Digital Marketplace and Community for Freelancers - Thoughts?
Hey everyone,
I recently released my side project called Hypelance a few weeks ago. The response has been quite positive, however, it has been a bit of a struggle to grow the website and gain exposure.
We're building this platform aiming to resolve all the issues other existing platforms bring, such as the removal of high oppressive restrictions and the existence of transaction fees. It is an ethically focused venture which I do want to grow.
I'd really love to hear more about what could be improved about the site? What should I do to grow it with my lack of marketing funds (I'm a student)?
Getting feedback would immensely be appreciated as that really does let me open up my eyes and aim to offer a better product for everyone.
Site for reference: https://hypelance.com/
I poked around it a bit, nice job on the UI! One thing I would say is you will probably need a search feature at some point once there are a decent number of posts. The other thing I would say is that it looks like you are targeting a whole lot markets here, seems like that is going to be really hard to grow unless you focus on some specific niche.
Hey! Thanks for checking it out.
We actually do have a search feature, it’s at the top of our sidebar. Do you think it’s too hidden or perhaps that was just a minor spot you overlooked on accident?
Our targeted niche would be freelancers and their respective clients to form an open marketplace for them. All the sub-niches within that do complement each other and I’m not sure by narrowing and restricting our scope, we would nurture a better growth from our platform. As one of our goals is to cater and make this platform accessible to all freelancers in the industry, it would be difficult to start selectively picking them out.
Oh yeah I see now, I went back and checked and your search bar disappears once you navigate down into a specific marketplace forum. I didn't notice it back on the main marketplace page.
Yeah I get that, I was just offering the traditional advice of "niche down" for marketing purposes. If you think you can market it better to a larger audience, go for it!
I definitely will look into making the searchbar more accessible in other regions of the website.
We opted to move the searchbar off our header to our sidebar in order to reduce clutter and make the header more low profile from a design perspective, however, from a functional view I can see how it is less accessible when viewing other parts of our website. Thank you for your input!