What do you think of BotMeNot's homepage?
Hello, Indie Hackers!
As of lately, I've been mostly busy working on developing new features for my latest project - BotMeNot (mostly the Recommendations section for the app).
However, I also want to work on improving my homepage - https://botmenot.com/
This is especially important to me, as I want to launch BotMeNot in Q1 of 2022. Currently, it's in the beta stage, and I'm looking to attract users who are willing to provide feedback.
Therefore, I would really appreciate any feedback that you may have for it!
I think the copy should be more benefits focused. What is the benefit of bot protection to me as a website owner. Or what is the benefit of botmenot to me Vs my existing set up. This info should be headers that jump out to me.
Will it save me money? Give me competitive edge? How? What's a use case or case study?
Secondly there is no clear next step. Sign up or join the beta? Or something else?
Hi!
The point about being more benefits-focused has been now brought up a couple of times. I'll definitely be working on it.
Thank you for sharing your comments!
I don't understand what your product is doing: "How good is your website's
bot protection?"
Bot protection against what? Bot traffic? Bot crawling data on your site? Bot submitting data to your site? Bot creating accounts?
Does it only show if your site is vulnerable, or does it protect against bots somehow? How can it simulate being a bot, if bots come from specific IP. You can not (easily) spoof IP addresses.
Hey, first of all, thanks for showing interest in BotMeNot!
Second, let me try to address as many of your questions as I can.
Generally speaking, yes, against all types of bot traffic. This includes web crawlers, spambots, bots that try to submit other types of undesired content, account-creating bots, etc.
Currently, in its beta stage (which I kindly invite you to try out!), it only tells you how vulnerable a website is. There is no protection functionality.
However, we are currently developing a recommendations functionality, that will help users solve their bot issues.
As for our technical capabilities, our different tests do actually include visiting a site from multiple addresses, using multiple user agents, and other techniques that bots use to "stay under the radar".
I hope I answered your questions.
Please feel free to ask anything else or to test BotMeNot's functionality on your own! Right now it's completely free as it's in the beta stage (every beta user gets 100 free testing credits).
Thanks for the info!
I will just share my thoughts below, as I fail to see the use-case for the service you are building (which means the landing page does not sell it well enough).
I still don't understand how a site can be more or less vulnerable to specific bot attacks and how you can test it.
If this was a problem that could be automatically solved, there would no longer exist DDoS attacks and captchas.
Also, how do you guarantee that your tests are accurate? Once you run enough tests using your own bots/IPs, those will be blacklisted and not as effective.
Overall, I find the service a bit confusing, as I don't understand how it can quantify the issue, what can I do with the data that I receive (actionable steps) and in what way does it affect my business.
I find services that, for example, find vulnerabilities in your site (XSS/ SQL injections) useful as they describe a real issue and an actionable fix.
I am a bit skeptical because I know you can't guarantee 100% bot protection (in the same way you can guarantee XSS protection for example), so any site is always susceptible to automatic crawling and data entry (if the problem was so easy to solve, YouTube wouldn't be filled with comments made by bots).
First of all – thank you for such a detailed response. Few more similar comments we have received from other people made us think – and you are right – it’s not enough that we just measure how vulnerable you are, but we should offer some kind of protection.
We will start working on HTML / JS snippet which should help our users block at least some of bots.
Of course, no 100% guarantee can be given – where there bot protection, bots also get smarter.
You have raised one more important point – the accuracy: our tests are based on the fact that we launch requests on your website – as if we were a bot. We will simply measure how many of these requests got through – this is also what happens in reality, with real bots.
It could be great with a little test like: "Check your website now" and an input box. The result could be just partial, but with the main info: am i safe against bots or not ? You can check the ssl test from Qualys for example: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/
Also, one more thing!
This is actually exactly how it works, in the app.
Please register at https://botmenot.com/ and give it a try :)
I think the point is that Being able to input a URL and run a limited site test would be good. Also shows user what the full product does.
I will sent you an email to check as a beta user, i'm working on fortpress.app, and i think there are synergies between our projects
Wow! That's a very interesting suggestion! Thank you for your answer!
This comment was deleted 4 years ago
Very valuable points, thanks!