Show HN: Strongarm – An Incident Response Platform

http://strongarm.io

by stephendicato • 11 years ago

5 5 11 years ago

strongarm.io

stephendicato3• 11 years ago

I'm a co-founder at Percipient Networks and we are extremely excited to get feedback from HN!

I wrote a short post about the vision for STRONGARM on our blog. It should give a little more context.

https://percipientnetworks.com/blog/strongarm-incident-respo...

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. Thanks!

kevin2• 11 years ago

I felt like it took me too long to figure out what exactly this is and who is the ideal audience this is for. pg writes about matter of fact answers here really well:

http://www.ycombinator.com/howtoapply/#matteroffact

  “One test of whether you’re explaining your idea effectively 
  is to ask how close the reader is to reproducing it. After 
  reading that sentence I’m no closer than I was before, so its 
  content is effectively zero.”

One thing I personally try to find when I go to a site’s page is the one sentence I could easily memorize and repeat to someone else and feel like the most interesting person at the dinner table. That sentence is usually the foundation for any word of mouth growth.

When I read the three paragraphs you’ve laid out for me, the STRONGARM all-caps branding on jargon is overwhelming. So intense. It’s like you’re…strong-arming me with your brand. Sorry.

I did find it weird that your homepage sign up form is basically a way to prefill out the real sign up form.

This—>

http://cl.ly/image/0K411O3Z3E3K

Goes to this->

http://cl.ly/image/2z2Q0t2S0F1A

Did it create the account between steps or did you think asking for a third thing on the page was going to be the actual dealbreaker for conversion? I just can’t follow the logic. Just let me in! There’s not enough stuff on the site information-wise and I finally say, “Okay, sure…I’ll give this a try.” And then you make me jump through more hoops…like this:

http://cl.ly/image/1z3R0m1E0E1j

And then you give me more text to read:

http://cl.ly/image/3b3P451p1I3k

And then FINALLY…I see how this works:

http://cl.ly/image/1J2p0o0s2H0o

It’s the first time I understand that this uses DNS to do its magic. When I go back to your homepage, I see that you did mention DNS once, but it’s lost in all that text and jargon that I skipped.

http://cl.ly/image/2n0d3A1a0M1o

For your setup instructions…just show me the text. Don’t make me click to expand them. As I read through it, I realized that the first step is just getting my DNS setup. If that’s the case, make that easy to find…hell, maybe you don’t need me to create an account at first. Can you protect me now and have me claim it later for notifications and dashboard access?

More importantly, show me this stuff way earlier:

http://cl.ly/image/40090t07442k

That stuff is the meat of what you ACTUALLY offer to me. Don’t make me go through all that above just to get to here. I only made it because I’m reviewing this on purpose.

Here’s a quick suggestion: on your site go through an example or two of threats Strongarm protects against. A How it Works page would be great. Considering your audience, they’re going to want to know the basic mechanics before they start routing traffic through there. The content you have on your site isn’t enough to make anyone feel confident doing what you want. To make them feel confident, show them the future explicitly.

stephendicato3• 11 years ago

Thank you very much for taking the time to register and give us this feedback. It's invaluable to us, especially at this stage.

Regarding the homepage sign up form and registration process, our intent was to lower the barriers of entry. I think we went too far technically and missed the mark explaining our value and how we achieve it.

We will focus on getting the "how" and "why" upfront. We integrate with your DNS. We provide easy, automated threat intelligence directly and through partnerships. We protect you and your data.

Do you have any advice on testing different markets?

Enterprises generally are the ones that know they need to care about security, but also tend to be most resistant to change. Home users might not care, at least not enough to change their network settings, or they may not know how. I suspect our ideal customer is somewhere in the middle, but how do we start to test this?

We are struggling with getting users to our landing page. Do you have recommendations on how to help with that?

Again, thank you for taking the time to help.

kevin2• 11 years ago

Start by talking to your potential users directly and manually going through it with them side by side. You'll learn from what it takes to do it in person and hopefully you'll incorporate that into the site through that process.

My bet is that this is going to be the kind of thing that will tend to grow by outbound processes faster than through inbound DIY signups.

Show HN: Strongarm – An Incident Response Platform

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