Like the hero of the landing page, it is clear and I quickly get what you are trying to do. Entered a number and got to the wizard, this is well done but the typing animation becomes annoying after a while (it was slowing me down). Also the red arrow explaining how to go back was distracting me (had to read what it says), I think a small text link at the bottom of the selection would be more elegant: The questions are so simple, I am unlikely to go back.
Then it got to the part at the end where it asked about the state they live in... Well, they live in Europe. Does that mean your service can't be used? I was unsure for a bit (and somewhat disappointed), then I just clicked "prefer not to say".
Then I got to the results page and it was all clothes. The top recommended one was an outdoor brand, even though I had not selected hiking/camping (or any other outdoor activity) in the previous step. To be honest I was expecting more original gift ideas given the page's promise & focus. Also no photos of products means I would have to spend a lot of time now searching the brand's web shop to see if they have anything cool that fits my budget.
We're actually gearing up to launch a new version of Outdone on Product Hunt later this summer! If you'd like to stay in the know and do us a huge favor, feel free to follow us on Product Hunt! https://www.producthunt.com/products/outdone
Thanks for taking a look @rguldener! Lots of great feedback here.
Definitely going to look into some of the UX items you flagged. I think you're totally spot on about the slow typing animation.
Re: the states — our target audience is the US for now, but you bring up a good point for when we want to add gifts for other areas of the world.
And lastly, totally hear you, about brands vs. specific products. Our goal is to curate a group of great brands that we totally trust and can vouch for. For our next update, we plan to include a few hand-selected products from each brand.
Jon, I agree with @orliesaurus (had some good feedback from him myself!).
You are tackling an interesting problem. What is your business model?
Do you have UX and ML expertise? Do you have someone who deeply understands humans and how we make choices? I'd think that these are the qualities required to make your project a success.
The selection process is too cumbersome. You could streamline it by giving a multi-choice.
Can you find a good gift for yourself? It could be a good test.
I couldn't.
If you focus on apparel, would it be better to make it your value prop?
You could probably be even more focused and limit it to one type of apparel like t-shirts.
Thinking back, I've been gifting books (something useful or rare) and experiences (we do something together, I organize it and it's on me, e.g. a freediving trip to a marine reserve). I probably wouldn't buy any kind of material gift unless I was 100% sure it's needed.
If the above was of value I'd appreciate your impression of stackmuncher.com, specially its homepage and the developer search. Ignore other pages linked from the top.
We're actually gearing up to launch a new version of Outdone on Product Hunt later this summer! If you'd like to stay in the know and do us a huge favor, feel free to follow us on Product Hunt! https://www.producthunt.com/products/outdone
For now, our core business model is affiliate marketing partnerships with the apparel brands. That said, we want every recommendation to be fully data-backed, so we do not let our partnership status influence when or how often we recommend a brand.
As for our team, yes! Among the co-founders and development team we have a Consumer Researcher, landing page UX Expert, and heavy ML expertise. (I don't have ML expertise myself, I fall onto the UX and business strategy side.)
You definitely raise a great point re: gift categories. Our goal is to prove this concept as viable in one gift category — apparel — and then expand the recommendation engine to cover other categories like books, experience, and more! You're totally right that many users would prefer to give something other than clothing.
I'll follow up below with another comment about stackmuncher. Thanks again for taking a look!
Instead of the headline being "Open Directory of Software Developers" I'd suggest adjusting it to something more descriptive and more of a CTA. This is a super quick example but "Find developers of all kinds with just a quick search" and below it you could add a more descriptive subhead.
This could be because I'm not a developer myself, but the search syntax seems unintuitive. Would you mind explaining the reasoning behind this syntax?
Thanks Jon. Valuable points. I've been pondering the whole project name for a while.
Unintuitive search syntax is due to lack of a proper UI.
Tag me when you need another round of reviews. Happy to help.
I love the green footer but the light blue backdrop on the top. I don't know. I tried playing with the colors in my browser. Plain white looks great, it makes your illustrations pop. Check this out https://imgur.com/a/KoyuyRN
Also, the header shadow doesn't look pretty pleasant. I would tweak that too maybe replace it with a narrow grey line.
We're actually gearing up to launch a new version of Outdone on Product Hunt later this summer! If you'd like to stay in the know and do us a huge favor, feel free to follow us on Product Hunt! https://www.producthunt.com/products/outdone
Thanks for taking a look! That’s interesting because I actually don’t love the green footer, but am a fan of the blue backdrop. I agree, though, the plain white you mocked up looks nice!
As far as the language/content/ux, did you find those to be satisfactory? Wondering what you think of the gift recommendation engine.
I tried your website because I have a birthday coming up and I really don't know what to give the person that being said I don't really see what's ai-powered in your website it's not really obvious it just looks like a bunch of if statements where you select a couple of options and it gives you the best match.
The results also came back as brands instead of products meaning there's literally no point in me using your service, because you didnt recommend me a gift, but a brand (superset of possible gifts)
This led to my confidence in gifting using the platform, to be low, despite the promise in the header. My brain immediately told me, "just go to Amazon and pick one of the trending items instead, you will find something better"
We're actually gearing up to launch a new version of Outdone on Product Hunt later this summer! If you'd like to stay in the know and do us a huge favor, feel free to follow us on Product Hunt! https://www.producthunt.com/products/outdone
Here is our thinking.. apparel is the most requested gift category, so for this mvp, we cut the universe down to that level.
I think most people would argue that a given brand’s products are all fairly similar — in that if someone likes one item they make, they likely like most of the items they make. So in that sense, we think this model acts as a data-backed push in the right direction while still leaving some onus on the shopper to grab the specific item that matches their giftgetter the best.
Do you truly feel that telling you a person has a very high likelihood of enjoying a gift from Patagonia is as effective as Amazon’s trending products page? (Honest question!)
All that said, totally fair points you’re making and we really appreciate the feedback. On the Ai front, the engine truly runs on a neural net recommender system powered by real consumer data — but as a user, it’s tough to know that just by trying it.
Definitely not just you. We've heard this feedback from other folks as well!
We're actively looking into how we can merge our current approach with a more product-centric recommendation — while still ensuring all recommendations stem from real consumer data.
Thanks again for taking a look! Throwing you a follow. 🤝
Like the hero of the landing page, it is clear and I quickly get what you are trying to do. Entered a number and got to the wizard, this is well done but the typing animation becomes annoying after a while (it was slowing me down). Also the red arrow explaining how to go back was distracting me (had to read what it says), I think a small text link at the bottom of the selection would be more elegant: The questions are so simple, I am unlikely to go back.
Then it got to the part at the end where it asked about the state they live in... Well, they live in Europe. Does that mean your service can't be used? I was unsure for a bit (and somewhat disappointed), then I just clicked "prefer not to say".
Then I got to the results page and it was all clothes. The top recommended one was an outdoor brand, even though I had not selected hiking/camping (or any other outdoor activity) in the previous step. To be honest I was expecting more original gift ideas given the page's promise & focus. Also no photos of products means I would have to spend a lot of time now searching the brand's web shop to see if they have anything cool that fits my budget.
Thanks again @rguldener!
We're actually gearing up to launch a new version of Outdone on Product Hunt later this summer! If you'd like to stay in the know and do us a huge favor, feel free to follow us on Product Hunt! https://www.producthunt.com/products/outdone
Thanks for taking a look @rguldener! Lots of great feedback here.
Definitely going to look into some of the UX items you flagged. I think you're totally spot on about the slow typing animation.
Re: the states — our target audience is the US for now, but you bring up a good point for when we want to add gifts for other areas of the world.
And lastly, totally hear you, about brands vs. specific products. Our goal is to curate a group of great brands that we totally trust and can vouch for. For our next update, we plan to include a few hand-selected products from each brand.
Jon, I agree with @orliesaurus (had some good feedback from him myself!).
You are tackling an interesting problem. What is your business model?
Do you have UX and ML expertise? Do you have someone who deeply understands humans and how we make choices? I'd think that these are the qualities required to make your project a success.
The selection process is too cumbersome. You could streamline it by giving a multi-choice.
Can you find a good gift for yourself? It could be a good test.
I couldn't.
If you focus on apparel, would it be better to make it your value prop?
You could probably be even more focused and limit it to one type of apparel like t-shirts.
Thinking back, I've been gifting books (something useful or rare) and experiences (we do something together, I organize it and it's on me, e.g. a freediving trip to a marine reserve). I probably wouldn't buy any kind of material gift unless I was 100% sure it's needed.
If the above was of value I'd appreciate your impression of stackmuncher.com, specially its homepage and the developer search. Ignore other pages linked from the top.
Thanks again @rimutaka!
We're actually gearing up to launch a new version of Outdone on Product Hunt later this summer! If you'd like to stay in the know and do us a huge favor, feel free to follow us on Product Hunt! https://www.producthunt.com/products/outdone
Thanks for taking a look @rimutaka!
For now, our core business model is affiliate marketing partnerships with the apparel brands. That said, we want every recommendation to be fully data-backed, so we do not let our partnership status influence when or how often we recommend a brand.
As for our team, yes! Among the co-founders and development team we have a Consumer Researcher, landing page UX Expert, and heavy ML expertise. (I don't have ML expertise myself, I fall onto the UX and business strategy side.)
You definitely raise a great point re: gift categories. Our goal is to prove this concept as viable in one gift category — apparel — and then expand the recommendation engine to cover other categories like books, experience, and more! You're totally right that many users would prefer to give something other than clothing.
I'll follow up below with another comment about stackmuncher. Thanks again for taking a look!
Instead of the headline being "Open Directory of Software Developers" I'd suggest adjusting it to something more descriptive and more of a CTA. This is a super quick example but "Find developers of all kinds with just a quick search" and below it you could add a more descriptive subhead.
This could be because I'm not a developer myself, but the search syntax seems unintuitive. Would you mind explaining the reasoning behind this syntax?
Thanks Jon. Valuable points. I've been pondering the whole project name for a while.
Unintuitive search syntax is due to lack of a proper UI.
Tag me when you need another round of reviews. Happy to help.
Happy to help! I realize building a search engine of that nature can't be an easy task.
Best of luck! Excited to see where you take this.
I love the green footer but the light blue backdrop on the top. I don't know. I tried playing with the colors in my browser. Plain white looks great, it makes your illustrations pop. Check this out https://imgur.com/a/KoyuyRN
Also, the header shadow doesn't look pretty pleasant. I would tweak that too maybe replace it with a narrow grey line.
Thanks again @techPackets!
We're actually gearing up to launch a new version of Outdone on Product Hunt later this summer! If you'd like to stay in the know and do us a huge favor, feel free to follow us on Product Hunt! https://www.producthunt.com/products/outdone
Thanks for taking a look! That’s interesting because I actually don’t love the green footer, but am a fan of the blue backdrop. I agree, though, the plain white you mocked up looks nice!
As far as the language/content/ux, did you find those to be satisfactory? Wondering what you think of the gift recommendation engine.
I tried your website because I have a birthday coming up and I really don't know what to give the person that being said I don't really see what's ai-powered in your website it's not really obvious it just looks like a bunch of if statements where you select a couple of options and it gives you the best match.
The results also came back as brands instead of products meaning there's literally no point in me using your service, because you didnt recommend me a gift, but a brand (superset of possible gifts)
This led to my confidence in gifting using the platform, to be low, despite the promise in the header. My brain immediately told me, "just go to Amazon and pick one of the trending items instead, you will find something better"
Thanks again @orliesaurus!
We're actually gearing up to launch a new version of Outdone on Product Hunt later this summer! If you'd like to stay in the know and do us a huge favor, feel free to follow us on Product Hunt! https://www.producthunt.com/products/outdone
First off, thanks so much for taking a look!
Here is our thinking.. apparel is the most requested gift category, so for this mvp, we cut the universe down to that level.
I think most people would argue that a given brand’s products are all fairly similar — in that if someone likes one item they make, they likely like most of the items they make. So in that sense, we think this model acts as a data-backed push in the right direction while still leaving some onus on the shopper to grab the specific item that matches their giftgetter the best.
Do you truly feel that telling you a person has a very high likelihood of enjoying a gift from Patagonia is as effective as Amazon’s trending products page? (Honest question!)
All that said, totally fair points you’re making and we really appreciate the feedback. On the Ai front, the engine truly runs on a neural net recommender system powered by real consumer data — but as a user, it’s tough to know that just by trying it.
I think that because the world of ecom puts folks in front of products ( or vice versa) showing brand first is weird to me. Maybe it's just me tho?!
Definitely not just you. We've heard this feedback from other folks as well!
We're actively looking into how we can merge our current approach with a more product-centric recommendation — while still ensuring all recommendations stem from real consumer data.
Thanks again for taking a look! Throwing you a follow. 🤝