With this post I’m doing three things at once:
- Bringing back my public site reviews of microISVs and startups who ask me to review them.
- Showing off for the first time a very small part of Project X that functions right but has the CSS styling of the south end of a northbound cat: you are hereby warned.
- Eating a bit of my own catfood (yes, I know the expression is eating your own dogfood, but we have/are enslaved by cats, not dogs here.) Total time to do this review: 25 minutes compared to about 2 hours on previous reviews. Quality of the review? About as good or better, I think. What do you think?
First the review screenshot, then some comments for Thomas Thiriez, founder of TwistedWave.
The biggest issue I have with the site is that it didn’t start the conversation by telling me what TwistedWave was.
Think of it this way: when someone lands on your microISV’s site, it’s up to you to tell them why you matter to them. That means first giving them a synopsis (what I call the Hook), then going into detail about the particulars of why your product/service is worth their attention.
The second biggest issue were the two misspellings – Now as you can see from the screenshot, I’m not innocent of this sin either! But misspellings on your product’s main page are simply not acceptable.
Two suggestions for Thomas:
1. Find a way to explain what Twisted Wave is in a sentence or two and put that under a much smaller image, then follow up with a brief description of what Twisted Wave does and how it does it.
2. Fix the typoes.
One last point re Thomas’ blog: he does a great job of talking about Twisted Wave but neglects talking about anything else. If you want your blog to succeed – and by that I mean bring web traffic your way – talk about the problems your software addresses and the people who have those problems.
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I’m curious as to what part Project-X played in the production of the review. Was it responsible, somehow, for cutting 2 hours down to 25 minutes?
@Ged, I’m assuming it’s the bit outside the screenshot – i.e. it is, at least in part, a tool for reviewing websites?? Interesting. I wonder where else Bob’s going with this? Maybe down the Twiddla / website annotation route? So he can scribble in red pen on your site?
@Tim,
It looks to me line Bob is trying to raise a bit of Mystique. What is Project X?
He say’s it’s just one small bit, though. I look forward to finding out more.
That’s part of it Ged and Tim, but the other is I’m back to blogging here and couldn’t pass up a way to do a site review in 25 minutes instead of the 2 hrs it usually takes me. For me, this was a real world test that the questions I had crafted for site reviews in Project X worked.
Richard (I don’t know if he wants his last name used, so I won’t) did raise a good point in an email to me re this post. For him, the biggest value add was the “why” and “what can they do about it” I included in earlier reviews. Good points! I’m adding that as a third open ended questions besides “What did you like/dislike about the site?” and “Any suggestions for this site?”: “How would you improve this site?”
I’m thinking Project X will allow others (not just Bob) to review the site. Then all comments and ratings will be accumulated for the client/website owner to view and use to improve his site.
Keith – you’re exactly right. Like I said, it’s a small part of Project X. But what about customers finding negative reviews of your site on the web? And why should microISV A review startup B’s web site? I think I’ve found good solutions to these and other problems we all face. Stay tuned!
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