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I distinctly remember seeing this on HN and, as I generally sign up for things that even remotely interest me on HN (assuming people may not have perfected thei
by bmelton 15y ago
I distinctly remember seeing this on HN and, as I generally sign up for things that even remotely interest me on HN (assuming people may not have perfected their pitches yet) I was curious as to whether or not I might have been one of the three.
Then I looked at thetaboard.com, and I knew immediately that I wasn't.
If thetaboard is a project management product, I have no idea how it does that. Compared to Basecamp, which is what I use now, and basecamp's current homepage lets me know that it has todos, documents, projects, blah blah blah. For what its worth, I don't think that basecamp's current landing page is as effective as past pages have been, but it also has a lot more brand recognition and trust than a new startup.
Compared to the thetaboard landing page, and there are literally zero details as to how it makes team collaboration better. Also, its <title> attribute says "Simple Team Collaboration [...] and Product Managment[sic]", but all I can see is "Simple Team Collaboration", which to me at least, is a different product than Product Management.
There's a screenshot that looks like Outlook, and is too small to see. It appears to work on an iPad, but we don't use iPads, so that's moot. Does it work on Android? Is that really a Samsung tablet?
Again though, the main thing is that there aren't any details. There's nothing on the home page that sells me, or even tries to even the least little bit.
In short, it disheartens me when you say that your biggest mistake is not leveraging Twitter. That's not it at all. Your biggest mistake is in having worthless copy on the home page. Your signup ratio is 3/14,000, .0002. If that were even just half of a percent, you'd have a ton more signups.
Having people tweet links to a page that isn't converting means that if every person in the world saw and clicked your link, you still wouldn't have the registration or conversion of the average message board.
- dclaysmith 15y agoI agree with everything you've said. It's really not-ready-for-prime time--I really didn't expect as much traffic as it's gotten at this point. As I'm not ready to really push signups--I haven't put much energy into copy, enumerating features, convincing people to use it. My goal is to create something that is a process/system agnostic tool that people can use for any number of uses. That sort of flexibility makes it difficult to succinctly express what the product is. When I get it to that point--I'll reread this comment and fix some of the issues you've brought up. (I have a day job so development is slow going).
- crusso 15y agoYeah, lots of us lack time to do these side projects. You'll be a great deal more effective if you constantly focus on the most important next steps in the whole process rather than the particular parts you feel you're best at or that you enjoy the most. Might I recommend that you attack the above poster's criticism as your very next tasks rather than doing more product development or blogging about what you've learned? It sounds like you have a product that you can demo and talk about. Stop working on developing it. Switch to marketing/sales. Create a landing page experience that will get conversions.
- dclaysmith 15y agoI'd argue that as a product it isn't there quite yet. There a few deal breaker features that it doesn't have yet. Given the polish of Trello and other PM/collaboration tools I think I need to do the opposite--quit blogging and work on the product. I guess when you are doing both you just have to find a balance. When I get through this push of development I'm going to launch the premium plans and focus on the points @bmelton and others have brought up (copy, conversion, landing pages, etc.)
- debacle 15y agoIt looks like a Trello-type clone, however the interface seems more simple and easy to use. I suppose the site is focusing on development more than marketing right now.
- dclaysmith 15y agoYeah, Trello came out after I began development--so not a clone so much but definitely a similar product. I won't be able to compete on price (that was the worst part of seeing Trello launch) so I'm going to focus on a few other things. Simplicity and ease of use is at the top of the list.
- debacle 15y agoI didn't see any pricing information. I'm assuming it wont be free, then?
- dclaysmith 15y agoMy goal is to create something worth charging for but there will be a free/personal plan. Whatever you can do now, you'll be able to do for free when premium plans are introduced. It would make things a lot easier (for me) if Fog Creek was charging for Trello. They are hiring developers for software they are giving away while I'm working on ThetaBoard on nights and weekends and hoping to charge... I think when I'm done there will be enough differences with Trello and I'll be able to get some paying clients on board.
- bdunn 15y agoThere will always be people who won't pay for products. These people borderline accuse you of stealing if you attempt to charge, or are obsessed with open-source, self-hosted everything. Ignore them. There are plenty of people who will gladly pay for things that benefit them. If you can build something that kills pain or makes money, you'll get paid.
- bdunn 15y ago