Ask HN: Bad writing? Product unconvincing? Please review my product pages!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2598209

by petervandijck • 15 years ago

7 11 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I've written some sales-y pages for a product that's almost finished, I'd love to get some feedback on the pages here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/443080/landing/home.html

Is the writing bad? Is the product not well explained? Is the value proposition unclear? Would you sign up?

Please feel free to tear this apart, I'd love any input, I've been working on this by myself so I'm getting a bit stuck... Thanks!!

petervandijck4• 15 years ago

Clicky: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/443080/landing/home.html

(you can click around, there are like 4 pages, it's just html, it doesn't actually do anything yet)

thaumaturgy2• 15 years ago

Ironically, I think you might want to consider hiring a designer.

The A-number-one thing I notice about it is that it's one of those nice designs that looks like every other startup's templated nice design. My eyes flit around the first page looking for a place to land; the logo and the slogan next to it go unnoticed for a bit. The icons next to each item do not add anything at all to what you're trying to say. About the second thing I notice is the Gmail-like interface; since I'm curious about it, I click through the slides, but none of them are really blowing me away.

To me, there's no ... "pop". Nothing about it blows my hair back.

The bottom text boxes get clipped on my 17" widescreen display. Not sure if that was intentional or not.

Also, what's your target audience here? If it's other startups, then an iteration on this design might work well. If it's enterprise ... then I don't think you're going to get their attention with anything like this design.

It's an interesting idea though! ...I think?

autalpha• 15 years ago

Ditto on the design and the mismatching of icons and messages. Those slides don't really seem to help your case here. But I'm also concerned with the language usages ("Stop hiring like an amateur!") can be a bit too forward, assuming and jarring. Maybe that's the "slick" way of talking that I am not used to.

pbreit• 15 years ago

The copy and design look fine to me. As long as you are freemium (not just a free trial!) and the service works well, you are OK to launch and and test and iterate.

mattgratt2• 15 years ago

I would refocus the above-the-fold copy on a 'Hire Faster' value proposition rather than a 'Hire a better tech team' value prop. I am young and foolish, but I don't see how the quality of the hire increases by using your system - but I do see how it becomes easier to manage the entire process, so I can spend more time closing quality talent and less time pushing paper.

Unless I'm mistaken, this is like a hiring automation system - sort of like Salesforce.com for tracking your hiring. If I look at Salesforce.com's Sales Cloud's landing page (http://www.salesforce.com/crm/sales-force-automation/) they focus on giving your reps more time selling and less time managing - maybe a good value prop for Hirely as well?

I think "Don't Let Candidates Fall Through the Cracks" might be an interesting sub-head.

Additionally, pull the Guy Kawasaki quote. I find it confusing and distracting. I start wondering what Guy Kawasaki has to do with your product, and start trying to connect a hiring management system with actual hire quality.

I also don't see "See Everything About a Candidate on One Screen" clearly explained on the first page - which seems to be the most compelling part of your "the story of hirely" page.

Hope this helps - would love to help more.

petervandijck4• 15 years ago

Good stuff, rewriting :)

mattgratt2• 15 years ago

Cool - feel free to email me (email in profile) as your landing pages move along. I've done hiring at small startups so I get the product and the value.

petervandijck4• 15 years ago

I did a totally new landing page here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/443080/design/index.html

Any better?

thaumaturgy2• 15 years ago

I like that a lot more.

petervandijck4• 15 years ago

Thanks, me too :)

bo_Olean• 15 years ago

Second design looks better in content but I liked the first one. You could make the slider auto scroll with some slick graphics of your app (slider arrows are doing no good).

Ask HN: Bad writing? Product unconvincing? Please review my product pages!

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