Hi all.<p>My expertise lies in networking and development and not in marketing and business development. I'm probably not best suited to the life of an entrepreneur, but with the help of friends like @peterc, and keeping HN in my feeds I have learned an awful lot over the last year or so.<p>I am launching http://splinch.it/ in July. Splinch provides automatic router and switch configuration file versioning and collaboration using git. It will also provide log file analysis for the very same allowing me to autodetect configuration changes and read in the new config.<p>I'd really love some feedback from people here about the landing page as it is now and suggestions on how to improve it. Also, any ideas on how I can reach my target audience would be great.<p>Thanks!
@jamesotron.
Hey James,<p>A few things:<p>- Heavy use of text shadow and box shadow makes my browser chug to a halt. Latest Chrome build on a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo with 8GB of RAM.<p>- Get rid of "What is splinch?" The paragraph there is enough, and there's no need to guide the user's eye to that.<p>- Header/logo are huge... I'd consider making that section 50% of it's current height.<p>- I'd get rid of social stuff for now: Your target audience is savvy enough to share in a smart way.<p>- I'd change the button text to [ Join our mailing list and get your first month free ] and make the color of the button distinct from your background color. Your button should be in the foreground, and using a similar palette as the background is visually confusing.<p>- The items at the bottom look more like a footer -- typically where you'd look for things like menu, about, etc.. -- and less like features/important information. I'd consider bringing them up into the lighter background so that they are visually grouped with the product<p>- I'd try a little bit of a different layout. Typically the top left of the screen is the most valuable real estate. I took a couple minutes and did this: <a href="http://cl.ly/3l0y1w2G2p2y1P2M1p3u" rel="nofollow">http://cl.ly/3l0y1w2G2p2y1P2M1p3u</a><p>- The container is a bit weird.. Unfortunately chrome developer tools is super slow with all the text, so I'm not sure quite what's going on. What I would do is have a container with a fixed width (880px-960px) with a margin:0 auto; to center the entire page.<p>Great idea, and while I'm not your target audience, I think that a lot of people will get value out of what you're building.
You've done a good job of outlining your product, what it does, why it's needed etc. But I'd recommend some design tweaks.<p>I think you should get rid of the shadows. They make it difficult to read, and it doesn't look very professional, crisp or clean.<p>The white on brown isn't super easy to read. Maybe go for more contrast in that section on the bottom.<p>Why is the socialize at the bottom so HUGE?? What is that? Why is it there? Why is it detracting from the opportunity to say more important stuff about splinch?<p>Your page content should have a set width. You're resizing your 'splinch provides' text which is making it too long to read.<p>Give yourself a limit of 980px or something like that, and squeeze all your content into that box. Take a look at the homepage for <a href="http://basecamp.hq" rel="nofollow">http://basecamp.hq</a> - you can get some ideas for layout from sites like this.<p>Makes it very difficult to read.
I am confused about "Splinch Pro" - is there going to be a non-pro version? If not, perhaps it's worth removing that distinction.<p>As for your pricing, is it based on research? Corporate IT is one of those magical environments where sometimes more is more - ie, your service won't be taken seriously if it's priced too low.<p>I think it would be worth your time creating a second page with more details. I don't know what "collaborative maintenance" means, nor "community extendable", so having some more information would be helpful. Specifically, I would point out the advantages of your service over the existing approaches. Keep in mind this won't just be read by network admins, but by non-technical managers to whom the benefits may not be immediately obvious.