Here is the latest design attempt. It feels ‘elegant’ and colleagues who have seen it like it.
Good points:
- Lots of white-space
- Centred on the screen but flexible width
- Feels like a serious ‘tool’ – not a gimmick (inspiration from Google and Craigslist)
- Minimum use of colour by employing an ‘eyefeed’. Putting primary (mainly) colours in a prominent place (top) on the page seems to satisfy the eye and thus lets me get away with extremely simple styling through the rest of the page. I think Google’s logo enables Google to employ the same trick
- Using a lot of browser defaults
- Only uses one column and mostly uses browser defaults, therefore, will render well on broader range of browsers and load to wireless devices quicker
Bad points:
- The title color of ‘visited hyperlink’ clashes with the eyefeed
- The logo at the bottom clashes with the eyefeed
- The list of searches look bad without a strong left margin
- The links do not all operate in the same way (Chris Hocking’s observation)
Phil Shanks (colleague) spotted new competitor called findmyship.com. Here it is:
Emailed the owner and, much to my surprise, got a reply. Owner was Brendan based in Dublin. Good bloke. He said the site had been up for a year already but he has only just started to market it. Here are some of the things he said:
On what he is doing right now:
“Yup this is my baby, although there are more bodies getting involved in particular around the marketing side, and we’re about to do a tech upgrade, providing I can justify the spend. (To date it’s just been a ’spare time’ project really).”
On his previous experience:
“Really though it’s an experimental ‘toe in the water’ thing. I’ve been a keen follower of the social networking trend for years. We tried launching an online dating site around 8 years ago back here, but were beaten to the punch and pulled back.”
I am not the only one who thought there was a market:
“Since then I’ve just watched all these social sites grow and felt there was a market for a product like ours.”
Where he got the idea:
“For me it was a girl I met in a taxi rank at 3am on a Saturday morning. We got on famously, really clicked, but she was so suddenly whisked away by her friends who pulled up in another cab. We had that, “ooh what now” moment but everything went so quick that no contact info was shared and the ship sailed on!! I went back and said to myself, ‘ok, how do I find this person again?’ but obviously couldn’t. “
How he is marketing it:
“I’ll keep you posted on our progress, but really everything about what we’re doing now is in around the marketing area and specifically around viral marketing campaigns. The Metro link was a result of an email blitz on a range of radio station and magazine emails based in Ireland and the UK. I wasn’t expecting anything to come out of it but it popped up on the radar in a couple of places which is all we want really. We’ve also been doing some local late night flyer and card hand out advertising which has generated some interest too.”
My kick off was Shepherd’s Bush. His is Dublin:
“I agree with you completely on the local issue too. Our initial concentration is on Dublin, and specifically key venue locations within Dublin. The biggest threat is the ‘run out of marketing steam/budget’ issue too I think. We need that user base to really kick off any type of advertising revenue in the longer term.”
The problem of ‘critical mass’:
“In talking with friends and family I realised that this was so much more common than I originally thought, and the concept of findmyship was born. I mean in theory, like your site, it’s a great idea, but depends ENTIRELY on the brand being a common, household name! If everyone knew that such a site existed and what its primary purpose was then I’d have no doubt such a site would be a raging success. Educate the masses!”
On motivation:
“At the moment it’s all just a labour of love, albeit a strange warped and perverted love!”
It is remarkably rewarding to have met someone who is under apparently similar circumstances, has had similar experiences, drawn similar conclusions and made similar decisions. Good luck Brendan.
Hoping I can rekindle Matt’s enthusiasm by moving onto the groups application but, in case this does not work, I am looking for local developers.
First attempt was a guy (Alex Tingle) who had developed a WordPress plug-in and, I discovered from his website, lived locally.
Second, I attended phpLondon event on Alex Tingle’s advice. I demonstrated the product to two programmers I met there. They thought it was cool but were not in a position to help with development. Then met programmer who was local, avaialble and apparently capable. His price was £30 per hour. Useful benchmark.
Sidenote, Nick got back in touch offering to work on style/design for free in exchange for future profit share. Nice offer and nice to know that someone else still has faith in this whole enterprise.