, I picked a language and then I had this list of items which were not clear to me what they were, exactly (from the blogs I knew this was the library). So, I clicked on one. And then it was beautiful. Like, no joke, the actual reading experience was... perfect. It worked... flawlessly. Your core product is very, very good! It is definitely your strongest asset. Don't hide it behind the splash page, then sign-up-modal-you-have-to-dismiss, then the library UI... get users to experience your core product as quickly as possible... that'll get 'em hooked!!!

Vivtek 11y ago
I have to agree with this. I'm a language junky myself - I live in Budapest, have lived in Germany and Puerto Rico, and last year I discovered and fell in love with Duolingo (why yes I do want to be practicing and learning six languages at once), so I'm basically 100% your target demographic. I also followed the link to the site - the "try it right now" on the Spanish email quote is a truly fantastic idea, and well-executed - but for the low-information user (i.e. me) your UI was a tad confusing. Requiring me to sign in to look at phrase translations was also off-putting, even though I can only assume this is some kind of research usage restriction.
- steveridout 11y ago
  Sign-in for phrase translations is because that's one of the limits of the free plan, you get 10 / day for free and you can upgrade to premium for unlimited. I could try to make it more seamless by imposing this limit based on cookie or IP address if they aren't signed in yet. Would love to know what else you found confusing about the UI?
  - bpicolo 11y ago
    I got the popup about translating phrases every-other word I clicked. That bit was pretty frustrating : (
    - draven 11y ago
      Same here, I got around it by first clicking the translated word a second time (to deselect it) before clicking on the next word.
  - Vivtek 11y ago
    This is one of those questions that's hard to answer, because by framing the answer you're already analyzing the UI, thereby making it less confusing. One irritant was getting the phrasal popup repeatedly. Once it's appeared, I pretty much already know I can't do that (as noted by others already). The default should be something like deselecting the first word to allow me to look at the other. Put a non-modal message somewhere obvious that says "hey, if you log in you can see phrase translations, too". I think your idea of seamlessness with a cookie is really promising. Let me see what it does, but warn me that I'm going to run into a limit. Maybe. There was no real try-it-out-now link (that I saw - I'm not looking at it now, just reporting my perceptions at the time) except for trying it out on the Spanish quote - which again, I found remarkably clever. But the result is that I wasn't entirely clear about what you were actually offering. Possibly a little picture of the main UI somewhere on the front page might help. Not sure on that - as I said, it wasn't that difficult to poke around and find things once I decided I was interested, but I normally don't notice that phase at all, if you see what I mean. Hope that helps.
domfletcher 11y ago
I very much agree with this. Maybe A/B test presenting your a simplified version of your product info in a language other than the user's browser language with a call to action to translate it. The product feels like magic in the demo linked on medium.
steveridout 11y ago
Point taken - I clearly need to work on streamlining the landing page and first run experience. Thanks for the feedback! :-)
- zimbatm 11y ago
  Is it possible to reproduce the user experience on the homepage without installing the extension ? Instead of showing an animation of a user highlighting some text, let the user highlight any text on the homepage and experience the magic.
deleted 11y ago
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Vivtek 11y ago

I have to agree with this. I'm a language junky myself - I live in Budapest, have lived in Germany and Puerto Rico, and last year I discovered and fell in love with Duolingo (why yes I do want to be practicing and learning six languages at once), so I'm basically 100% your target demographic. I also followed the link to the site - the "try it right now" on the Spanish email quote is a truly fantastic idea, and well-executed - but for the low-information user (i.e. me) your UI was a tad confusing. Requiring me to sign in to look at phrase translations was also off-putting, even though I can only assume this is some kind of research usage restriction.

steveridout 11y ago
Sign-in for phrase translations is because that's one of the limits of the free plan, you get 10 / day for free and you can upgrade to premium for unlimited. I could try to make it more seamless by imposing this limit based on cookie or IP address if they aren't signed in yet. Would love to know what else you found confusing about the UI?
- bpicolo 11y ago
  I got the popup about translating phrases every-other word I clicked. That bit was pretty frustrating : (
  - draven 11y ago
    Same here, I got around it by first clicking the translated word a second time (to deselect it) before clicking on the next word.
- Vivtek 11y ago
  This is one of those questions that's hard to answer, because by framing the answer you're already analyzing the UI, thereby making it less confusing. One irritant was getting the phrasal popup repeatedly. Once it's appeared, I pretty much already know I can't do that (as noted by others already). The default should be something like deselecting the first word to allow me to look at the other. Put a non-modal message somewhere obvious that says "hey, if you log in you can see phrase translations, too". I think your idea of seamlessness with a cookie is really promising. Let me see what it does, but warn me that I'm going to run into a limit. Maybe. There was no real try-it-out-now link (that I saw - I'm not looking at it now, just reporting my perceptions at the time) except for trying it out on the Spanish quote - which again, I found remarkably clever. But the result is that I wasn't entirely clear about what you were actually offering. Possibly a little picture of the main UI somewhere on the front page might help. Not sure on that - as I said, it wasn't that difficult to poke around and find things once I decided I was interested, but I normally don't notice that phase at all, if you see what I mean. Hope that helps.

domfletcher 11y ago

I very much agree with this. Maybe A/B test presenting your a simplified version of your product info in a language other than the user's browser language with a call to action to translate it. The product feels like magic in the demo linked on medium.

steveridout 11y ago

Point taken - I clearly need to work on streamlining the landing page and first run experience. Thanks for the feedback! :-)

zimbatm 11y ago
Is it possible to reproduce the user experience on the homepage without installing the extension ? Instead of showing an animation of a user highlighting some text, let the user highlight any text on the homepage and experience the magic.

deleted 11y ago

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