3 ms·

Critique our startup: HeavyInk.com

19 points by tjic 19y ago

Our team of 2.5 engineers (two real engineers, and one half business guy / half engineer) have spent the last three months coding up HeavyInk.com in Rails - it's a mashup of an Amazon.com style retailer for comic books (individual issues, graphic novels, subscriptions to issues, subscriptions to graphic novels - you name it), and Facebook style social networking (yeah, I know: "Oh, God, not ANOTHER social netowrking site..."), with some other goodies thrown in. The comic book retailer space is a bit crowded, but after doing a bunch of research (see details elsewhere at news.ycombinator: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=75296 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=75296), we concluded that the existing firms all failed in major ways. There are some cool technologies under the hood (Coco/R for Ruby to parse out details on authors and artists from free-form human-readable text descriptions), and a lot of cool code reuse (Sanskrit, Beast, etc.). So: please check out the site, and give your feedback, either here, or in the HeavyInk forums (http://heavyink.com/forum/forums/1 http://heavyink.com/forum/forums/1 ) We really do take all feedback seriously, and have prioritized various features and bug fixes based on customer comments. Thanks!

tjic 19y ago
Our team of 2.5 engineers (two real engineers, and one half business guy / half engineer) have spent the last three months coding up HeavyInk.com in Rails - it's a mashup of an Amazon.com style retailer for comic books (individual issues, graphic novels, subscriptions to issues, subscriptions to graphic novels - you name it), and Facebook style social networking (yeah, I know: "Oh, God, not ANOTHER social netowrking site..."), with some other goodies thrown in. The comic book retailer space is a bit crowded, but after doing a bunch of research (see details elsewhere at news.ycombinator: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=75296 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=75296), we concluded that the existing firms all failed in major ways. There are some cool technologies under the hood (Coco/R for Ruby to parse out details on authors and artists from free-form human-readable text descriptions), and a lot of cool code reuse (Sanskrit, Beast, etc.). So: please check out the site, and give your feedback, either here, or in the HeavyInk forums (http://heavyink.com/forum/forums/1 http://heavyink.com/forum/forums/1 ) We really do take all feedback seriously, and have prioritized various features and bug fixes based on customer comments. Thanks!
danielha 19y ago
The website looks slick and I'm a big superhero/comics geek. I signed up and will poke around when I get a chance.
- strider 19y ago
  Awesome, thanks! Go rate a few of your favorite comics, and then click the "recommendations" tab up top - we've been getting a lot of compliments on this feature.
  - Tichy 19y ago
    Can you get recommendations without having to log in, too?
    - tjic 19y ago
      Not personalized recommendations, no. A question for YC-ers: does this sound like a valuable feature? My inclination is to think "no", but I might be wrong...
      - marcus 19y ago
        Use the current session history to do personal recommendations to users that aren't logged in. As a user browses through the comics he will generally click the things that interest him and a single great on the spot recommendation can be a deal sealer for a new user browsing your site.
german 19y ago
Looks good, just one thing, in my browser (firefox 2.0.0.8 on linux) the signup button display is funny.
- strider 19y ago
  Yep. It worked fine in 2.0.0.7 on linux (that's what we used during devel), and then Firefox released 2.0.0.8, which regressed a bit, and reintroduced an old Firefox bug. There was uproar (we weren't the only site that looked bad in 2.0.0.8) and the Firefox team expedited the release of 2.0.0.9, and the site looks great again. We actually held off on the announcement until 2.0.0.9 was ut! So: consider upgrading Firefox right now, and give it another shot!
  - tyler 19y ago
    Problem is that Ubuntu hasn't updated Firefox to 2.0.0.9 in the repositories yet.
rms 19y ago
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/08/heavyinkcom-a-mashup.html http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/08/heavyinkcom-a-mashup.ht... Boing Boing! Congratulations. The pagerank gods have smiled upon you. Let us know how much traffic/repeat traffic that gets you.
- tjic 19y ago
  My personal blog once got linked by BoingBoing. The machine glowed fiery red, just before it caught fire and died. :-) Hopefully the fact that we've got a dedicated box with extra memory for HeavyInk will stop a repeat of that story...
Tichy 19y ago
Good luck! The days when I bought comic books are long past, but your site is inspiring. Perhaps I'll find something new worthy of buying.
- tyler 19y ago
  Thats awesome. If you sign up and rate the kind of stuff you used to like, as well as stuff you specifically don't like... the recommendation system should give you some decent suggestions. (If it doesn't, I suck.) They're not as good as they will be, because our data set is still fairly limited, but its getting better daily.
ubelt 19y ago
When you're browsing for titles, it would be nice to put page navigation links at the bottom too aside fromt he ones at the top.
oditogre 19y ago
I like the site overall, but here's some initial gripes: "20% off Everything and Free Shipping on All Orders" Could probably stand to qualify this with 'Special Offer' or if it's something you always do, 'We always offer...' or something. Maybe it's just me, but the way it just sits there right now, my first thought was something like, "Is this place going out of business?" Search results page is a bit confusing, and it would be really nice to have an advanced search so I could exclude fields (first search I tried was for Priest (example: http://www.amazon.com/Priest-VOL-3-Min-woo-Hyung/dp/1591820103/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/103-0865395-6261467?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194565489&sr=1-2 http://www.amazon.com/Priest-VOL-3-Min-woo-Hyung/dp/15918201... - if somebody can tell me how to make a link into a single word on N.YC I'll clean this up). It doesn't appear you have the series anyways, but it would have been nice to specify that I was searching for a Title and get a 'No Results' page instead of browsing through 3 pages of 'Not What I'm Looking For'. If buttons (like 'Subscribe To Issues') aren't going to be an actual link (i.e., your pointer doesn't turn into a hand when you hover over it), there should be some sort of mouseover effect to indicate it's not just a dead link (and maybe a click effect, too, for people with slower computers / connections that won't load the next page straight away.)
- tyler 19y ago
  Yeah, I agree regarding the search results being confusing. It didn't turn out exactly as I wanted, but its on my ever-growing list of tasks to improve it.
alaskamiller 19y ago
the ratings don't work in firefox 2 on osx.
- tyler 19y ago
  Interesting. Its been a while since I did any testing on the MacBook. Thanks.
mattmaroon 19y ago
Well, I don't know anything about the size or statistics of your industry. I don't read comments, so I can't really buy anything. Your design is ok, but why not make it a little more comic-bookish? Maybe get a designer to give you something similar to the cover of Amory Wars you have at the top there. In retail your success is going to come down to things we YC denizens can't see from a glance. Prices, selection, service.
- tjic 19y ago
  The market is about $500 million/year. We're not going to get VC funding, because there's no chance to become a billion dollar player. However, we'd be more than happy to get 2% of the market, and make a 10% profit! As far as why the design isn't overly comic-booky: we did a ton of customer and competitor research before we picked the feature list or started writing the code, or doing the design, and we found that one objection many people have to comic book stores is that they feel like ghettos: they're perceived as not welcoming if you're not already part of the subculture. With that in mind, we consciously chose a design that was fresh and exciting, but didn't echo the super-hero motifs and stylings that many other comic book websites use.
  - DanielBMarkham 19y ago
    For what it's worth, I like the design a lot. Was there some kind of process you went through to get it looking like this? Did you prototype and show users, do some sketches, photoshop, etc?
    - tjic 19y ago
      Thanks! You can read a lot more about our design process on our old blog ( http://heavyink.com/blog/ http://heavyink.com/blog/ ), but the short version is: 1) come up with basic idea for website 2) put up a survey 3) ping comic bloggers; get 400 people to take survey 4) narrow down feature list 5) get a UI consultant to help us design how the features get spread across the various pages (lots of "scenario" stuff: "say that you're a young woman shopping for manga. What do you type? Where do you click?"). 6) hand the "wireframes" from the UI consultant off to our graphic designer 7) review the sketches; decide to pick a new graphic designer 8) get sketches back from second graphic designer; tell him "No, make the color scheme more like Netflix". Repeat this last step in 100 different steps: feedback on size of elements, etc. The engineering team provided the feedback, the graphic designer provided the expertise with fonts, layout, etc. 9) done! ...well, actually, nothing is every done. We've got to revamp the tabbed navigation, the RSS customization buttons, and a ton of other stuff...but it was well enough done to go live!
mwerty 19y ago
It's clean but I feel it looks too much like netflix. Suggestion: Put the black splotch on red effect to one or both of the sides.
ALee 19y ago
You're in a pretty cool area. Like I said from a previous post though, I would suggest that you either talk to the guys from ComicVine (to see what they did wrong- they're now working on a another startup even though ComicVine is doing fabulously well) or figure out a way to beat them (I would suggest cribbing the stuff you like from them and then just making it better).. As someone who read too many comic books when young, the digital comic phenomenon is really gaining serious steam. If you could let people upload their fan drawings and do licensing with the major publishers, you could really get a better in. Comicvine did not have that and as a result was never approached by Marvel or DC to acquire (the two companies just were pissed).
natrius 19y ago
Instead of having that huge arrow to get people to install the OpenSearch plugin (or at least in addition to the arrow), you should use OpenSearch autodiscovery. When you go to a site with autodiscovery implemented, the logo box of the search bar glows blue. Go to Wikipedia and look at your search bar to get an idea of what happens. Most users probably either don't notice or don't know what the blue glow means, so I can understand keeping the arrow, but you might as well add the autodiscovery too. Someone might do something nifty someday by crawling the web and scraping those autodiscovery links to build some sort of meta-search engine... that still wouldn't be as useful as Google, but it'd still be nifty. http://www.opensearch.org/Specifications/OpenSearch/1.1#Autodiscovery_in_HTML.2FXHTML http://www.opensearch.org/Specifications/OpenSearch/1.1#Auto...
- breck 19y ago
  I really really liked the yellow search bar, but I think you should make it point to something more useful than adding a firefox search. I personally don't use that for anything but very major searches(google, ebay, occasionally wikipedia). what if you used that bar to point to a sales special or something that can drive revenue or would be really appealing to users.
- asmosoinio 19y ago
  I have never noticed the blue glow before, and I must say it is hardly at all visible with my theme (some Vista standard): http://screencast.com/t/bZ5XX0u1uCg http://screencast.com/t/bZ5XX0u1uCg Maybe the glow is a bit more apparent in some other UIs or with other kinds of color themes?
Fuca 19y ago
I like the idea but I think you need a designer Good Luck

19 points by tjic 19y ago

tjic 19y ago

danielha 19y ago

The website looks slick and I'm a big superhero/comics geek. I signed up and will poke around when I get a chance.

strider 19y ago
Awesome, thanks! Go rate a few of your favorite comics, and then click the "recommendations" tab up top - we've been getting a lot of compliments on this feature.
- Tichy 19y ago
  Can you get recommendations without having to log in, too?
  - tjic 19y ago
    Not personalized recommendations, no. A question for YC-ers: does this sound like a valuable feature? My inclination is to think "no", but I might be wrong...
    - marcus 19y ago
      Use the current session history to do personal recommendations to users that aren't logged in. As a user browses through the comics he will generally click the things that interest him and a single great on the spot recommendation can be a deal sealer for a new user browsing your site.

german 19y ago

Looks good, just one thing, in my browser (firefox 2.0.0.8 on linux) the signup button display is funny.

strider 19y ago
Yep. It worked fine in 2.0.0.7 on linux (that's what we used during devel), and then Firefox released 2.0.0.8, which regressed a bit, and reintroduced an old Firefox bug. There was uproar (we weren't the only site that looked bad in 2.0.0.8) and the Firefox team expedited the release of 2.0.0.9, and the site looks great again. We actually held off on the announcement until 2.0.0.9 was ut! So: consider upgrading Firefox right now, and give it another shot!
- tyler 19y ago
  Problem is that Ubuntu hasn't updated Firefox to 2.0.0.9 in the repositories yet.

rms 19y ago

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/08/heavyinkcom-a-mashup.html http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/08/heavyinkcom-a-mashup.ht... Boing Boing! Congratulations. The pagerank gods have smiled upon you. Let us know how much traffic/repeat traffic that gets you.

tjic 19y ago
My personal blog once got linked by BoingBoing. The machine glowed fiery red, just before it caught fire and died. :-) Hopefully the fact that we've got a dedicated box with extra memory for HeavyInk will stop a repeat of that story...

Tichy 19y ago

Good luck! The days when I bought comic books are long past, but your site is inspiring. Perhaps I'll find something new worthy of buying.

tyler 19y ago
Thats awesome. If you sign up and rate the kind of stuff you used to like, as well as stuff you specifically don't like... the recommendation system should give you some decent suggestions. (If it doesn't, I suck.) They're not as good as they will be, because our data set is still fairly limited, but its getting better daily.

ubelt 19y ago

When you're browsing for titles, it would be nice to put page navigation links at the bottom too aside fromt he ones at the top.

oditogre 19y ago

I like the site overall, but here's some initial gripes: "20% off Everything and Free Shipping on All Orders" Could probably stand to qualify this with 'Special Offer' or if it's something you always do, 'We always offer...' or something. Maybe it's just me, but the way it just sits there right now, my first thought was something like, "Is this place going out of business?" Search results page is a bit confusing, and it would be really nice to have an advanced search so I could exclude fields (first search I tried was for Priest (example: http://www.amazon.com/Priest-VOL-3-Min-woo-Hyung/dp/1591820103/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/103-0865395-6261467?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194565489&sr=1-2 http://www.amazon.com/Priest-VOL-3-Min-woo-Hyung/dp/15918201... - if somebody can tell me how to make a link into a single word on N.YC I'll clean this up). It doesn't appear you have the series anyways, but it would have been nice to specify that I was searching for a Title and get a 'No Results' page instead of browsing through 3 pages of 'Not What I'm Looking For'. If buttons (like 'Subscribe To Issues') aren't going to be an actual link (i.e., your pointer doesn't turn into a hand when you hover over it), there should be some sort of mouseover effect to indicate it's not just a dead link (and maybe a click effect, too, for people with slower computers / connections that won't load the next page straight away.)

tyler 19y ago
Yeah, I agree regarding the search results being confusing. It didn't turn out exactly as I wanted, but its on my ever-growing list of tasks to improve it.

alaskamiller 19y ago

the ratings don't work in firefox 2 on osx.

tyler 19y ago
Interesting. Its been a while since I did any testing on the MacBook. Thanks.

mattmaroon 19y ago

Well, I don't know anything about the size or statistics of your industry. I don't read comments, so I can't really buy anything. Your design is ok, but why not make it a little more comic-bookish? Maybe get a designer to give you something similar to the cover of Amory Wars you have at the top there. In retail your success is going to come down to things we YC denizens can't see from a glance. Prices, selection, service.

tjic 19y ago
The market is about $500 million/year. We're not going to get VC funding, because there's no chance to become a billion dollar player. However, we'd be more than happy to get 2% of the market, and make a 10% profit! As far as why the design isn't overly comic-booky: we did a ton of customer and competitor research before we picked the feature list or started writing the code, or doing the design, and we found that one objection many people have to comic book stores is that they feel like ghettos: they're perceived as not welcoming if you're not already part of the subculture. With that in mind, we consciously chose a design that was fresh and exciting, but didn't echo the super-hero motifs and stylings that many other comic book websites use.
- DanielBMarkham 19y ago
  For what it's worth, I like the design a lot. Was there some kind of process you went through to get it looking like this? Did you prototype and show users, do some sketches, photoshop, etc?
  - tjic 19y ago
    Thanks! You can read a lot more about our design process on our old blog ( http://heavyink.com/blog/ http://heavyink.com/blog/ ), but the short version is: 1) come up with basic idea for website 2) put up a survey 3) ping comic bloggers; get 400 people to take survey 4) narrow down feature list 5) get a UI consultant to help us design how the features get spread across the various pages (lots of "scenario" stuff: "say that you're a young woman shopping for manga. What do you type? Where do you click?"). 6) hand the "wireframes" from the UI consultant off to our graphic designer 7) review the sketches; decide to pick a new graphic designer 8) get sketches back from second graphic designer; tell him "No, make the color scheme more like Netflix". Repeat this last step in 100 different steps: feedback on size of elements, etc. The engineering team provided the feedback, the graphic designer provided the expertise with fonts, layout, etc. 9) done! ...well, actually, nothing is every done. We've got to revamp the tabbed navigation, the RSS customization buttons, and a ton of other stuff...but it was well enough done to go live!

mwerty 19y ago

It's clean but I feel it looks too much like netflix. Suggestion: Put the black splotch on red effect to one or both of the sides.

ALee 19y ago

You're in a pretty cool area. Like I said from a previous post though, I would suggest that you either talk to the guys from ComicVine (to see what they did wrong- they're now working on a another startup even though ComicVine is doing fabulously well) or figure out a way to beat them (I would suggest cribbing the stuff you like from them and then just making it better).. As someone who read too many comic books when young, the digital comic phenomenon is really gaining serious steam. If you could let people upload their fan drawings and do licensing with the major publishers, you could really get a better in. Comicvine did not have that and as a result was never approached by Marvel or DC to acquire (the two companies just were pissed).

natrius 19y ago

Instead of having that huge arrow to get people to install the OpenSearch plugin (or at least in addition to the arrow), you should use OpenSearch autodiscovery. When you go to a site with autodiscovery implemented, the logo box of the search bar glows blue. Go to Wikipedia and look at your search bar to get an idea of what happens. Most users probably either don't notice or don't know what the blue glow means, so I can understand keeping the arrow, but you might as well add the autodiscovery too. Someone might do something nifty someday by crawling the web and scraping those autodiscovery links to build some sort of meta-search engine... that still wouldn't be as useful as Google, but it'd still be nifty. http://www.opensearch.org/Specifications/OpenSearch/1.1#Autodiscovery_in_HTML.2FXHTML http://www.opensearch.org/Specifications/OpenSearch/1.1#Auto...

breck 19y ago
I really really liked the yellow search bar, but I think you should make it point to something more useful than adding a firefox search. I personally don't use that for anything but very major searches(google, ebay, occasionally wikipedia). what if you used that bar to point to a sales special or something that can drive revenue or would be really appealing to users.
asmosoinio 19y ago
I have never noticed the blue glow before, and I must say it is hardly at all visible with my theme (some Vista standard): http://screencast.com/t/bZ5XX0u1uCg http://screencast.com/t/bZ5XX0u1uCg Maybe the glow is a bit more apparent in some other UIs or with other kinds of color themes?

Fuca 19y ago

I like the idea but I think you need a designer Good Luck