Ask HN: Review my side project
Hey HN,
I've recently read the '4-Hour Body' and got pretty inspired. Started the diet and muscle program. Have seen great results so far. Then saw a supplementation chapter, and decided to see about creating the actual stack. I then contacted a company who was making it, and worked out a dropshipping arrangement and set up http://paggstack.com/ (the name of the proposed stack).
My questions for you guys are:
- What do you think of the site? Do you think it looks professional? Would you make any changes?
- Do you like the concept of it?
- Any specific tips on marketing it? I know supplements and stacks are usually looked upon as spammy, but I want to do the best job at removing that image.
I'm mainly targeting SEO and Twitter at the moment.
Btw, I'm doing this to fund my main startup.
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Hundreds of active indie hackers contributed case studies, pricing heuristics, and pitfalls to avoid when moonlighting on side projects.
Site looks really good. A few minor observations:
- Details page: Policosanol is listed in the table as 23mb instead of 23mg.
- Blue box around product photo is distracting.
- Main body font feels a little too small generally.
- Possibly too many parentheses on Detail and Contact page.
- A few punctuation errors, e.g. "The possibilities are endless and the potential is unlimited." should have a comma before "and" whereas "Buy now, and" lower down should not.
- Front page: I found the "swallow 8 more pills per day" to be confusing. It would be clearer if you listed the # of pills per day that you'd have to swallow using the separately-purchased products and total those up in the table above that pitch.
- Odd that the 110% guarantee is referred to on the Contact page and nowhere else that I can see.
- The chat plugin floats onto an awkward space on the iOS Safari.
Again, terrific job. Good luck with this and the main startup.
Just some immediate first impressions.
- The logo looks small and isolated from the rest of the page.
- The text in the navigation tabs looks strange, maybe it should be centered?
- The boxes with the slight shading are missing vertical borders, which looks unfinished.
- The circles with the prices are not ordered numerically, which was confusing at first glance. Also the text labels in the image are too small.
- The font size for the description paragraphs is too small; looks like fine print.
- The colors for the Buy/Learn buttons at the top are badly chosen; when I hover over one, it looks like they're both active or inactive since they're the same color. There should be four different colors or they should be identical.
- Not sure why "Required" was abbreviated to "Req'd" when adjacent cells have much more text.
Looks great, very clear but I have a few nitpicks:
- On first visiting the site, "no items in Cart" just kind of floats there on the right. I have no interest in having a cart at that moment, so just hide that text until there is something to display.
- Don't start chatting with me immediatelly, it's kind of disconcerting (Though it was nice talking to you. Stick to two minutes waiting time or wait for them to engage you ;)
- It seems very much geared to technology minded people, with detailed comparison on costs, # of pills etc. Not everyone has read 4HB, so give us the cliffs note so we know what these pills are for.
- I think the two main buttons switching to each others color on hover is kind of ugly, and I'd use a third color on hover for both.
In any case, good idea, good website. I hope it's a success for you!
The design looks great; not spammy at all.
At a glance, I was confused by the table near the bottom. The large heading says "What does the PAGG stack consist of?" and the following paragraph is in a low contrast/small font, so I jumped almost directly from the heading to the table. That gave me the impression that the table was describing what you were selling (i.e. 7 bottles for $92 instead of $111), which isn't the intended effect.
An H2 more in line with the rest of the section or a prominent table caption might be a good idea.
Also keep in mind that the largest group of people buying supplements (at least in the US) have aging eyeballs. The size and low-contrast of your P text is going to be challenging for many of them.
The design looks awesome - perfect for your target demographic - well done.
I noticed that you have taken the brand images from 4hourfatloss.myshopify.com - are they just placeholder images for now? Are you planning on creating your own label brand?
For your phone number - get a Skype online number with voicemail that gives you a toll free United States number - or a number in any country you like. It will cost you a small monthly fee for this service but will provide great benefits to the perception & customer service of your product.
I would suggest some targetted Facebook ads too to drive traffic.