10 ms·

We lost a customer. This is how we found out

373 points by wickedcoolmatt 13y ago

rowyourboat 13y ago
"I failed to explain the benefits Ramen can provide." No, I think those came across quite clearly. He wants to know how it works, i.e. what is required of him, and what will the process of getting funded look like. That's a difference.
- wickedcoolmatt 13y ago
  Our wording is a little off there. Appreciate the feedback, and you're totally right.
  - namenotrequired 13y ago
    Do you have anything that does explain how it works? I'm very interested and would love to learn about it.
    - arsemouflon 13y ago
      Move on.
      - namenotrequired 13y ago
        Why?
    - wickedcoolmatt 13y ago
      We have outline of how Ramen works here (we actually funded Ramen on Ramen): https://ramen.is/projects/ramen https://ramen.is/projects/ramen We're currently working to boil all that down and bring it right out in front to fix this problem. Basically what happened here was this version of the home page was somewhere between a teaser and functional homepage. We've been working on so many other parts of the business, we let one of the most important pages slip. We're hoping to fix this with our new design coming out soon.
      - mbesto 13y ago
        Yup, your landing page is very confusing. (mine once was too!) My best suggestion is to grab a few people who would be your typical audience, physically sit them next to them and watch/listen as you ask them things like: What would you do first? Is it clear what the site does for you? What do you think will happen if you click X Why would you come to this site? Iterate and keep going! Good luck.
      - tommorris 13y ago
        Here's a free stab at some copy: "Get funding for your software project from early adopters who care. Ramen lets you raise money from users who help test and develop your product." Your homepage lacks clear instructions for either startup projects or investor/users. Have a clear look at the frontpage of ramen.is from the perspective of a user, then look at sites like YouTube, Soundcloud, BBC iPlayer, Kickstater and so on. These are all trying to seduce people in to look at things that are new and fresh. Then look at it from the perspective of the startup entrepreneur. Business users want to see both clear instructions on how to use the site and what they'll get out of it, as well as seeing activity of existing projects, case studies of companies that have used it before. You aren't doing that good at providing either. Just some constructive criticism, I hope. Interesting project.
RyanZAG 13y ago
It's pretty common on a lot of recent startup landing pages. Great looking design, nice little touches like animation - but very little detail on how the product actually works. The assumption is that someone curious is going to sign up to find out. Lots of people won't do this and will just bounce. I think every landing page should try to answer these questions: What is your product? Why would I use your product? How does your product work? What does your product cost? ("Still working on it" is fine, but say so) What countries are you available in?
- danielweber 13y ago
  Many times I see a link on HN and click on it, and they act like everyone knows exactly what is going on. It gives me a nagging feeling that I am completely out of touch with HN, too. The way moderators edit headlines doesn't help this at all.
  - mhewett 13y ago
    This happens almost 100% of the time with product updates. You are taken to a page that says "We have released version 3.1.5 of Gizmo. Download it here." with not even a hint of what Gizmo is.
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      Updates and bugreports are two communications I specifically had in mind when writing my "Tell me what the fuck it is EVERY GODDAMNED TIME YOU COMMUNICATE ABOUT THE PRODUCT" above. Major peeve.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Well obviously Giz.mo giz's your mo's. Update 3.1.5 is going to completely upend the status quo, it is so disruptive & social. Edit: The downvotes are making me giggle like a small child. Do I have a problem?
  - ggchappell 13y ago
    You're not alone. I find an awful lot (a majority?) of look-at-this HN posts to be nearly incomprehensible.
mycousinvinny 13y ago
Are you dumb dude? He wants a button on the top that says "How It Works" like you have outlined here https://ramen.is/projects/ramen https://ramen.is/projects/ramen Because as of now all he can do is submit his project, he just wants to know what the process is like before doing it. This is so painfully obvious how don't you see that?
edem 13y ago
I LOVE this post. I actually did not read it since it contained something which I miss in every other blog: a TL;DR section. +1!!!
- angilly 13y ago
  Thanks! We <3 TL;DR's too :)
- edem 13y ago
  I don't understand the downvotes. Did everybody just had a bad day or completely lost their minds?
bpodgursky 13y ago
It's also odd that there's no "browse all projects" or "find projects to back" option, only a few hand-curated options. No discovery options at all.
- angilly 13y ago
  One of the Ramen founders here. We just launched a few weeks ago, so that's actually all we got right now. Feel free to submit a project if you'd like :)
harrystone 13y ago
I don't do web design but that Peek thing just looks brutal to me. It's probably a good tool though, I'd just hate to have it pointed at my work.
- lumens 13y ago
  Ha, funny - as a startup founder (https://www.mightyspring.com https://www.mightyspring.com), I immediately went and signed our site up for a review from Peek. Seemed insanely valuable to me.
  - keithpeter 13y ago
    Post the video link here if you decide to go for publicly accessible feedback. I think I can understand what your company is about fairly easily just glancing at the first page.
- keithpeter 13y ago
  A slap in the face with a wet fish can be good sometimes. More than 10 years ago. Big conference of Web type people (not all developers but some) from Colleges and Universities in the UK, about 20 organisations represented, 50 people in the room. Disability Discrimination Act coming in. A talk organised by TechDis I remember (hazy memory of organisation details). A profoundly blind Web developer using a screen reader with Windows steps up, with a colleague running the slides on a projector. She goes through some basic usability for non-sighted users (like http://diveintoaccessibility.info/ http://diveintoaccessibility.info/ summary). Then she asks for a volunteer, and surfs to their College Web site live with the screen reader plugged through the PA. "Red dot, red dot, red dot, [big list of navigation junk] Image image image image..." You get the idea. She simply said: your Web site is telling me that you are not interested in blind students. I think everyone present at that session went back and ran their sites through screen readers after that talk! No-one was feeling smug in the slightest.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
wickedcoolmatt 13y ago
Hey y'all thanks so much for the support! UserTesting (the folks behind Peek) shot us over a promo code to get the first 100 of you to the front of the line if you want to give it a whirl: ramenreader
- carrotleads 13y ago
  not sure where I should enter the promocode. Have submitted my site carrotleads.com for a test though. It free anyway, so what was the promo code for???
jrochkind1 13y ago
I had not known about the Peek service, that's pretty awesome. Does anyone know of anything like that, but that's _not_ random, where I could actually send volunteers from my current users to my sight, and have their clicks and voice recorded and sent to me? Is there such a business that works well at a reasonable price?
- robby1066 13y ago
  usertesting.com has this in it's main product (which Peek seems to be just a scaled back, lead-generation version of), but I think supplying your own testers is one of their enterprise features, which is more expensive than the normal service.
Malarkey73 13y ago
Jeez. That is like sooooo many modern websites. What is this site? What is thingumajig.io? Its a webby thingumajig? Sign up? Sign up for what? Oh it's a website for web something. nice font.
- tormeh 13y ago
  Haha, spot on :)
rurban 13y ago
Come on, this guy is not everything. The first link I clicked was at the bottom left: Project which brought me to https://ramen.is/projects/ramen https://ramen.is/projects/ramen which explains everything in detail this guy did not find and searched for. Overall, looks a fancy new kickstarter site. I care about projects not kickstarter per se, so I like the idea how the projects are presented in ramen.
- farresito 13y ago
  You said it all: the link was at the bottom left. I rarely go to the bottom links when surfing a webpage, unless I'm really sure what I'm looking for could be there.
- edmccard 13y ago
  >The first link I clicked was at the bottom left: Project Well, if I was looking for information on how Ramen worked, a generic link in the footer called "Project Page", under the equally generic heading "Product" is not the first thing I would click. And if I eventually got there, and saw what looked to be a page intended for backers (it has a blurb and options to back at $2.00, $10.00, etc.), I probably wouldn't notice the "How it Works" section buried three screenfuls down the page.
- vacri 13y ago
  Primary information should not be put in a low-contrast footer, the place where you usually put things like the privacy declaration, or which company made the theme, or which CMS is 'powering' the site. The footer is a blind spot which plenty of people mentally block out because it's usually full of meaningless information.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Suffice to say, my eyeballs literally do not process the footer unless: 1) I am looking for "Contact Us" 2) I need some piece of information so badly I am willing to dig around the website for 10+ minutes, after which I will start looking at the footer, at the HTML (in case there are collapsed menus), searching Google with "site:www.thesite.com"... This level of dedication is reserved for financial institutions, and government.
joshvm 13y ago
The information may be there, but if the user has to scroll to see it then that's poor UX design. I did wonder why he didn't scroll to the bottom, but still "About Us" doesn't scream "how the service works" to me. And indeed, if you click on the link you get taken to a page of smiling founders. I got the impression that the designers were trying to be clever by integrating the tutorial into an actual project page - and going to the Ramen project explains a lot about the process. However, that's intuition from using the web a lot, not a logical step. It's the same kind of intuition that gamers have when crawling a dungeon and you know that taking the short route will almost certainly be a Bad Idea. This backfires in another way: I also wonder if there are only four projects on the site? Can I search for more? It makes me think that the projects there are just dummy pages to demonstrate how the site works.
- angilly 13y ago
  Regarding the last line: Ramen just launched a few weeks ago, so the projects you see are all we have right now. Good feedback on the scarcity giving you the impression that they are dummy pages. They aren't. Ramen, Benefit & Velocity Kick are very real projects. Great feedback though. We need to get more projects into the system asap. Thank you! PS. If you wanna submit a project: https://ramen.is/project_submissions/new https://ramen.is/project_submissions/new :-D
JanezStupar 13y ago
I like how a guy records a video in which he talks about how he has no idea what they are about. Then they write a blog post about it. Submit it to HN, get to the front page, get lots of potential customers... And there is still no information on their site about who they are and how it works...
- xur17 13y ago
  Yeah, I actually ran into the exact same problem earlier today when I was looking at the Ramen site. It sounded interesting, and I was considering submitting my site to it, but I wasn't (and still am not) clear on how it actually works. Is it for fundraising like Kickstarter, or can I use it to promote an existing site? I went as far as creating an account, but I gave up when it required me to use my Linkedin account (even after I signed up with an email address).
  - aferreira 13y ago
    > gave up when it required me to use my Linkedin account Exactly.
- maxk42 13y ago
  Another frustrated would-be customer here. Way to fail twice, Ramen.
- mfrommil 13y ago
  Would be nice to see the "before and after" example of this after they do make the changes, and other customer feedback they used to make it.
jaredandrews 13y ago
Interesting comment on the bottom of the article: This random user is a prick. 1. Why didn’t he scroll to the bottom of the page? I noticed an “about us” link in the footer. 2. When I’m curious about companies, I look at their blogs. Sometimes they use a blog CMS system. Why didn’t this guy check the links in the header, like the link to your blog? 3. This guy has a baby babbling in the background. Maybe he was distracted? We do a lot of user testing at work and it has really opened my eyes. This sort of attitude really bums me out though. You can sit around all day and complain about customer incompetence. Meanwhile they are out using a different app/product and you still aren't making any money/conversions.
- angilly 13y ago
  FWIW, I thought for a while about whether or not to approve that comment due to it's flamewar-factor, but I approved it so I could write this response: "Ehhh I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a “prick”. Yeah he certainly could have gone through our blog and read up on Ramen. He could have clicked on our project page and watched our video. I think the point of Peek, though, is that you can’t tell a visitor that their first impression (and/or their first confusion) is _wrong_. I think he brings up a lot of completely valid points about our homepage. We haven’t put enough energy into making our homepage something that succinctly describes what we do. He called us out on it. I give him kudos."
  - shakethemonkey 13y ago
    Those projects appear to be your clients. Clicking on a project video is absolutely the wrong answer. Why isn't "Fundraising Platform" in the left column clickable? That should lead to expository text, but it isn't even a link.
- vacri 13y ago
  It's pretty clear that that commenter doesn't have any serious experience with user testing. A design needs to work with the user - you don't abuse the user because they don't efficiently use your design. Well, not if you're professional.
webwright 13y ago
If you do this, it's best to do it in clusters of 5-10 testers in your target demographic and try to identify patterns. It's dangerous to say "UserX is confused, so all of our users must be confused." No matter how perfect your design, it will be confusing/frustrating for someone.
- sgarman 13y ago
  Totally agree. You don't need 100's just 5-10 like you said. It will be really obvious of the issues because many people will suffer them same ones.
mauricio-OH 13y ago
Great post but it sounds a lot like trying to sell that peek service. Would've been great to see what actions were taken to improve the site rather than wait to the new design launch.
nedwin 13y ago
While you're getting all this traffic you should definitely put a couple of calls to action to check out your product. Even just linking the word "Ramen" in the blog post would be a great start to get more conversions happening.
tdicola 13y ago
Are user videos from Peek supposed to be public? I would be a little creeped out if I was the random user from this study and suddenly found my video plastered in a blog post.
- calvino 13y ago
  Yes, the testers are paid and understand/agree that the videos can be shared publicly.
fallinghawks 13y ago
There's this one link at the very bottom of the page, which the Peek user kept missing, and would be the first one I would go to if I couldn't find what I was looking for: Product/Project Page. That appears to be the page that would have answered many of his questions and kept him as a customer. That should totally be at the top of the page. However, even that's a little confusing because it is itself a project -- so a user might wonder what the heck they are looking at, site info or some other project?
htk 13y ago
Great post, the video is as simple as is enlightening. What I like the most about it is that the user is genuinely interested in the service. But he acts natural and realizes he doesn't see an easy way to get more info on it. He could try to read the blog, or search for small print, but that's not what the average user is going to do. I'm going to try Peek soon!
Siecje 13y ago
Where do the testers for peek come from if it is free?
- calvino 13y ago
  UserTesting pays members of their plan to take the test in the hopes some people find it useful enough to try out their enterprise offerings.
throwaway112233 13y ago
There is a website where I can put a website and watch people's reactions? ....well, I have an idea what kind of websites I will try to submit...
lingben 13y ago
sorry for the tangent but I remember seeing a usability site where you could get usability testing for your site by 'pay it forward' by taking other sites for a test drive anyone know what I'm referring to? thanks!
- robby1066 13y ago
  Were you thinking of usabilityhub.com? They have a couple of different products for 'micro-usability' tests ('look at this page for 5 seconds and list things you remember' and similar). And I remember them using that model. You could pay, or be a tester to earn credit for your own tests.
dredmorbius 13y ago
So much this. A few bits I've noticed over 25+ years in the industry: • Tell me what your product is. What it does, where it works, how it does it, what it requires. Is it a physical product (or is it shipped in one), an interactive application, a Web service, a programming language / tool? • Tell me what the fuck it is EVERY GODDAMNED TIME YOU COMMUNICATE ABOUT THE PRODUCT. It doesn't have to be long or detailed, you can link to your detailed description in the communication. But your press releases, emails, Tweets, blog posts, marketing collateral, etc., are going to get passed around, word-of-mouthed, and/or pulled out of drawers (or browser history / searches) for weeks, months, and years to come. Make them work for you. • The Economist's practice of briefly introducing any individual, no matter how famous or obscure, is a wonderful practice of microcontent contextualization. "Using the Economist house style offers an elegant alternative, wherein virtually all people and organizations are identified explicitly, no matter how prominent. For example, you might see 'Google, a search giant', 'GE, an American conglomerate', or 'Tim Cook, boss of Apple'." http://redd.it/1x8yky http://redd.it/1x8yky • Tell me how to try it out. Preferably for 60-90 days (a 30 day cycle can go far too fast. I've been very, very impressed with New Relic's "use it for free, convert upmarket for additional features" model, and it's apparently worked well for them. For small accounts, their cost of sales is effectively nil (and for large accounts, COS is always a PITA). But for those large accounts, you've got a proven track record with the prospect, and they really know what they're getting. • Put your tech docs front and center. As a technical lead / director, my questions are "how the fuck do I make this thing work", and if you can't tell me • It's been observed many times that those who have the best appreciation for how a product works are those who use it directly, and secondly, those who either service it or support those using it. John Sealy Brown's The Social Life of Information addresses this with both Xerox copier repairmen and support staff. Use this to your advantage two ways: let these people share and collaborate, even if informally For the repairmen, this was a morning coffee break turned out to be a hugely valuable cross-training and troubleshooting feature. For phone support, after an "expert system" and changes in technology separating phone reps from technicians, researchers noted two reps who consistently provided good advice: one was a veteran from the earlier stage, the other a recent hire who sat across from the other and learned from her. Similarly, user support groups (mailing lists, Web forums, Usenet groups), in which users interact and share knowledge with one another directly (Hacker News would be an instance) are often (though not always) far more useful than direct tech support. • Provide clear pricing information. This has been noted from Jacob Nielsen on forward as the information people are most interested in. • Make damned sure that whatever process or workflow you've created online works, and for as many possible end-user environments as possible. Keeping interfaces as simple and legible as possible is a huge bonus. • Remove distractions from your transactional webpages. Once someone's homed in on a product, focus on that, though you may mention alternatives or (truly useful) related products. Every additional piece of information on the screen is an opportunity to confuse and lose the sale. I've been restyling many websites simply for my own use (1000+), and simply removing distracting elements produces a far more productive environment. • Ensure your pages are legible. Backgrounds should be light, foregrounds light (and where, with extreme reluctance, you invert these, separation should be clear). DO NOT SCALE FONTS IN PX. On far, far too many devices this renders as unreadable, particularly from older (e.g., more senior w/in the organization) readers. Grey-on-grey is just cause to fire whomever suggested or required it. See ContrastRebellion: http://www.contrastrebellion.com/ http://www.contrastrebellion.com/ • Don't organize your website according to internal corporate structures. Your website is an outward facing tool, and should address the needs of users, not of internal departments. Lenovo's laptop site organization would be highly typical of this: I want a Linux-capable, large-display, full-keyboard, trackpoint device. The rest I generally don't give a shit about, and its product line confuses me every fucking goddamned time I try to buy something there (usually every 2-3 years). I'm not a sufficiently frequent customer that I keep up with every last change, but I've spent thousands of dollars on IBM/Lenovo products, as an individual (hundreds of thousands to millions as an enterprise customer). And of course: test all of this, don't simply take my word for it. But yes, I've walked from far, far, far too many product pages, from free software projects to Fortune 10 companies to edgy app devs. Life's too fucking short for that shit.
carrotleads 13y ago
Well their main problem was they had a 2 sided market and catered to both half heartedly. Dropbox caters to a single market and the message is more simple for them. A "How it works" with subsection for both target market would help. multiple sided products always have trouble selling effective messages and would like to see examples if you guys know of any. I am doing a redesign of my site http://carrotleads.com http://carrotleads.com on this topic. Was targeted at companies earlier and now I will have trouble converting network'rs. I can see the problem, but solutions need more deep thought. Working on it. Submitted site to Peek. Want to see how it turns out.
- bjeanes 13y ago
  Did you get back a video from Peek? Was it useful? I'm curious about your experience.
  - carrotleads 13y ago
    I did get the test back and I have already made a few changes to make discovery of companies easier. See test link below, turnaround of less than 12 hrs. http://peek.usertesting.com/result/969590386309 http://peek.usertesting.com/result/969590386309 Still my site will undergo a proper redesign with 2 seperate workflow's. Well that how my thinking is for now.
adrianhoward 13y ago
Everybody seems to be missing the biggest lesson from this. No matter how obvious you think the problems with the OPs site was you should... DO USABILITY TESTING Often. Because if those problems were obvious to the OP - they would have fixed them. By definition. I guarantee that everybody here has there own blind spots with there own application or service. I've been doing usability tests for nearly twenty years now - and the number of times we've found nothing that can be improved can be counted on approximately no hands. Use online services like peek (there are many, many others too). Do them yourselves. Do them regularly. If I could pick only one thing to help folk improve their product - usability testing would be it. Even above customer interviewing. Nothing beats watching your customers try and fail to use your product. Here's three books to get you started: * Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-it-yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems, Steve Krug - Does exactly what it says on the tin. Short sharp guide to getting you started. * Handbook of Usability Testing: Howto Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests, Jeffrey Rubin & Dana Chisnell - The last book but in much more depth. The first edition of this was my bible when I started doing usability testing. * Remote Research, Nate Bolt & Tony Tulathimutte - A great guide to how to approach getting the most out of remote usability testing services like peek. The tools are a few years out of date now. The advice isn't. Seriously. If you're not already doing usability tests go spend an hour or two reading 'Rocket Surgery Made Easy' and then go test your product with some actual human beings. You'll thank me.
- userium 13y ago
  I agree with the importance of doing usability testing. I made this usability checklist (http://userium.com/ http://userium.com/), which can be used to catch common usability problems before user testing. By fixing obvious usability problems you get more meaningful feedback from users.
beejiu 13y ago
The 5 W's is something taught to all school kids at an early age -- who, what, where, when, why (and sometimes, how). Your tagline should address all of these in one simple sentence.
- wanderingstan 13y ago
  The "where" is often totally forgotten as well. Sometimes it still matters if a company is in US vs Europe, South America or New Zealand!
jusben1369 13y ago
You lost a prospect not a customer. Big difference.
borski 13y ago
Just got our peek for https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com It was surprisingly good! No negative feedback, and only positive feedback, though the tester wasn't our target market.
arnklint 13y ago
Another solution to _this_ problem might be to get your site reviewed by a conversion specialist or using some sort of heuristic review. In many cases my experience is that a combination of more qualitative methods such as user testing combined and heuristic evaluations and heatmaps and with Google Analytics solves _most_ of the issues you have with your site.
uptown 13y ago
They've got three well known investors. How'd one of them not catch this problem?

373 points by wickedcoolmatt 13y ago

"I failed to explain the benefits Ramen can provide." No, I think those came across quite clearly. He wants to know how it works, i.e. what is required of him, and what will the process of getting funded look like. That's a difference.

wickedcoolmatt 13y ago
Our wording is a little off there. Appreciate the feedback, and you're totally right.
- namenotrequired 13y ago
  Do you have anything that does explain how it works? I'm very interested and would love to learn about it.
  - arsemouflon 13y ago
    Move on.
    - namenotrequired 13y ago
      Why?
  - wickedcoolmatt 13y ago
    We have outline of how Ramen works here (we actually funded Ramen on Ramen): https://ramen.is/projects/ramen https://ramen.is/projects/ramen We're currently working to boil all that down and bring it right out in front to fix this problem. Basically what happened here was this version of the home page was somewhere between a teaser and functional homepage. We've been working on so many other parts of the business, we let one of the most important pages slip. We're hoping to fix this with our new design coming out soon.
    - mbesto 13y ago
      Yup, your landing page is very confusing. (mine once was too!) My best suggestion is to grab a few people who would be your typical audience, physically sit them next to them and watch/listen as you ask them things like: What would you do first? Is it clear what the site does for you? What do you think will happen if you click X Why would you come to this site? Iterate and keep going! Good luck.
    - tommorris 13y ago
      Here's a free stab at some copy: "Get funding for your software project from early adopters who care. Ramen lets you raise money from users who help test and develop your product." Your homepage lacks clear instructions for either startup projects or investor/users. Have a clear look at the frontpage of ramen.is from the perspective of a user, then look at sites like YouTube, Soundcloud, BBC iPlayer, Kickstater and so on. These are all trying to seduce people in to look at things that are new and fresh. Then look at it from the perspective of the startup entrepreneur. Business users want to see both clear instructions on how to use the site and what they'll get out of it, as well as seeing activity of existing projects, case studies of companies that have used it before. You aren't doing that good at providing either. Just some constructive criticism, I hope. Interesting project.

RyanZAG 13y ago

It's pretty common on a lot of recent startup landing pages. Great looking design, nice little touches like animation - but very little detail on how the product actually works. The assumption is that someone curious is going to sign up to find out. Lots of people won't do this and will just bounce. I think every landing page should try to answer these questions: What is your product? Why would I use your product? How does your product work? What does your product cost? ("Still working on it" is fine, but say so) What countries are you available in?

danielweber 13y ago
Many times I see a link on HN and click on it, and they act like everyone knows exactly what is going on. It gives me a nagging feeling that I am completely out of touch with HN, too. The way moderators edit headlines doesn't help this at all.
- mhewett 13y ago
  This happens almost 100% of the time with product updates. You are taken to a page that says "We have released version 3.1.5 of Gizmo. Download it here." with not even a hint of what Gizmo is.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Updates and bugreports are two communications I specifically had in mind when writing my "Tell me what the fuck it is EVERY GODDAMNED TIME YOU COMMUNICATE ABOUT THE PRODUCT" above. Major peeve.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Well obviously Giz.mo giz's your mo's. Update 3.1.5 is going to completely upend the status quo, it is so disruptive & social. Edit: The downvotes are making me giggle like a small child. Do I have a problem?
- ggchappell 13y ago
  You're not alone. I find an awful lot (a majority?) of look-at-this HN posts to be nearly incomprehensible.

mycousinvinny 13y ago

Are you dumb dude? He wants a button on the top that says "How It Works" like you have outlined here https://ramen.is/projects/ramen https://ramen.is/projects/ramen Because as of now all he can do is submit his project, he just wants to know what the process is like before doing it. This is so painfully obvious how don't you see that?

edem 13y ago

I LOVE this post. I actually did not read it since it contained something which I miss in every other blog: a TL;DR section. +1!!!

angilly 13y ago
Thanks! We <3 TL;DR's too :)
edem 13y ago
I don't understand the downvotes. Did everybody just had a bad day or completely lost their minds?

bpodgursky 13y ago

It's also odd that there's no "browse all projects" or "find projects to back" option, only a few hand-curated options. No discovery options at all.

angilly 13y ago
One of the Ramen founders here. We just launched a few weeks ago, so that's actually all we got right now. Feel free to submit a project if you'd like :)

harrystone 13y ago

I don't do web design but that Peek thing just looks brutal to me. It's probably a good tool though, I'd just hate to have it pointed at my work.

lumens 13y ago
Ha, funny - as a startup founder (https://www.mightyspring.com https://www.mightyspring.com), I immediately went and signed our site up for a review from Peek. Seemed insanely valuable to me.
- keithpeter 13y ago
  Post the video link here if you decide to go for publicly accessible feedback. I think I can understand what your company is about fairly easily just glancing at the first page.
keithpeter 13y ago
A slap in the face with a wet fish can be good sometimes. More than 10 years ago. Big conference of Web type people (not all developers but some) from Colleges and Universities in the UK, about 20 organisations represented, 50 people in the room. Disability Discrimination Act coming in. A talk organised by TechDis I remember (hazy memory of organisation details). A profoundly blind Web developer using a screen reader with Windows steps up, with a colleague running the slides on a projector. She goes through some basic usability for non-sighted users (like http://diveintoaccessibility.info/ http://diveintoaccessibility.info/ summary). Then she asks for a volunteer, and surfs to their College Web site live with the screen reader plugged through the PA. "Red dot, red dot, red dot, [big list of navigation junk] Image image image image..." You get the idea. She simply said: your Web site is telling me that you are not interested in blind students. I think everyone present at that session went back and ran their sites through screen readers after that talk! No-one was feeling smug in the slightest.

deleted 13y ago

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wickedcoolmatt 13y ago

Hey y'all thanks so much for the support! UserTesting (the folks behind Peek) shot us over a promo code to get the first 100 of you to the front of the line if you want to give it a whirl: ramenreader

carrotleads 13y ago
not sure where I should enter the promocode. Have submitted my site carrotleads.com for a test though. It free anyway, so what was the promo code for???

jrochkind1 13y ago

I had not known about the Peek service, that's pretty awesome. Does anyone know of anything like that, but that's _not_ random, where I could actually send volunteers from my current users to my sight, and have their clicks and voice recorded and sent to me? Is there such a business that works well at a reasonable price?

robby1066 13y ago
usertesting.com has this in it's main product (which Peek seems to be just a scaled back, lead-generation version of), but I think supplying your own testers is one of their enterprise features, which is more expensive than the normal service.

Malarkey73 13y ago

Jeez. That is like sooooo many modern websites. What is this site? What is thingumajig.io? Its a webby thingumajig? Sign up? Sign up for what? Oh it's a website for web something. nice font.

tormeh 13y ago
Haha, spot on :)

rurban 13y ago

Come on, this guy is not everything. The first link I clicked was at the bottom left: Project which brought me to https://ramen.is/projects/ramen https://ramen.is/projects/ramen which explains everything in detail this guy did not find and searched for. Overall, looks a fancy new kickstarter site. I care about projects not kickstarter per se, so I like the idea how the projects are presented in ramen.

farresito 13y ago
You said it all: the link was at the bottom left. I rarely go to the bottom links when surfing a webpage, unless I'm really sure what I'm looking for could be there.
edmccard 13y ago
>The first link I clicked was at the bottom left: Project Well, if I was looking for information on how Ramen worked, a generic link in the footer called "Project Page", under the equally generic heading "Product" is not the first thing I would click. And if I eventually got there, and saw what looked to be a page intended for backers (it has a blurb and options to back at $2.00, $10.00, etc.), I probably wouldn't notice the "How it Works" section buried three screenfuls down the page.
vacri 13y ago
Primary information should not be put in a low-contrast footer, the place where you usually put things like the privacy declaration, or which company made the theme, or which CMS is 'powering' the site. The footer is a blind spot which plenty of people mentally block out because it's usually full of meaningless information.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  Suffice to say, my eyeballs literally do not process the footer unless: 1) I am looking for "Contact Us" 2) I need some piece of information so badly I am willing to dig around the website for 10+ minutes, after which I will start looking at the footer, at the HTML (in case there are collapsed menus), searching Google with "site:www.thesite.com"... This level of dedication is reserved for financial institutions, and government.

joshvm 13y ago

The information may be there, but if the user has to scroll to see it then that's poor UX design. I did wonder why he didn't scroll to the bottom, but still "About Us" doesn't scream "how the service works" to me. And indeed, if you click on the link you get taken to a page of smiling founders. I got the impression that the designers were trying to be clever by integrating the tutorial into an actual project page - and going to the Ramen project explains a lot about the process. However, that's intuition from using the web a lot, not a logical step. It's the same kind of intuition that gamers have when crawling a dungeon and you know that taking the short route will almost certainly be a Bad Idea. This backfires in another way: I also wonder if there are only four projects on the site? Can I search for more? It makes me think that the projects there are just dummy pages to demonstrate how the site works.

angilly 13y ago
Regarding the last line: Ramen just launched a few weeks ago, so the projects you see are all we have right now. Good feedback on the scarcity giving you the impression that they are dummy pages. They aren't. Ramen, Benefit & Velocity Kick are very real projects. Great feedback though. We need to get more projects into the system asap. Thank you! PS. If you wanna submit a project: https://ramen.is/project_submissions/new https://ramen.is/project_submissions/new :-D

JanezStupar 13y ago

I like how a guy records a video in which he talks about how he has no idea what they are about. Then they write a blog post about it. Submit it to HN, get to the front page, get lots of potential customers... And there is still no information on their site about who they are and how it works...

xur17 13y ago
Yeah, I actually ran into the exact same problem earlier today when I was looking at the Ramen site. It sounded interesting, and I was considering submitting my site to it, but I wasn't (and still am not) clear on how it actually works. Is it for fundraising like Kickstarter, or can I use it to promote an existing site? I went as far as creating an account, but I gave up when it required me to use my Linkedin account (even after I signed up with an email address).
- aferreira 13y ago
  > gave up when it required me to use my Linkedin account Exactly.
maxk42 13y ago
Another frustrated would-be customer here. Way to fail twice, Ramen.
mfrommil 13y ago
Would be nice to see the "before and after" example of this after they do make the changes, and other customer feedback they used to make it.

jaredandrews 13y ago

Interesting comment on the bottom of the article: This random user is a prick. 1. Why didn’t he scroll to the bottom of the page? I noticed an “about us” link in the footer. 2. When I’m curious about companies, I look at their blogs. Sometimes they use a blog CMS system. Why didn’t this guy check the links in the header, like the link to your blog? 3. This guy has a baby babbling in the background. Maybe he was distracted? We do a lot of user testing at work and it has really opened my eyes. This sort of attitude really bums me out though. You can sit around all day and complain about customer incompetence. Meanwhile they are out using a different app/product and you still aren't making any money/conversions.

angilly 13y ago
FWIW, I thought for a while about whether or not to approve that comment due to it's flamewar-factor, but I approved it so I could write this response: "Ehhh I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a “prick”. Yeah he certainly could have gone through our blog and read up on Ramen. He could have clicked on our project page and watched our video. I think the point of Peek, though, is that you can’t tell a visitor that their first impression (and/or their first confusion) is _wrong_. I think he brings up a lot of completely valid points about our homepage. We haven’t put enough energy into making our homepage something that succinctly describes what we do. He called us out on it. I give him kudos."
- shakethemonkey 13y ago
  Those projects appear to be your clients. Clicking on a project video is absolutely the wrong answer. Why isn't "Fundraising Platform" in the left column clickable? That should lead to expository text, but it isn't even a link.
vacri 13y ago
It's pretty clear that that commenter doesn't have any serious experience with user testing. A design needs to work with the user - you don't abuse the user because they don't efficiently use your design. Well, not if you're professional.

webwright 13y ago

If you do this, it's best to do it in clusters of 5-10 testers in your target demographic and try to identify patterns. It's dangerous to say "UserX is confused, so all of our users must be confused." No matter how perfect your design, it will be confusing/frustrating for someone.

sgarman 13y ago
Totally agree. You don't need 100's just 5-10 like you said. It will be really obvious of the issues because many people will suffer them same ones.

mauricio-OH 13y ago

Great post but it sounds a lot like trying to sell that peek service. Would've been great to see what actions were taken to improve the site rather than wait to the new design launch.

nedwin 13y ago

While you're getting all this traffic you should definitely put a couple of calls to action to check out your product. Even just linking the word "Ramen" in the blog post would be a great start to get more conversions happening.

tdicola 13y ago

Are user videos from Peek supposed to be public? I would be a little creeped out if I was the random user from this study and suddenly found my video plastered in a blog post.

calvino 13y ago
Yes, the testers are paid and understand/agree that the videos can be shared publicly.

fallinghawks 13y ago

There's this one link at the very bottom of the page, which the Peek user kept missing, and would be the first one I would go to if I couldn't find what I was looking for: Product/Project Page. That appears to be the page that would have answered many of his questions and kept him as a customer. That should totally be at the top of the page. However, even that's a little confusing because it is itself a project -- so a user might wonder what the heck they are looking at, site info or some other project?

htk 13y ago

Great post, the video is as simple as is enlightening. What I like the most about it is that the user is genuinely interested in the service. But he acts natural and realizes he doesn't see an easy way to get more info on it. He could try to read the blog, or search for small print, but that's not what the average user is going to do. I'm going to try Peek soon!

Siecje 13y ago

Where do the testers for peek come from if it is free?

calvino 13y ago
UserTesting pays members of their plan to take the test in the hopes some people find it useful enough to try out their enterprise offerings.

throwaway112233 13y ago

There is a website where I can put a website and watch people's reactions? ....well, I have an idea what kind of websites I will try to submit...

lingben 13y ago

sorry for the tangent but I remember seeing a usability site where you could get usability testing for your site by 'pay it forward' by taking other sites for a test drive anyone know what I'm referring to? thanks!

robby1066 13y ago
Were you thinking of usabilityhub.com? They have a couple of different products for 'micro-usability' tests ('look at this page for 5 seconds and list things you remember' and similar). And I remember them using that model. You could pay, or be a tester to earn credit for your own tests.

dredmorbius 13y ago

So much this. A few bits I've noticed over 25+ years in the industry: • Tell me what your product is. What it does, where it works, how it does it, what it requires. Is it a physical product (or is it shipped in one), an interactive application, a Web service, a programming language / tool? • Tell me what the fuck it is EVERY GODDAMNED TIME YOU COMMUNICATE ABOUT THE PRODUCT. It doesn't have to be long or detailed, you can link to your detailed description in the communication. But your press releases, emails, Tweets, blog posts, marketing collateral, etc., are going to get passed around, word-of-mouthed, and/or pulled out of drawers (or browser history / searches) for weeks, months, and years to come. Make them work for you. • The Economist's practice of briefly introducing any individual, no matter how famous or obscure, is a wonderful practice of microcontent contextualization. "Using the Economist house style offers an elegant alternative, wherein virtually all people and organizations are identified explicitly, no matter how prominent. For example, you might see 'Google, a search giant', 'GE, an American conglomerate', or 'Tim Cook, boss of Apple'." http://redd.it/1x8yky http://redd.it/1x8yky • Tell me how to try it out. Preferably for 60-90 days (a 30 day cycle can go far too fast. I've been very, very impressed with New Relic's "use it for free, convert upmarket for additional features" model, and it's apparently worked well for them. For small accounts, their cost of sales is effectively nil (and for large accounts, COS is always a PITA). But for those large accounts, you've got a proven track record with the prospect, and they really know what they're getting. • Put your tech docs front and center. As a technical lead / director, my questions are "how the fuck do I make this thing work", and if you can't tell me • It's been observed many times that those who have the best appreciation for how a product works are those who use it directly, and secondly, those who either service it or support those using it. John Sealy Brown's The Social Life of Information addresses this with both Xerox copier repairmen and support staff. Use this to your advantage two ways: let these people share and collaborate, even if informally For the repairmen, this was a morning coffee break turned out to be a hugely valuable cross-training and troubleshooting feature. For phone support, after an "expert system" and changes in technology separating phone reps from technicians, researchers noted two reps who consistently provided good advice: one was a veteran from the earlier stage, the other a recent hire who sat across from the other and learned from her. Similarly, user support groups (mailing lists, Web forums, Usenet groups), in which users interact and share knowledge with one another directly (Hacker News would be an instance) are often (though not always) far more useful than direct tech support. • Provide clear pricing information. This has been noted from Jacob Nielsen on forward as the information people are most interested in. • Make damned sure that whatever process or workflow you've created online works, and for as many possible end-user environments as possible. Keeping interfaces as simple and legible as possible is a huge bonus. • Remove distractions from your transactional webpages. Once someone's homed in on a product, focus on that, though you may mention alternatives or (truly useful) related products. Every additional piece of information on the screen is an opportunity to confuse and lose the sale. I've been restyling many websites simply for my own use (1000+), and simply removing distracting elements produces a far more productive environment. • Ensure your pages are legible. Backgrounds should be light, foregrounds light (and where, with extreme reluctance, you invert these, separation should be clear). DO NOT SCALE FONTS IN PX. On far, far too many devices this renders as unreadable, particularly from older (e.g., more senior w/in the organization) readers. Grey-on-grey is just cause to fire whomever suggested or required it. See ContrastRebellion: http://www.contrastrebellion.com/ http://www.contrastrebellion.com/ • Don't organize your website according to internal corporate structures. Your website is an outward facing tool, and should address the needs of users, not of internal departments. Lenovo's laptop site organization would be highly typical of this: I want a Linux-capable, large-display, full-keyboard, trackpoint device. The rest I generally don't give a shit about, and its product line confuses me every fucking goddamned time I try to buy something there (usually every 2-3 years). I'm not a sufficiently frequent customer that I keep up with every last change, but I've spent thousands of dollars on IBM/Lenovo products, as an individual (hundreds of thousands to millions as an enterprise customer). And of course: test all of this, don't simply take my word for it. But yes, I've walked from far, far, far too many product pages, from free software projects to Fortune 10 companies to edgy app devs. Life's too fucking short for that shit.

carrotleads 13y ago

Well their main problem was they had a 2 sided market and catered to both half heartedly. Dropbox caters to a single market and the message is more simple for them. A "How it works" with subsection for both target market would help. multiple sided products always have trouble selling effective messages and would like to see examples if you guys know of any. I am doing a redesign of my site http://carrotleads.com http://carrotleads.com on this topic. Was targeted at companies earlier and now I will have trouble converting network'rs. I can see the problem, but solutions need more deep thought. Working on it. Submitted site to Peek. Want to see how it turns out.

bjeanes 13y ago
Did you get back a video from Peek? Was it useful? I'm curious about your experience.
- carrotleads 13y ago
  I did get the test back and I have already made a few changes to make discovery of companies easier. See test link below, turnaround of less than 12 hrs. http://peek.usertesting.com/result/969590386309 http://peek.usertesting.com/result/969590386309 Still my site will undergo a proper redesign with 2 seperate workflow's. Well that how my thinking is for now.

adrianhoward 13y ago

Everybody seems to be missing the biggest lesson from this. No matter how obvious you think the problems with the OPs site was you should... DO USABILITY TESTING Often. Because if those problems were obvious to the OP - they would have fixed them. By definition. I guarantee that everybody here has there own blind spots with there own application or service. I've been doing usability tests for nearly twenty years now - and the number of times we've found nothing that can be improved can be counted on approximately no hands. Use online services like peek (there are many, many others too). Do them yourselves. Do them regularly. If I could pick only one thing to help folk improve their product - usability testing would be it. Even above customer interviewing. Nothing beats watching your customers try and fail to use your product. Here's three books to get you started: * Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-it-yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems, Steve Krug - Does exactly what it says on the tin. Short sharp guide to getting you started. * Handbook of Usability Testing: Howto Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests, Jeffrey Rubin & Dana Chisnell - The last book but in much more depth. The first edition of this was my bible when I started doing usability testing. * Remote Research, Nate Bolt & Tony Tulathimutte - A great guide to how to approach getting the most out of remote usability testing services like peek. The tools are a few years out of date now. The advice isn't. Seriously. If you're not already doing usability tests go spend an hour or two reading 'Rocket Surgery Made Easy' and then go test your product with some actual human beings. You'll thank me.

userium 13y ago
I agree with the importance of doing usability testing. I made this usability checklist (http://userium.com/ http://userium.com/), which can be used to catch common usability problems before user testing. By fixing obvious usability problems you get more meaningful feedback from users.

beejiu 13y ago

The 5 W's is something taught to all school kids at an early age -- who, what, where, when, why (and sometimes, how). Your tagline should address all of these in one simple sentence.

wanderingstan 13y ago
The "where" is often totally forgotten as well. Sometimes it still matters if a company is in US vs Europe, South America or New Zealand!

jusben1369 13y ago

You lost a prospect not a customer. Big difference.

borski 13y ago

Just got our peek for https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com It was surprisingly good! No negative feedback, and only positive feedback, though the tester wasn't our target market.

arnklint 13y ago

Another solution to _this_ problem might be to get your site reviewed by a conversion specialist or using some sort of heuristic review. In many cases my experience is that a combination of more qualitative methods such as user testing combined and heuristic evaluations and heatmaps and with Google Analytics solves _most_ of the issues you have with your site.

uptown 13y ago

They've got three well known investors. How'd one of them not catch this problem?