honest opinion/feedback would be appreciated. i want to know what i can do to make it better.
This is the weirdest attempt at reverse psychology growth hacking ever.
1. Having to sign up to see what you all had turned me off from the jump. Just skipped it. If your product isn't a necessity - don't make registering to use it one.
2. Kill unnecessary fade ins and outs like on the menu structure at the top. Give me a solid look that's as short and fast as a typical user's attention span.
3. As many others have stated, kill the facebook only registration. It's there for a convenience, but making that mandatory is a buzz kill. Facebook isn't for everyone.
When those 3 things are addressed, I'll happily create an account and survey the rest :)
I can't comment on the usefulness because GILT and Fab and the flash sale craze has finally killed itself, but if you market yourself to the right hipsters, I don't see why this venture wouldn't grow in those locations. Think Hyperbeast.
1. social commerce sites typically have a fraction of the conversion rates to normal e-commerce sites. e-mail re-engagement is very effective for return visits. even a simple best of the week gets high open/click through rates. I do agree with you right off the bat is not ideal. However, given the space I play in, I cannot be in the etsy transaction phase to get sign ups --> see fancy (they now have 10m users - what is your opinion of their strategy)? when i showed the first click through page for 10 seconds , my bounce rate dropped to 60% from 70%. do you know what i should be shooting for?
2. great. thanks for the insight. will do.
3. what's interesting is that i have the email sign up option but i guess it's not clear enough. only thing is fb is great from a social user acquisition standpoint. there's embedded virality aspects within the site such as collection and commenting that works great in acquiring super targeted users (their friends). 70/30 of our users opt with the facebook sign up. but you seem to say that we should make email sign up much more prominent bc sign up is better than no sign up. maybe like a wanelo.com look? do you know the efficacy of having google+ / twitter as well or stick to the most effective one on my platform and then just give email.
i'm not in the flash sale business. i'm in the discovery commerce business (what i want to do is create a platform for local retailers to properly market their products/stores without having to get into a groupon scenario to get discovered. gilt/fab naturally has to move toward a marketplace concept because of growth and market conditions: need to move bigger amount of inventory and in a booming stock market scenario, inventory with good deals is not that readily available.
thanks again so much for your comments and i hope to incorporate a lot of the changes as fast as possible. btw do you know anyone who is a pro tablet/mobile/cross browser interface guy that can make my site usable in other states than just laptop on chrome/firefox? my guys do not have that experience.
also if you would like please use the username: rebecca@reppio.com password: guest to peruse the site.
your feedback has been super helpful so far.
3. I didn't see it. Using lazy registration is better viewed through the lens of "What information can I use to grow." With Google+ , Twitter - what information does it give you to help you grow?
Facebook gives you a large amount of information about the user, their connections and more - but the network isn't as hip as it once was - therefore, make both forms of registration equally accessible. - Promote connecting with Facebook after registration for those who chose not to in the beginning. Show the benefits such as connecting with friends, showing what's popular etc to help. Also, beware of relying on facebook data as email address are now "@facebook.com" by default and others have unreachable college email address. Give them the option to change their email address while keeping their Facebook UserID intact.
I'm a designer/developer. My email is in my bio, if you need help just hit me up.
Your photo of NYC on the homepage seems to be ~18 months out of date. WTC1 is finished as is WTC4
the value is that you get to see inventory that you can't find anywhere else and all consolidated onto a single platform. 500 shops. all in 1 place from ny, la, chicago.
is it better to show the inventory? or have a deeper landing page with more info? we have 10,000 curated lifestyle products with a catalog and guide.
what is the best way to communicate that without getting to wordy?
when i had the signup modal two steps in, noone wanted to sign up bc they can get most of their daily dose of cool items fed to them on 1 page. would it be better to have sign up modal pop up after x time? would that help even if it was 10 seconds?
Just my $0.02.
However there's extensive UX research that the "you must create an account to continue" step in e–commerce is the single greatest reason for shopping cart abandonment (it's not quite apples-to-apples for your site but consider it).
As far as communicating: I just so no reason to interact with the service, it seems like a splash page with a sign up. I get no sense of the sorts of stores you represent, the inventory of items available. Why should I trust it? Why should I do business here?
I'm probably not your typical user, I live in NYC and frequently travel to Chicago so the other question in my head is: why would I use this when I probably can walk down the street (metaphorically) and shop direct? What's the value add to me? What do I get by adding your service as an intermediary between me and the store?
Put another way: if I were to come across this site outside of HN commentary, I see nothing that would cause me to interact with it. You don't have much if any press to go by to judge reputation. Your twitter feed is mostly launch promotions.
Your tumblr feed could be interesting but all of the images link just to your homepage, so even if I had an account I'd have to rummage around to find the item I just clicked on.
I went ahead and created an account and what I find are: - yep, the tumblr links just go to your homepage - you have my gender but still display dresses to me - I clicked through both stores and items and: meh, I don't see a strong value here to buying here.
A final comment: you don't have an SSL side set up on your site. There is zero chance I'll "add a credit card" to a site running without SSL.
did it really make you not sign up?
Also, I can't tell if your site is like Pinterest, where I flag things I'm interested in, or like JackThreads, where the store's product selection is nicely curated.
if you don't mind, i would really appreciate it if you would give it another try on your laptop as i respect the honesty in your answer.
please use the site using the following login info- login: rebecca@reppio.com password: guest
thanks.
btw. can i ask you if you were deterred in signing up bc of the modal that popped up? other people here seemed to be pissed. i've tried to test so many different ways. it seems like if there is a story written about us (pr piece) conversion skyrockets. otherwise, conversion goes down. but if i show inventory and other parts of the site, a lot of people are lazy bc we have a forever scroll function on the shop page so people just browse what they want for 5 minutes and they leave.
any insight would be super helpful. thanks for the compliment!
