Home
Starting Up
Case Studies DB
Products
Ideas DB
Vibe Coding Tools
Subscribe to IH+
Starting Up
Case Studies
Ideas DB
Products DB
Sign in
Join
13
Likes
26
Comments
Can you Roast My Website please?
by
Bart Boch
https://Forever.so
Hey Bart, I think it's great! I really like the design.
My one piece of feedback is that it would be great to put more of the problem you're solving in the hero section.
It was only when I went to the "Why Immutable?" page that I read:
"The issue with regular cloud storage providers is that your files are still at the risk of getting deleted by a malicious party that obtains an access to your account...
Immutable cloud storage offers the highest level of file retention available."
This 👆 is really interesting to me but wasn't immediately apparent just from your front page. Hope this is helpful!
Hi, Georgia!
Thank you for the feedback. I am reluctant to put a "solution" in a Hero since I have not defined my public yet (no customers, officially launched just 2 days ago). I don't want to alienate people, without being sure who is my target audience, but then, the quote you selected is actually quite neutral, so I'll test it out now :)
This is very helpful - I am working in marketing and have done dozens, if not hundreds website optimizations, but the old saying says - never review your own website.
For the last 3 weeks I've been trapped in a loop, where I constantly change something and overoptimize - and still feel there is something wrong with it, I just can't figure out what's that...
+1 On what @georgiabaz said.
A few hero title ideas:
Something to get the creative juices flowing!
Hi Bart !
Your platform looks interesting, but I am somehow feel: the immutable word (which I perfectly understand as a software architect) can be hardly spent in terms of marketing. The most relevant thing for data which is hosted by a provider is security in terms of protecting the access to it, maliciously manipulating it or not is not exactly the first thing that comes, on average, to people's mind.
So, your challenge is to leverage the immutability thing, because failing at this could potentially cause the user to fallback to the idea you have tried to address in the FAQ (why not Dropbox/etc...).
My 2 cents :)
Not 2 cents for sure, way more! ;)
That's the direction I haven't determined yet.
The word "immutable" is crucial here (marketing and long-term perspective), but I think I need to smuggle it softly, rather than push it as much as I do now. It's this difficult state, where I know, that if I'll forfeit using this word now, it might be impossible to fully recover from it in the future (marketing and branding wise).
The original header was not "The Immutable", but "The Most Durable" - what do you think? "Secure" is a nice word, but vague.
I am redoing the whole header based on feedback here, so I'll try to make it clearer.
Thank you!
I think that "The Most Durable", regardless it will be the final claim or not, is a way better starting point, because its real meaning does not lie in a concept which only professionals would really understand and appreciate.
Go go go ! :)
Definitely. The word "immutable" had me expecting a product for developers. I was surprised to scroll down to see a GUI for interacting with the files instead of API docs.
I have been coding this for the last 9 months, 12-16 hours a day, 7 days a week. I forgot how not to speak technical language ;) Time to re-learn!
Hey Bart, interesting idea. I agree with the other comment that bringing a crisp message in the hero section about the problem you are solving would be beneficial. Some of the wording in the sections is a bit awkward as well, it might be good to take another pass at that. For example,
I would reword this to something like:
Do you have an idea of your target audience?
Thank you! The script is constant work in progress, I'll try to finalize it within a week or two. The issue is that my background is heavily marketing-influenced, so I caught myself in a trap of constant fixes, optimizations, and re-adjustments. I'll need to look at it from the distance I think. Try to normalize it, and finalize. Focus on other parts finally.
My target audience? Well it's yet tbd, but I am starting promoting this week to SMB's, Startups (hello IndieHackers), and individuals valuing their photos/memories highly.
TBH (as mentioned) my marketing background went wild, and so far it's:
-accounting/accountants (they are required by law to keep files for set period of time)
-architects & associated (same as above)
-lawyers & associated (same as above)
-designers
-photographers & cameramen
-video game developers
-software developers
-startups
-SMB's
-individuals valuing their memories
-white-collar contractors
-doctors & associated
-archivists
-administration departments
-HR
etc.
And that's not all of them. In every one of those niches, I would feel comfortable marketing and selling. The thing is that I don't want to limit myself to a single niche, yet I plan to use content marketing to reach them.
Thank you for the feedback, I appreciate it!
Usually not until something bad happens. Like mistaken closure of cloud accounts (happens), hardware failure, failed redundancy. Cloud storage offers usually 9 9s (meaning the chances of your file to survive for a period of time is 99.999999999% - it looks good as a number, but when you'll imagine, those large cloud providers receive billions of files every few moments, those chances are not so slim anymore), we store files in 3 independent providers, independent geographical locations, with no way of them ever disrupting themselves. The chance from "plausible" goes to "astronomical".
The images will be gone within few days :) As for illustrations - I have no illustrative skills - the one I used was purchased with a theme, so that'll be a tough task. I'll try to figure something out though.
Working on it as we speak.
Thank you for your replies, I really appreciate them!
You need to find a concise way to give this explanation. I just got this from wasabi (s3 compatible service that I use) in their newsletter couple of days ago. You may find this interesting + maybe it will help you find a way to convey the message
Regarding stock photos and illustrations - I can recommend freepik.com. They have subscription for ~11euro for 100 images a day, and if you browse their site long enough you'll get a discount to 7.5
For free options you can use unsplash.com for images and undraw.com for illustrations.
If you don't have design skills, undeaw is the most limited, but will give you very consistent design with your brand colors and more than enough options to choose from, which I think gives the most professional impression.
Regarding the large blocks of text in the middle, not all of them are equally important. Choose a few and make "Benefits" section that tells me why I should choose you over other solutions. Everything else is maybe "features" page.
Also if you already have some clients, a testimonials section will help you get credibility
Good luck
I'm no design expert, one little thing I noticed is that your hero CTA button flies off to the left when you re-size the window, not stays at the center. But looks great!
Ah, you are right! Same here! I'll try to contain his desire to travel :) Thank you!
Great stuff.
On my desktop, the design looks amazing and I like the text. It's not as good on my mobile and that might be because there's just as much text.
I kind of like the term "Immutable". It makes you sound kinda smart (yes, I realise that what I just typed makes me sound like an idiot). Some sales people want to be your buddy and some sales people wear a lab coat and tell you the smart and prudent thing to do.
As a Linux user, I wanted to know "Is this gonna work on my platform?". I mean, I guess it's web based but I want to know it's not some Windows plugin.
Thank you, you are not alone with "to much text". I'll try to adjust it. I'll also work more on mobile design (my main focus now was desktop).
Maybe I can be both :)
It is web-based (with native apps coming in 2022), and we are platform immune - it doesn't matter from where do you send us a file, in what state, or which OS you use - it will be preserved and returned exactly the same.
If you'd be ever interested in such a service I am hunting for first users here:
https://forever.so/launch.html
🆘 If you have to explain what immutable means to your audience you're doing something wrong.
🆘 The random images of a library and a rocket ship launching aren't on "brand" with the rest of the site, and too generic.
🆘 There's no mention of why I should trust you over something AWS built - even if I get to pay more, I can trust AWS. You? I don't know you
🆘 Two call to actions in the above the fold section: Discover and Launch. What's it gonna be
🆘 Your navigation links are confusing, first it's Why Immutable, then it becomes Why Permanent. Which one is it gonna be?
✅ The best part of your whole website is this sentence: "Immutability provides COMPLETE IMMUNITY of uploaded files to ransomware and hacker attacks." I think this notion is what you should create your website around.
Thank you for the reply :)
For now, I don't have a determined audience - I am testing the grounds, and once I'll find one, I'll definitely adjust the LP to them. Also, I think I need to define "Immutable" for a simple reason - non-native audience members don't need to know such advanced words, so it would alienate them and increase bounce rate. It's thin ice, but for my business, marketing identity, and possible future, I need to keep the word "Immutable". It's a chicken and egg problem - I'm the first customer-oriented dedicated immutable cloud storage, meaning, I need to explain what I do, and coin this name into the mainstream.
Images will be gone soon, I promise ;)
Regarding AWS, that's a really good point. Pretty much the idea is that we utilize AWS, and two other clouds at the same time, creating unmatched redundancy, but I need to find a way to explain this without burning bridges somehow.
"Launch" changed to "Login" :)
Totally missed that! Thank you! I'll change in a moment.
I am redoing the heading right now based on the comments in this thread, it's definitely crying for attention right now!
Thank you very much, amazing feedback!
I like the design. Waaaay too much text.
Cut the text by 80%.
Figure out places to add the text instead, in case the visitor wants to know more.
to me, it's unclear what the "launch" button does, especially since it takes me to a login page. If that, perhaps it should be called "login?"
Also, make the images relevant or otherwise remove them.
Interesting, I usually prefer more text, than less, when I want to invest myself (time/money) into something, I might be using for years. But I'll look for a way to "unclog" the landing page a bit though.
The button is "Login", I was just tinkering with it, it's back to normal now :)
Pictures will definitely go - they are placeholders for now (I am still deciding, on if I should completely re-do the section with them).
Thank you, I appreciate the input!
I added it to my 'design case studies' folder. Well done. I'm a little unclear about what sort of cloud storage this is - it looks like a backup solution? I'm unclear what the use case for immutable storage is too
I must be missing something.
I don’t really see the advantages over an s3 or b2 bucket with cloudfront or cloudflare in front. Immutable? Just enable versioning or use IAM / api keys as intended (minimum scope). Worried about catastrophic failure? AWS already has >3 availability zones (AZs) by default with S3 storage.
I don‘t know, but by the time a person knows what immutable means they probably already know how to make a static bucket.
Plus, I feel like the tiers are way too big—$25/mo vs pennies/mo is a huge difference.
Also, I think you’re underestimating the inherent value of the S3 compatible ecosystem. It’s built into so many libraries, apps, and more. I can’t imagine giving that up. Especially when the alternative to the standard is an unknown entity—you.
Anyway, apologies if this comes across as overly critical. I just don’t see it. As a developer, it’s definitely not for me.
Absolutely. You said it on the end - this is not for developers.
I never even tried to go this route. This is for 90% of other people, people that don't understand and cannot do this (and maybe developers that want to offload this to a dedicated solution, to not have to worry about it).
There will be always a space for DIY, and for fully managed options.
It's a big market, I am not trying to eat the whole cake, just a slice of it.
Digital Ocean managed to grow even with Amazon as a competitor. It was always "just spin an instance", yet it differentiated itself by offering easy-to-use, reliable, semi-automated service.
BTW, keeping all eggs in just AWS is risky - there is always a slim chance, you'll get burned. Diversity (also with vendors) is the key to true redundancy.
The section showing price and specifications: change the color from red to green. Red feels like everything mentioned there is not included. Wrong signalling.
Not sure what do you mean - on the left is what we provide, and on the right is what major cloud providers provide. Is that not clear? Red, means much less than what we provide, grey is less than what we provide.