YC SUS: Aaron Epstein and Eric Migicovsky give website feedback

50m read

·Nov 3, 2024

Good morning! It's Eric. I'm here with Aaron from YC. Aaron, do you mind giving us a little bit of an introduction?

Jerusalem, sure! Hey, so I'm Aaron Epstein. I actually went through YC in winter 2010, so 10 years ago at this point. I was co-founder of a company called Creative Market. It's a marketplace for graphic design assets where people, designers all around the world who create fonts and Photoshop files and stock photos and website themes, they come, they sell them on the platform, and it's a great way to get really great design work.

So now I am back at YC as a visiting partner and excited to help all of you startups, cool founders, get some feedback on your designs and put together some really great work. So here's how we're gonna do this: we've actually got two hours of Aaron's time, which is amazing. We're gonna dive right in. In a few seconds, we're gonna go fullscreen so you'll be able to see what we're seeing, and we will go through a pretty long list of startups and review their websites.

So we're gonna start with the first company called SEO Buddy, and we're coming at this from complete zero, so it's as if we're seeing it for the first time. Look at usertesting.com, if you've ever used that before. User testing but with YC partners, okay?

SEO Buddy: grow your search traffic and outrank your competitors with just 20 minutes of work per day.

Twenty minutes of work per day? Yeah, so that sounds like a lot of work. Yeah, like I think you're trying to make it seem like it's not a lot of work, but when you're like, "20 minutes of work," like that sounds hard.

Yeah, that was my first reaction as well. I think you're trying to target a specific customer a little bit too early in the cycle. Like I get what you're doing. You're visualizing the person who's already experienced the pain of having to manage SEO and search engine optimization themselves, but it might be just a bit too early.

Yeah, so the sub-headline is kind of a light on a white background instead of getting lost in endless reports and spreadsheets. SEO Buddy turns the daunting world of SEO into easy-to-complete daily missions.

So I'm not sure what daily missions are. Okay, so this is for growing my search traffic and outranking competitors, but I'm not exactly sure how and why. I think it's good that you have, like, hey, there's a free trial, there's a very clear call to action. You've got the two orange buttons; the color stands out, grabs my attention. You've got the fire emoji: "111 companies signed up in the last month." That's good for showing social proof and helping build trust with people.

I think there's some stat where, you know, Airbnb and booking.com and all those sites, when they put things like, you know, "95 percent of people did this action" or "there's only two left at this price," I think that significantly increases conversion rates.

So I think the gray subtext is just hard to really sink into, and because you've got such a long header right here, that it could be a bit shorter. I think you could probably drop this second part here and maybe bump this up to make it a little bit larger and easier to read.

Let's keep going! You've got some social proof here. It doesn't truly land with me. I can't tell whether these are news clippings or companies. Yeah, and I've never heard of any of those. I assume they're companies.

Yeah, so lets me know like you have customers, but not ones that I would trust. You know, they could just be your friends' companies or house companies you've even created. One thing some startups' companies have been doing is putting their startup school affiliation on the main page.

Yeah, SEO is not rocket science, but it's not easy to be successful. I have too many negatives here. You could flip the sentence around to say like, "SEO is difficult; we make it easy," or like ending on a positive note here.

Yeah, I feel like this whole section also is probably telling your target audience something they already know, which is like SEO is hard. But still, you know, we're like halfway down the page right now, and I’m not sure what's different about what SEO Buddy can do versus any other tool that's out there. I feel like this is like a pretty crowded, competitive space.

Yeah, and the main thing that I'm looking for is like, what is SEO Buddy and how is it better or different than any other tool that can help increase your search engine rankings? So one way you could consider doing this is presenting like what the world was like before SEO Buddy and then what the world is with SEO Buddy. You're kind of getting into it here, right at the top, that like this takes less time than the alternative.

Yeah, okay, so now we're actually getting into what SEO Buddy really is. It's an all-in-one SEO productivity tool that helps you grow your search traffic, outsmart your competitors, and take control of your entire SEO strategy. You've got backlink monitoring, competitor research, content manager, and outreach tool.

We've got some screenshots here, okay? A feature is coming soon, but this is now I'm starting to understand like what your product actually is and does and why I should use it. So I would recommend taking this and putting this like much higher.

I'll pick it up. Yeah, okay, it's a little, it's still a little bit crowded in terms of trying to understand exactly what yours does. There's just a lot on the screen. Yeah, there's a lot going on, and I think probably what you're trying to do is you have a full-featured product, and you're trying to communicate everything that you can do, but really it's usually better if you can be a lot more focused and focus on what are the top one, two, three features that are the main reason somebody would use this and just be really crisp and clear about those, the benefits that they provide.

That's another thing like don't sell features to people. You know, you're saying track backlinks and keyword performance, like that's a feature that you do. What's the benefit that somebody gets as a result of that? You know, maybe it's like they can rank higher, they can figure out what's working and what's not in their ad campaigns like lots of different things that you can do but frame it as like the superpowers that you give people rather than, you know, the specific literal feature that you provide.

Okay, anything to wrap up on this one before we move on to the next? No, I mean, in general, I think it's pretty strong, like it's straightforward. You have the talk to me thing if somebody needs help at the bottom.

Interesting! I actually seen some before. Have you, like, maybe you could experiment with this auto popping up, now you probably wouldn't want to roll the audio, but like having that pop up would be a worthwhile experiment.

Yeah, okay, so now we're further at the bottom and so you're starting to humanize it a little bit more. I see who's behind this thing, makes me want to support you if I know your story, so I think that's good. Yeah, it's cool stuff here. Thanks!

Next up, Computus, your Drive.

Sure! Okay, right off the bat, Computus, the world's best crypto tax tools. Okay, so I assume this is for people that have a lot of crypto and they need to file taxes on it, and then you say find out what we mean, and you should just tell me what you mean rather than making me click another link to find out what you mean. I think it opens an email link.

Okay, yeah, so that's weird. So I'm not sure why that's happening. There's not much going on here, so I don't really know, yeah. You know what to make of this. There's no image.

Yeah, if I need something to draw my attention to, like the top, generate tax documents, monitor expected tax obligations, and make sense of crypto investments.

Okay, so I can generate tax documents. That means something to me. I can figure out what I have to pay taxes on, and I'm not sure what "making sense of crypto expenses" maybe it could be more specific with that.

Okay, now again, do the services just a note about design, like oftentimes I love to copy websites that I really enjoy or really like using. This seems like you copied kind of a bootstrap template or something but then kind of missed out on like what's tying the page together.

Yeah, this seems super bare-bones, almost to the point where it doesn't build trust and credibility with me, and especially if we're dealing with something like you know, you're talking about tax advice and a portfolio that sounds like serious where it's gonna cost me a lot of money if it gets messed up.

Yeah, so building trust and confidence is really important here. So the first one that we just looked at, they had a bunch of logos where even if I hadn't heard of them, it's like, "Right, people are using this." They talked, you know, this little fire icon: "111 people had used this recently." You saw the face of the person that was behind it and heard his story.

I'm guessing this is probably like a landing page just to collect interest, so rather than like a live service, considering that you're mostly trying to funnel me towards like a consultation.

Yeah, which is cool. You're trying to like gather interest from users, but in order to get people to trust you enough to share their crypto kind of story, I think you're definitely going to need to like...how would you recommend positioning this as like a website where the founder could like gather feedback, launch their product?

Well, first of all, I would just, you know, you talked about copying some other site. First, you just need to hit a certain bar of like trust and credibility for anybody to give any type of feedback or put in their information. You know, even things like having a logo rather than just typing the name of your company, it just makes you look more legitimate. If you have any images of the product or something like that, that makes me think there's like a real thing here.

So I would start there to build the trust and credibility. Then I would figure out what's the main goal that you have on this page. You know, there, yeah, the action is like way down the page, and what is it? What do you want us to do? Do you want us to learn more? You know, and open this PDF?

Yeah, like this should all be on your website, and you should be driving people to one goal, which it's probably not learn more because that should be in the page. It should probably be like schedule a consultation or putting your email, and that should be the thing that's all the way in the top at the header.

So, I've talked to founders pretty often that are in this kind of trap where they want to talk to users, but they need a website in order to seem credible.

Yeah, I think this might be an example of where it actually is negatively impacting your credibility. Like if I were to have a friend, if you were to get a warm introduction to me through a friend and actually do user research that way that might even be more powerful than sending someone to a website like this.

Yep, or you know just go fire up like a web flow template or something like that. It's a really good way to just get this base level of professionalism that people would trust, and you can do it super quickly; you don't have to be a designer. They've got all kinds of templates and stuff. It's really easy to just, yeah, knock something like this out. That would be worthwhile.

Okay, let's move on to the next one.

Cepsa, a mobile app for creative people fond of arts and crafts. Discover trends, discover local events, introduce your point of view, and share your feelings.

Meet your soulmate and sub-senton.

Okay, I think you buried the lead here. It sounds like this might be a dating app. That's it? I'm not sure.

Yeah, I'm not sure either. I mean, okay, let's go to the next section.

Yeah, it's possible to join a mob or create one to stop the world from being regular.

Okay, so this is like an example of you're using a lot of vague words and terms that don't really mean things to people. It's hard to visualize what this product actually is, and then even the imagery doesn't help. Like you're showing people, and so I was kind of with Eric like is this a dating app or something?

Oh, it's a mutual friend between you and yet unknown but already truly your folks.

Okay, might also be some English language, so is this for a meeting offline?

Okay, so find local experts popular in private, get opinions and reviews from celebrities, and find like-minded people.

Yes, I'm unclear. Is this an app to meet new people in person that you share similar interests with or is this a community to engage around art? And then I'm not sure where the celebrities part comes from.

Yeah, so we're very confused overall. Let's check out the YouTube or the Google link here. Hangouts app.

Okay, you got some users. That's pretty good, and it's in Russian.

Okay, I think we might not be fully qualified to review a Russian app but this move is Russian, not good.

Okay, overall, like the design, the content that's inside the design does not really do it for us.

Yeah, so maybe some actionable feedback we could give here: take the screenshots that are further at the bottom and maybe pull those up higher. At least if I can look at something tangible, I have a better chance of figuring out what it actually is.

Oh, the app screenshots? Yeah, and those are in Russian too. So like right off the bat, if the app is in Russian, even if you have an English-language website, it just makes me think this is not for me.

Yeah, just very might, yes literally is it?

Yeah, in which case maybe you don't need an English-language website.

Yeah, that would be fair.

Okay, let's move on to the next one.

Narration Box, it's good, calm, cool state-of-the-art audio and speech synthesis powered by AI on machine learning.

Let's take a listen.

Yeah, making strangers rich. It's a hot summer Tuesday. What’s excel, Rhonda? It's a great trial station with his eyeballs powered up in a sunlight jangling off the canal motor scooters and kamikaze cyclists whizzing past and tourists chattering, other...

Okay, so square smells partly, I get what you're doing. Like the actual one-liner is excellent, like state-of-the-art audio and speech synthesis, the problem is the demo that you show doesn't sound like state-of-the-art.

Like there's gotta be, there's just like comparative compared to like Alexa or Google Assistant, yeah, it just sounds a little bit off. It sounds like a robot.

Yeah, the other thing is I'm not clear what this is for. It's state-of-the-art audio and speech synthesis, but is there like an API? Can I integrate this into my app? Like what good can I talk to it? Like what is this for? What are the use cases or things that I want to know?

So, yeah, my first question is just like is it good? So it's great that you have the preview up there but then we listen or like yeah, this doesn't seem as good as some of the other things.

There's still, it's just on the low so, so cost-effective, that's for sure compared to a lot of their voices, 20 languages, okay it sounds like, so I guess, okay, so now we're in tune in to Deventer, and here's some use cases further down the page.

It's to get quick? So it looks like you could feed in audio files like a podcast and get the entire, like translation or the entire voice.

Oh no, it's the other way around. You're doing voice to text, right? Design your speech in audio.

Oh cool, so you could like emphasize certain words. Hmm, that's interesting. I mean, from some casual playing around with the Google API, so I don't know if that's something that they offer that's unique.

Yeah, what are the use cases here?

Okay, character voices and apps, PA. Okay, so is this like an SDK? Like it seems like this is for developers but it seems like there's not a lot of information about how developers can actually start using this.

Yeah, so you got a lot of languages, so I guess what I'm struggling with is to understand how this is different. Like there are many speech-to-text APIs available. In fact, like iOS and Android include them by default. I think it would be useful to call attention to what's special about Narration Box and what advantages you have over the competition.

Yeah, yeah, and then your pricing, I don't think I saw any actual. Oh, there it is. Okay, yeah, very hard there. Yes, you might want to call that out a little bit more.

So start now and contact sales, I'm not really sure the difference between those. So again like to your point before, you didn't know who was supposed to start like, you know, targeting of like this is an SDK part, this is for, you know, app developers do this right and why do I need to contact sales to like if I'm a developer and I want to use this. I want to just download the SDK and start testing it, or I want some web interface so I can start typing out text and actually hearing it live.

I mean, to go back to some like fantastic examples, Stripe, I don't know if they still have it but I'll wait for like the early part of their time. They just had like you could actually get started with the SDK.

Yeah, start now, contact sales.

So I think they're probably modeling this after Stripe.

Oh, here we go. Okay, so they've still got a little bit of their SDK stuff on the front page. Yeah, so model the developers now after Stripe to miss that component.

The iconography images, what do you think? I mean, so it makes it seem friendly but it doesn't actually communicate anything about the product to me. It doesn't reinforce like messages that you want to give so like it's not bad, but it's not actually helpful.

Yeah, so it's not a negative, but you're not adding, it doesn't make it a needle.

Yeah, I do like that like this seems like a very unique thing being able to have different voices and diagram which is like I think you've got some cool stuff here. I would like to highlight maybe, you know, what basically you need to talk to your users and see what they're reacting to or what there was, you know, I'm attracted to but that sounds like one.

Yeah, it seems like pulling that up and some of the use cases up to the top of the editor party, up to the editor is cool. That stood out, yeah, and then I'll get rid of like the powered by AI and machine learning. Like people don't want AI and machine learning; they want the benefit that that gives, which is we can, you know, Auto speak any sentence you type or something, 20 different languages.

Yeah, yeah, like that sounds because having to change the API.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, cool! Awesome Narration Box.

Okay, we've got Deco Echo. Welcome to the wonderful world of upcycling.

I've heard about cycling. I have not, so I do not know what this is.

What would you like to do today? Learn about upcycling? I guess? Okay, let's see if we've learned how does it work: find out how to turn waste into profit by giving the highest value, jump from zero to market-ready product.

Okay, so, like I thought I knew what upcycling was, and now your market now, and we're confused. I think this sounds like it's for people who want to recycle things and then sell them.

So loan, okay, so tell us what materials you want to upcycle. Find the best designer for your project, agree on a timeline and a price, provide your waste, get awesome upcycle products, sell them via our marketplace.

Okay, shop with us, hundreds of upcycle products. So do I create there? I just send you my recycle bin and then somebody creates it?

So I think this is falling into, you know, one error mode which is we don't know who the website is for or who the company is for. Oftentimes, like founders will tell me that, you know, their products are for everybody, like everyone can benefit from this, but the counterintuitive learning here is that you actually can benefit a lot from focusing in on who will get the most benefit.

Now, that saves you time, like basically it's a way to make sure that the people who can benefit the most from it immediately understand what your product is.

So I think now having looked at it, I okay, so take it stab at it like I think it's for companies that have a lot of recycling in a specific format like, like watches or that kind of finger bottles. They can send it to artists, artists will upcycle them, and then you can make money if they get sold, maybe.

Okay, so the examples are cool. Oh, yeah, you start to resonate with me like, all right, this looks like Miss recycled material in new products.

Okay, okay, so now you've got one mobile.

Okay, so this was in there. That's a major label. If that's true, one of the ways that you can actually maybe structure this is like walk me through an entire example with one of your customers.

Say like T-Mobile came to us, or McDonald's came to us with this waste, and we worked with, we introduced them to an artist. With the artist, they were able to make it into this product, and then they sold this product on our website.

Yep, I think the biggest thing we're missing is like the why and for who.

Yeah, and so is this a marketplace of this stuff? Is your goal to, okay, so here's some case studies. You've got big names on here, and I want to figure out like what they did.

So this is a charity auction. It feels like there's some kind of like nonprofit something angle to all of this that I can't quite figure out.

Yeah, which is not bad. I'm not turned off by that.

Yeah, yeah, so this is really cool. Like I think I see what you're doing. You're like recycling T-Mobile market other marketing material.

Like, oh, these are like the signs that they have on like billboards job, like that, and turned back?

Yeah, so like the interesting part is you've got a lot of content here. Like you've clearly put a lot of time into taking great photos, like building a lot of assets, but the organization just is not.

Yeah, it's worth noting, also, you have a lot of like big blocks of text written in here, right? And notice how we're going through the site trying to figure out what it is like not reading.

Yeah, we're looking at pictures. We're looking at headlines. We're trying to figure out from here. You probably say it like literally what you're doing in one of these paragraphs here, and we're just not taking the time to read it.

And that's honestly what people come into your site are gonna do too.

Yeah, so you really got to call out the important bits of like how it works, and I think the thing that you have on the homepage or it's like the step one through step five, it doesn't clearly communicate what it is.

No, no, and you can. And one of the ways that you could take this concept is to apply like the T-Mobile, like how to moment worked with you and just like walk...

Yes, through like specific examples of how you work with T-Mobile to do something, it would totally legitimize it.

You got a section here, like I guess there's brands that come to you with stuff that needs to be recycled. And then designers, how could you, how could they like divide their site better to?

I guess it depends like what's the goal? Are you trying to sell products that have been like do you?

I'm gonna take a stab at this. I don't, I'm not a hundred percent sure of this how it works, but are you basically trying you partner with like a T-Mobile or McDonald's?

You get the source materials from them because they have a lot of like bulk recycling that they want to do. You take those, you match it with a designer. The designer takes those materials, they create something, and then you have a shop button, so maybe I can, then like customers can then come buy the recycled materials from here.

And if that's how it works, then it seems to me the thing that makes this a business is not actually anything about partnering with T-Mobile. I assume you just get it for free because they were gonna recycle it anyway, and they get some brand value of, yeah.

And so it's actually like... in, in the selling the new products is really what you have. You have like a marketplace for selling upcycled or like, okay, so recycle but turned into products, materials that seem like these all look really cool.

Yeah, and I think if these were on the homepage, I would want to just dive right into like you are an e-commerce or marketplace or something. Thank you! Like most of the people who will be visiting your site are not brands; they're people who are gonna want to buy really cool products.

Yeah, so I want to buy this first thing for most cause it looks cool. But then I find out there's a story behind it. It's all recycled and it came from these big brands and it turned into this really cool, you know, pendant lamp.

Like that makes me value it even more, so I would start on the like the whole marketplace thing selling those products and then tell this story in the context of those products.

Just a small note, it looks like you're using some sort of e-commerce platform that's not Shopify or maybe it is? I like one of the reasons why I love Kickstarter and Shopify on these sites is like we kind of know them, like we've all shopped at sites before that use this similar hierarchy.

Anytime where it's somewhere that's different, it's like I have to think more about how I use this site.

Yeah, so like when in doubt, like it is sometimes always better just to use like an existing...

Yep. Users have mental models of like how an e-commerce site should work or how a checkout process should work that's based on their past experiences, and like this guest button is really small.

Yeah, and then I have to like enter an email to sign out as guest. So right, yeah.

Yeah, so try to map to what people are already used to doing and that way your product will feel familiar to them, and they won't have to relearn a whole new set of experiences.

Cool, so Breezy, oh just Breezy, quickly help you quickly help you find the best and most affordable insurance for your pets.

Okay, that's pretty clear.

Yeah, got that, but then you want me to subscribe? Like what am I subscribing to? I would expect that to be like, like put it in for information about your pet, and we'll give you quotes or like get a quote or something like that.

Okay, so it's a non-launched, kind of page. We're just trying to collect interest.

Oh, here we go!

Okay, pet insurance, calculate now. I'm guessing you mean health insurance? I don't know too much about pet insurance, but yeah, I assume it's health insurance.

Ooh, that's a good point!

Yeah, I say I would clarify that. So I unfortunately have experience with this, which is my dog dislocating her leg jumping out of our car window, and that was not a great experience and cost way too much.

It would have been really nice to have some pet insurance at that time, so I can definitely see the value in this.

So is this a calculator?

So I don't know what this is calculating. Is this like after you've had an accident or after the pet has had an accident?

Yes, it is!

Look at sweets, like you type in what the vet bill would be.

Yeah, okay, so this is kind of for like your situation. Like you know what you ended up paying?

Yep, and this would have been.

Yeah, too many options.

Yeah, I think like again, it would be helpful if you if you said like here's the scenario.

Like you could give an example of someone that you've already helped, saying like this person came to us; their pet had this accident, we, we had to cover them already.

This is how much they paid, and you can kind of walk through like a specific example.

Yeah, I think one of the problems here too is you're mapping the options to literally how insurance works.

So there's a deductible, there's reimbursement, there's an annual reimbursement limit and then you're kind of spitting out, you know, how much somebody will pay, but that's not actually how your users and customers think about insurance.

That you know, I want to know my dog just dislocated her leg; it's gonna cost three thousand dollars for the surgery to fix it.

How much of that am I gonna have to pay on each of these plans?

Yeah, and so I think if you can frame it in the mindset of how users are gonna think about it, like I don't know what reimbursement is, I don't know what the limit is.

Deductibles are confusing; try to simplify it for people.

There's not too much else on this page; I think you're missing just some common, like you went to all this effort of building the page. I would just take it across like that finish line by adding the lower recall and footer bars,

Yeah, just to provide that semblance of realness.

Yeah, people have a mental model for what a webpage looks like, and this has been missing some key components of that.

Yeah, and like an about page or even just a section on this page about who's behind it. Maybe have a personal story about how you had this massive bill that could have been saved if you had pet insurance.

Yeah, something like that, it's like a small design thing that's kind of throwing me off.

The tab here doesn't align to the bottom of the calculator.

Mm-hmm, yeah, minor.

Yeah, I think okay, like the image though, that’s a...

Yeah, pets food, Kyle screams pets taxonomy tracks, tracks anime business solutions reimagined.

Oh, I totally need business solutions. Rita match?

Yeah, this is the place for me.

Shrek tricks trips?

Anomie offers a wide range of consulting services with the necessary tools and expertise.

Okay, this is, this is a long, yes, aligner.

So way too much jargon here; we have no idea what this is.

I have a feeling that even when we scroll down, we're not gonna have an idea.

Yeah, time out like what you believe in your thoughts on all businesses and stuff. There's a lot of stock photos that just come across as cheesy.

Like what we're trying to get at here is like what's the meat of this business?

It sounds like maybe there isn't even a product if it's all consulting shop, but like what's your specialty?

Like what are you good at consulting with? What clients have you worked with in the past? How have you helped them?

And even if you don't have clients, like where have you worked in the past?

Like maybe you had some interesting experiences that drove you to become a consultant.

Yep, you could share those.

Like you don't have to have too many case studies if you if you haven't.

Right, and who's the ideal customer or client for you?

Like you want to speak to them in the header. Nobody's gonna come here and be like, "Oh, I'm looking for business solutions reimagined."

Like can these can these people help me, so I think like oftentimes when I see these sites they're generally to support the in-person sales process that you're already doing.

Like this site is not gonna generate traffic, but it's gonna act as like a place where people can Google your company name.

It's like it's a pretty good com, so if you're meeting people in in-person events and you give them your card, like you want somewhere that they can come to that like follows up on what you probably spoke about in person.

Yeah, so if you're selling business solutions to let's say transportation companies, then maybe you want to like frame that on your site when they arrive.

Tiny point: you SSL that might be because you rolled your own like site on WordPress or something like that.

Like it’s 2020. I think most people do expect SSL to be enabled on sites.

Yeah, if you use something like Wix, I think it enables it by default.

Yeah, you have an about Us page?

Let's click on that.

Nope, oh, it's in about a section.

Okay, but again, doesn't really tell us you need about you.

Yeah, what would be like are there any example sites that you could use to to base this off of instead of this from a consulting perspective?

I'm not sure.

I mean again, you probably have friends that are like, that the founder probably has friends that are in this space.

One of the ways that you can base your site is just to go to other competitors and go to other people that are in the same business and kind of use some of the same elements that they have.

Yep, companies Day One, Day One Day I.

Okay, but the URL is not Day One Day I.

That's throwing me off a little bit.

We're negatives! MDT, well maybe you're trying to work to buy it, cool!

Day One Day I. Make your app marketing campaign effective day one!

Okay, does that mean?

Yeah, sign up for beta.

Okay, we're missing the one-liner.

You got to work on your one-liner.

The best one-liners here already identify kit, they help me identify who this is for and how it benefits me.

I'm kind of getting the who it's for, like if I have an app, maybe it's for me.

Yeah, so I have an app; I want to put together a marketing campaign. You're gonna make it effective, but I don't know what that...

End of the day one part is throwing me.

Like that doesn't, that doesn't help.

Yeah, like what's day one? The first day that I started working on the app or the first launch day?

And like does it take time to ramp up marketing campaigns?

Okay, how is wow? Gray text on a white background with a super small...

Yeah, maybe I'm just old. I don't know!

Reduces acquisition costs by understanding user behavior on the first day of your app marketing.

Yet it also helps to fight bots and detect fraud traffic.

Okay, there's a lot going on here.

Main criteria: unique behavioral patterns. So it's not clear, like up top it sounded like you make the campaign more effective day one, which is advertising; that's like yeah how I'm market.

But now you're telling me about like fighting bots and detecting fraud, which makes like that's for like the ads.

So that frauds are front to them people are picking your app, but you wouldn't have that on day one, right? And that's also not making me more effective; it's like maybe saving me costs.

Yeah. So it's the fraud is about harming your marketing budget, but again like, yeah, I'm really like torn.

I think you're trying to say like it's possible that your product is a little bit unfocused, and that's spilling over into your website.

Yeah.

I mean, if you have users already, I think something that would be helpful would be to just go to them and say how would you describe this product? And they're probably gonna use different language and phrases than you use here,

And they're probably also gonna talk about like the one thing that's the most important to them, and I think if you just take the words that they say, and you just put those exact words up at the top here with maybe like, I don't know if a screenshot is relevant or like some type of visual that helps communicate what's actually...

There's something interesting here; you bring up a point that's no more SDKs.

No need to put yet another third-party SDK into your app.

We use raw data from other popular analytics platforms.

So one of the things that we've seen be successful, like if you're plugging into something like Segment or Mixpanel or an API that app developers might already have installed in their app, you could say that up front.

Say like we take your Mixpanel and Segment data and turn it into actionable marketing advice.

Yeah, cool, okay. Got some work to do here, but I think it's definitely like definitely around talking to your customers.

Yep, and it seems unlaunchable, so that's fine. But so what happens when you click that?

That's how it takes you down.

Yeah, okay, so like too many fields here, probably you should just put this form up in the main header rather than you know, you're requiring multiple actions now in this flow.

You need somebody to click at the top; you can choose anything.

Yeah, exactly, like just put like enter your email and...

Anyway.

Yeah, yeah, cool!

Next one: Waterloo Morgue, okay. Connect the common denominator. Future-proof local and global decisions on water, local predictive analytics to plan, produce, and protect.

So you've got a lot of one-liners here, and there's another one: "Jack and Briggs had local water effects your global."

That's my favorite one.

Yeah, yeah, that one actually says what's happening here.

I would probably consider killing the other ones and just using this one, yeah, and make it much bigger and just center it.

Okay, so I can predict how local water, I don't know what local water means, but maybe like local water supply is...

Yeah, but like also why do I care about that?

Yeah, well, if I do, I want to track and predict it. Is it like problems with the local water supply and how that affects my business? That you know, that's potentially relevant.

Yeah, so figure out who you're speaking to here and what's the use case and just talk to that specifically.

I think a lot of times people feel like they need to make it sound super broad so it sounds really big and important.

Yeah, but what happens is it sounds really vague, and it sounds like it's not for a specific person who you're trying to help.

Yeah, learn more button; it goes to an email, a mail-to link that does not help me learn more.

Yeah, that helps me not continue.

Yes, I think that was to an Elizabeth, so Elizabeth, if you're listening, I think a good approach here, rather than asking people to email you, is when you have a lot of offline conversations with people about what your company does and how it works and who it's for, they probably ask a lot of follow-up questions.

And so hopefully, you have a sense of the so things that resonate with people and what they're interested to learn, and that's the point of a website is not to get people to then email you to find out information; it’s actually just to put that information on the website.

So I would list the most common questions that you get and just put answers to those directly here up at the top to give people a clear idea of who this is for and what they should use it for.

I also don't know what you want me to do on this page.

Like, assume on your perfect end customer and what do you want me to do here?

Like email you to learn more? Do you want me to pay you something? Like I'm not clear what I should do.

A small problem is you've got a .org domain, which immediately makes me think of nonprofits!

Yeah, especially considering you're talking about water prioritization, water usage, like that kind of reinforces this like nonprofit idea.

But then you talk about we inform investors they plan for the future which makes me think that this is not a nonprofit; so maybe be more clear about that either by switching away from a .org or just saying like what your business is up at the top.

Yeah, we enable investors to make better decisions, like better decisions based on water resource allocation or something.

And from a UI design perspective, there's a lot going on here and a lot of inconsistency that I think hurts the credibility of the site.

So you've got a lot of like moving background images, you've got a lot of boxes that seem to have somewhat random alignment, you have a lot of different fonts and colors, a lot of different font sizes.

It's hard to get the hierarchy of things. This email address capture form, you know, is like white on light blue, and so it's really hard to really...

Black?

Yeah, and then you don't even call out, you know, like hey, enter your email address to get... What even the button says submit? It doesn't say like learn more or like sign up or something like that.

Yeah, I do like the animated graphics that, that makes a site feel a little bit more modern and looks nice, but it's kind of thrown off by this text with a blue.

Yeah, it's hard for my eye to figure out what you want me to look at and focus on because there's a lot of different things going on at once; it's all moving.

Okay, next up is Shane with Boost Lee.

I shamed!

Okay, Loosli, more new and repeat customers. A smart marketing system for restaurants that automatically markets to customers based on their engagement with your brand.

Okay, your subtitle is much better than your main title with your brand.

Okay, maybe like they're online?

Yeah, yeah, so the sub is definitely better, and it's good, and then it leads me to ask questions like, "Oh, how do you do that? How have these customers already engaged with my brand?"

And I know who it's for; it's for restaurants.

Yeah, that's a good start.

So make that a lot bigger!

Let's see how it works.

Okay, how it works: build a customer database have data; we can use it, no data, relax, we've got data. A lot of mentions of data!

Yeah, and so if I'm a restaurant owner, I don't know anything about a database. I don't know anything about data; as it's complicated; Wi-Fi, yeah.

I'm not sure what's happening there; like I just want you to tell me how you're gonna get me more customers.

What's the, what's that great local business YC company that does reviews based out of Austin? I can't remember the name.

Anyways, but that was not as helpful as I should.

Well, okay, so now we're starting to get to something here which is, text them on autopilot.

So texting drives incremental visits.

So now it makes me think you've got a product that somehow captures the phone number of visitors to the website or to restaurants and then can auto text them with specials and promotions and things like that.

So maybe it's like I come and I put my name on the waiting list and give you my phone number, and then you text me later to get me to come back, bring in new customers.

So, like what I don't know is like where do you get the new customers from? How do you know that they're gonna want to come and eat at my restaurant?

Okay, something about referrals; you probably prompt for reviews on Yelp and things. What an example.

Well, let me move pretty quick; everything's still very vague. It's like cut boost Lee's customer acquisition tools, but like what are they?

And so you can see we're trying to piece things together based on headlines or screenshots that we see, but we could be way off base.

I do like that you have a phone number up top; like that makes me think that you're probably legit.

Yeah but still very confused on what this is or why I would want to call that number.

Kind of go back to something we talked about before. If you can work from an example and you have some customers, like clearly people are using this, you can kind of tackle two birds with one stone by sharing how this specific company, like tell us, how Local Joe's restaurant used your product to double their sales and walk us through, instead of these kind of like abstract examples where you have screenshots that we can't really tell which company therefore, like walk us through like the one, two, three steps for how one of your customers benefited from using your service.

Because then they can like, theirs you get two benefits! Their people who are in a similar category can can filter themselves into that. They know like, oh, I'm also a restaurant that's in a similar style that this is relevant to me.

How can I use it? How can I benefit from it?

Yep, the biggest question somebody's gonna have coming to your website is what is this?

And so you need to be able to answer that really crisply and concisely. Is it for me?

Yep, you need to be able to answer, you know, who this is for. You want it to resonate with them, and you want to be actually more specific rather than broader.

Okay, you've got a blinking thing going on the left here; I can't even see what it is.

I think they're behind them Irving Texas.

Linking over and over and I’ve seen those before, but this is not okay, so it's showing that somebody signed up, but turns off really quickly.

Yeah, so I think you're trying to do the thing like there's only two hotel rooms left at this price, you know, to show the social proof of lots of people signing up, but it blinks, it’s super small text.

Yeah, it's actually just more noise than it's actually effective.

Yeah, and if you really have this many customers, like I almost don't trust it because of the way that the site works, like you don't even have a link to the actual product or, or an example.

If you really do have that many customers, I would say like we have 35 customers that are using the product.

Yeah, you don't have to hide it behind that blinking thing.

Cool! Next up, Martine, our team from Loop.

Earplugs protect your ears and style, hearing protection.

Cool, okay, beautiful image. I get that someone's yelling and I can see, I can see the side.

Yeah, yeah, that's cool. Okay, protect your ears in style. Okay, so ear plugs reinvented Loop is designed to reduce volume by 20 dB.

I'm an engineer, and I barely know what dB means; it's like a logarithm.

Logarithmic scale?

Okay, without sacrificing audio clarity, so I think this sounds like it's for people who go to shows like music events and want to listen to it, well, not getting their ears damaged.

So I thought that too, but then I get to the next image, and that doesn't look like they're at a show.

No, it's a show that I'm not invited to experience clear sound.

Okay, so like I think it is that.

Yeah, I mean based on the images, like some tattoos here, there's definitely like a kind of like a high-class vibe going with some of this like rose gold and, you know, you're trying to show like the build quality, and I've got music here, but it's like listening to music, going to music.

Oh, a wired link!

Let's go see that.

Nope, Kent, can't see it.

That's weird!

Like you've got a, if you've got an article in Wired, and I can't click on it, that seems like a total missed opportunity!

Yeah, look at this, yes that's pretty cool, yes this is great, but not great because I can't click on it!

Right, I wonder, Marta, look!

Okay, I think we were right; like look, yeah it's definitely bad.

So the product, okay, so I think the team behind this has some vision of the brand that they want to create.

Yeah!

And I think maybe it matches with the design of the product, but I'm not sure that it actually matches with the use cases for the product.

Like I would expect to see people at festivals wearing these and not looking, you know, really goofy with like orange ear plugs in, which is the common thing.

And here you can hear the music rather than...

Yeah, it completely, yeah.

And none of the imagery actually reflects the common use cases.

So as a person who's started a hardware company, I'm also like super worried when I hear about technology because it implies that you have to charge them or there's some sort of electronics, but I don't think there is technology.

I mean like there's technology in the shape, in the form, but not like electronics.

Yeah, so you could clarify that these are not electronic headphones; like you can't listen to music.

And then it looked like the price was only like 30 bucks down there, which is actually cheaper than I would have expected, which might also be a reflection of the brand image you're trying to create, which looks high-end.

Yeah, got some reviews, I like that! It helps, like all this is selling me that this is a real company that really exists.

Oh, that's great! Yeah, the store looks pretty easy to use. Some different styles?

Yeah, okay, so I think the biggest thing is, you know, putting some imagery that actually shows people using it in the specific use cases you would expect.

The FAQ link is not like you're spending so much attention here; like you're putting this front and center, and then having a link that basically goes to nothing might not be worth it.

Cool, but I'm interested that that seems relevant to my interests and, yeah, pretty good site overall.

Yeah, Form Facade!

Who are we speaking with?

Laughs. Ah! Embed Google form in your website. Embed inquiry form on your website. Make Google Forms look professional on your website.

So you might want to say forms embed feedback forms rather than bed feedback form in your website.

Oh yes, I was actually played with this this weekend because I needed this service, and I saw this on startup school, so I cheated a bit.

So I've used the product; it takes like actual Google forms, and it adds like CSS styling to them to make them not look like the classic Google form.

Okay, so are you actually embedding it in your site, or you're just styling it to match?

Wow, that's a missed opportunity!

And that try it free button is so small!

I think the most compelling example that you have is the before and after, like the two side-by-side things.

It shows me like I recognize that as a default Google form, and it's the typical ugly purple thing!

Yeah, no offense to the purple on your site!

And then there's the after which looks like, you know, it could embed or looks just like any other site.

And so that's the most compelling thing I think I would pull that like up into your header, make the text bigger explaining what it is and why should use it.

It's also such a simple compelling feature that you want to like, you want people who use Google Forms to immediately like understand like you should be able to show like the way that I would test your site as you're improving it is talk to maybe like 10 or 20 other founders in startup school; like everyone uses Google Forms.

I mean people who don't want to pay 40 bucks to Typeform or whatever all use Google Forms.

Yeah, and just make sure that like 10 out of 10 people who come to your site understand exactly what it's for.

Yeah, and so I would actually get rid of the rotating text in the top. All it should say is just Google Forms, and people could use, oh in Google Form.

Yes, inquiries or whatever the other things that you're saying, but you want people to instantly know like I use Google Forms; this is for me.

Yeah, like no, no blinking cursor here, no secondary thing, just embed Google Forms in your website, and then jump to the example.

But is it actually embedding Google Forms though?

Yeah, okay, so it's not just changing the CSS.

No! So like you could actually like add the form into your, oh guess like you don't have to link into that.

Okay, that's great, and like a, you know, I spent a time, actually a little bit more time looking at this product. For me personally, I think of this as like a better Typeform.

Yeah!

Like Typeform costs $50; they're basically like scamming people.

Huge amounts of money!

And because like, you know, Superhuman uses that, everyone else has to use it.

I love Google Forms, and I love the idea of not having to have like the classic Google URL and everything.

Like actually, there's three features that I think are really important: like make the form look the way that my website looks, don't use a Google URL, like embed it.

So you could use your own URL, like maybe text. Maybe there's just too much of like a wall of text in that section right above.

Yeah, nobody's really gonna read that.

Font too small!

These like, this should be your one, yeah, you have got more customers.

Yeah, it doesn't go anywhere, but it doesn't lead me completely to believe that they're your customers.

It's just a bit too, but I actually like that line at the bottom there and make Google Forms look great.

Yeah, like that could be your header!

And then subheader that's just like directly embed Google Forms into your website so it matches your native look and feel and keeps your standard URL or something like that.

Let's check out your pricing!

So start your 14-day trial today.

I used your site; it seemed pretty free.

Like I didn't even have to do anything.

Why are you over-complicating things?

Like it's free right now; I don't think you're charging for it.

Why have three options rather than just like free and then paid?

Mm-hmm.

And I guess another question I have is like can you not embed Google Forms right now? You can.

You can, there's an iframe option.

Okay, I think it you can't style it.

And, okay, yeah, so this is a wrapper around that probably, I think, so that lets you style it.

Yeah, anyways, cool! I think you got some pretty good stuff to work with here.

Next up, Nazfaz Crawl!

How are you doing on time?

With one hour.

Okay, Crawl!

Let's get the outdated recruitment process. Classic keyword mattress and work experience filters does not work in 2020.

Okay, so you're telling me things about your industry and competitors but nothing about you!

And it's also like you're jumping very specifically into like very detailed points of your product here, before I even know who it's for or whether it's relevant to me or what it does.

Like what is Crawl?

Like how far down do we have to go to figure out what Crawl is?

Rich your CV portfolio, so that sounds like it's for me as a job seeker, but I don't think it is.

Oh, it is!

Uh, and we have, yeah, and this is overlapping the text.

Yeah, I was gonna turn it off, but anyways, so it's definitely for job seekers.

And let the jobs come to you! Didn't get that from the beginning.

Yeah, I’m still confused on what the beginning is saying even now that I have a sense of where it is.

Instead of hacking, focus on building evaluations.

So this is, now I'm back to thinking that it's for companies evaluating work history and backgrounds. Public profiles?

Yeah, I think those all the job openings crawl, also makes it sound more like it's for the company to crawl.

Yeah, well, okay, so you're starting to get to that somewhere down here.

Crawl also finds and analyzes job and openings with a different spelling here.

With the help of NLP matches you with overfitting jobs and handles HR process for you.

Yeah, I know. I feel like we've read most of this page and we just don't know what's happening.

Yeah, so, and then you've got something for developers and a website builder.

So a lot of times like when this happens, you can get a lot by just sharing it with a few people who you believe are smart and asking them what they think.

Because like if you, like, you don't have to, I guess you don't have to overthink things too much; just like share what you've built with your friends and family and see if they understand it.

Yep, and this is hard sometimes to put yourself in the mentality of somebody that knows nothing about your company because you think about this all the time.

You have assumptions about how it works or you know how it works or you've used the product yourself, and it's hard to communicate that to people that have never seen it before.

And so by sharing it with other people that don't have the experience, you can figure out like where are the missing gaps that you need to fill in.

Okay, I mean I think I see what it is. I think it's something like an about me page for developers.

Okay, which is cool!

Yeah, something like this maybe should be the home page then.

Yeah, like why not lead off with us with a screenshot of this and you get your call-to-action could be like build your resume!

Build a resume web page with one click!

Yeah, cool!

Sinks with all these different things!

Pulls it in!

Yeah!

And if it is developer-focused, like make sure you speak to developers up at the top.

This right off the best page; the website builder page is much better than your niche.

Definitely create your custom one-pager in seconds!

Yeah, cool!

Yeah, this page is so much better!

Guys, your cards!

Yeah, cool, I would just switch to this one!

Yeah, as your main page!

Next up, she just with Unruh moat.

Okay, office spaces here, virtual and remote now, we're from home just like you do.

So from office, okay, a few English language problems in that first sentence.

Yeah, I'm still not sure what it does; like it's a virtual office, but how is that different than like a zoom call or chatting with my team on Slack?

YC SUS: Aaron Epstein and Eric Migicovsky give website feedback

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