I have just launched, and Indie Hackers is the first to know
Hi all --
First of all, thanks to everyone here for all of the sharing and positive energy. It's been a great 6 months of dev and learning. As my most frequented community resource (outside of dev), I thought it would be appropriate to make the first announcement here:
I decided to stop tinkering and launch. I finally did it -- I deployed my site 15 minutes ago and I await the Google robots. It is fully operational and ready for business.
Hashgear
I would love to know if the landing page communicates my business quickly -- do you understand what it is? How long did it take to get that understanding? Did you view it on desktop or mobile? I would love to get some feedback before I do a media blitz -- thanks in advance and I hope it's interesting for you!
Cheers,
Marc
Founder, Hashgear
Hey there,
My 2 cents; spend about 10 seconds scanning the page, but I truly have no idea what it is your business is selling/providing. Additionally, the landing page feels kinda cluttered, messy and a bit dull. You might want to consider: coming up with clear and concise messaging so your visitors understand what you're selling; maybe purchase a template or something to implement a nicer design (or at the very least sprinkle some color in there).
Hey Mattijs --
Appreciate the honest feedback. As you know, this is why we do user tests -- what seems "clear and concise" to me may not be to others.
I'm curious, did you look at the site on mobile or desktop? Did you engage with the carousel at all?
Also -- what confuses you about the tagline: "Products with the latest trending hashtags." Perhaps you are thinking of software products???
I was thinking that the average American (not software engineer) is not thinking about virtual products, and if they engage with the carousel at all (which has a 4-slide, concise description of how everything works) or see the photo of the woman wearing a hashtag t-shirt, that they will make the connection. Could be wrong though!
Cheers,
Marc
I'd be very careful with making those assumptions.
I'd indeed say that the term "products" is rather ambiguous. Rather than hoping or assuming your visitors will figure out what kind of products this is about (and trust me, the majority of visitors is not going to put in any effort trying to figure this out), why not simply make it 100% clear?
Along the same lines, expecting the user to interact with a carousel only to figure out what your product is about, is not a good idea. Having interactive elements, such as a carousel, is perfectly fine, however the user should be able to figure out what your business is about without having to interact with them (again, the majority of visitors is not going to bother).
I eliminated the carousel. It's still not perfect... but I think it's much better. New version here:
https://hashgear.shop/
You may have already thought of this, but it would be interesting to build a bot that links to a shirt when someone uses a hashtag. That, or you could do it like the tread-reader app where someone requests a shirt to be made out of the hashtag.
Cool concept! Good luck with it all.
Thanks Jordan!
Indeed, the idea of a bot was one of the first ideas in the concept phase. Creating a kind of feedback loop.
HOWEVER, unfortunately Twitter recently changed their automated tweet policy to ban automated tweets to trending hashtags -- which is exactly the time that any bot would want to tweet out products related to trending hashtags. :(
Ultimately what this means is that I have to pay for advertising. Which is also not a deal-breaker -- I plan to implement some kind of automated twitter advertising in the future, but I'm going to begin with manually creating campaigns and trying to get a sense of ROI on the advertising $$. That way I don't blow a ton of cash with no return by hooking up my Twitter ads account to the firehose.
There are other, less spendy ways I'm considering getting the engine started -- including word of mouth campaigns, media exposure, and Twitter for Business for starters. So... we'll see.
Cheers,
Marc
Hi Marc.
I was able to get into business, not quickly, but acceptable fast enough. Better wording on the top of landing page would help a lot. I agree with other comments that the landing page can be improved in clarity and design, but that is something that you can iterate. For example, you may want to avoid a clear separation in the middle from the top image and the US map, on desktop. I also have only partial view of the map, and have to scroll to se the rest. It would be good to have it above or below the browser visual content separator line.
Another observation that I would like to share is the page loading speed. It should be improved, as I noticed that listing pages take up to 5s to load. It would be very beneficial to make them a bit faster.
I wish you success with Hashgear! :)
Yep, load time is definitely a concern. I'm going to work on optimizing that just as soon as I can get the landing page cleaned up. Thanks for the feedback!
Hi all -- I took the feedback to heart and did a pretty substantial rework. It's not perfect yet, but I think it's conveying the message better. Thanks everyone for the comments.
https://hashgear.shop/
Congratulations on launching. That is one of the hardest things to do. But with that said I have a few comments.
Based on your comments it looks like there should be a carousel but I just do not see it. I checked on Firefox with tracking protection on and on Chrome on a PC. But all I see is a static image on the top with #AimHigher
First time around I was not sure what the site was for, I assumed it was a collection of trending hashtags. I scrolled down the site a bit and reached the Blog section and assumed it was the end. I guess I am just used to seeing links to the blog at the end of a page not in the middle. That plus the sticky button "See what is trending" plus the image with "A hashtag starts trending..." reinforced my idea that it was just a hashtag list of some kind
Second time around when I accidentally scrolled down, I finally saw the product images and understood what the site did. You might want to move the product images up to the top or just below the hero image.
Like someone else mentioned it is not very clear what the site is about. The word Product can mean many things to many people. I honestly had no idea what it meant. I would suggest being more concrete and saying something like "t-shirts, mugs, backpacks with the latest hashtags on them" or something along those lines which is easy to understand immediately and there is no confusion about the word "Products"
You might want to look at your testimonials. Again it is pretty confusing, it talks about donations. Now where else is there talk about donations. If donations are your unique selling feature then talk about it before hand.
Hope that helps.
Yep, this is all super helpful -- thank you for taking the time to give detailed feedback. Super appreciated.
It looks like the carousel is really not working at all. On desktop, the image of "A hashtag starts trending..." is the first image of the carousel -- there are a couple little buttons on the left of the text to move between slides, or if you click it, it advances. But it kind of sucks as an interaction. Nobody finds it.
On mobile, there is a pulsing arrow to the right of the map image... I will test with users to see if they find it organically. Some of the problem that people are having here is that they aren't finding that carousel. In live user tests, when I direct them to the carousel, as soon as they hit slide 2 they're like "ooooohhhhh, i totally get it" -- and the carousel also explains how the philanthropy (donating to organizations) works.
So... I'm leaning towards ditching the carousel, on desktop for sure. Might keep it on mobile but only if people find it and use it in user tests. I think people are so used to just scroll, scroll, scrolling these days, thanks to "feed" mentality. So maybe it's just best that I do that.
UPDATE: Changed the language from "products" to "apparel and home goods" -- and moved the blog to the bottom so products surface faster.
I noticed the flashing arrow but ignored it since I did not think the image was really relevant since it was just showing a map with hashtags.
Question for you is this. If people are telling you that they get it when they see slide 2. Why are you not putting that content in the open, why are you hiding behind buttons in a slide? This is the way I look at things "Do not make me think" is a very important rule in design. Making me click a button makes me think. Looking at the slides does give me a better idea about what you do. Why not put it in the web page rather than behind a carousel, so that i get to it on a normal scroll?
An earlier version of the page had slides 1 and 2 content all together in one graphic. I think I moved to the carousel because I needed to add more information (slides 3 + 4) and the responsive layout was becoming a challenge. Trying to avoid getting too cluttered. Either way, it was clearly a mistake and all of this feedback has confirmed that I need to ditch the carousel. Will tackle it tonight after work/family time.
:)
Hey there, congrats 🎉💪🏻
Awesome you launched and didn't five into the pitfall of perfection or doubt too long.
The site looks crisp from my iPhone 7. The aim and product are told clearly.
My feedback: show more clear you're donating money for a good cause more clearly (it's OK to do that). It is now "hidden" in the customer citations..
Also, describing the steps (choose from the trending hash tags, choose product,...) very clear and short would be of interest too. It shows people how easy it is to choose and order.
Keep up the work 🙌🏻
Thanks Edwin, appreciate the positivity. :)
I'm also glad you seemed to have less trouble deciphering Hashgear than some others. There's still work to be done on the landing page, but I couldn't let it get in the way of launching any longer. :P
I'm curious, you say the philanthropy aspect was buried in the user comments... this leads me to believe that you may not have interacted with (or known about) the carousel at the top, or perhaps you didn't make it to slide 4.
I added a pulsing arrow on mobile to indicate that the carousel is swipe-able. Did that come through for you?
Thanks for the feedback.
Marc
Somehow missed that.i also seem to be skipping flashy things and look for a "bottom-line" of what the business is about. Whether it is bullits or a paragraph as long as it isn't "hidden" under a click or two.
All the best 🚀
I'm not quite sure why someone would want a hoodie with #90DayFinance on it. The "testimonials" didn't make a lot of sense to me either.
Haha -- this is all fair commentary. A few notes:
I am not here to judge what or why people will or will not want certain products. That is the beauty of how ecosystems work. I myself am not part of the #90DayFiance ecosystem, and I wouldn't be caught dead in anything with that hashtag on it. But it is trending for a reason -- there are 20k tweets about it in the last 24 hours. People love their social media, and they love their pop culture.
I don't need every product to sell a thousand items to make money. I have 40,000 products from 5 months of social media, and if I sell an average of 1 unit for every product I make I am in the $1M ARR range. That is optimistic in my mind. I am aiming for enough profit to pay for a family vacation every year.
As for the testimonials, they are placeholders for the time being. I just launched so I actually don't have a lot of real quotes yet. I'm going to make some edits in the meantime.
Cheers,
Marc