I built an aggregator of programming stuff, which provides to every user a personalized feed of posts according to his interests. Users have the option to submit links, notes, code snippets and discuss them. The key feature is that you see only posts that are relevant to you.<p>It seems that the landing page has some concerns with explaining this idea.<p>Could you please give your feedback about it?<p>Website:
http://tagmask.com<p>Thanks
Too much text. Distil the value proposition of your service into a single sentence or two and put it in a nice big font so that I can get the gist in a couple of seconds.<p>The extent to which you already do this isn't really effective:<p>"Your personalized view of the programming world"...<p>doesn't mean anything to me. Plus you've used a relatively soft colour to this header - which doesn't really attract the eye all that much.<p>If the value proposition at a first glance seems interesting to me - then I'll expend the effort in reading more text.<p>my two cents...
Took a minute or two to offer a suggestion template: <a href="http://pixeltweak.net/uploads/tagmask-20110501-103238.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://pixeltweak.net/uploads/tagmask-20110501-103238.jpg</a><p>It's simple, so you don't overload the visitor with information. But it does the 2 things I assume you want the best: What Tagmask does, and how to get started.
Click on Posts. See how it shows "All posts (unfiltered)"? Make that your front page. Put a tag cloud at the top. Change the page title to say "Share programming links and filter them with tags" instead of "your personalized view of the programming world."<p>It took me 5 minutes to figure out what your site was with all the vague copy writing everywhere, and that's only because I clicked on Posts. If you had simply presented the functionality of your site on the front page, I'd have known what it was right away.
Put the text into bullet point lists, they are easier to read visually, they separate ideas clearly and it's easy to jump to the next item on the list.<p>Consider an iframe or a sample of <a href="http://tagmask.com/posts" rel="nofollow">http://tagmask.com/posts</a> if you don't want to actually have that as a homepage. People are much more likely to "get it" by showing an example rather than a description.
Some things just from a design and aesthetics standpoint:<p>- More white space. It's the easiest way to lose the "cluttered" feel of having giant blocks of explanatory text.<p>- Vary the fonts and font sizes. In particular, your nav. bar's font sizes are too big and distract from the section titles; you can lose the nav altogether for a landing page.<p>- Have a consistent coloring scheme. Pick 2-3 colors (maybe the ones from your logo) and stick with them: one color for the titles, one for links, one for text. E.g., using light purple for your secondary title text at the bottom makes them look like links.<p>- Make the "sign up" button stand out more. That's your call to action, and right now it blends in with the background.
It needs some graphics and touching up to look nicer.<p>The very popular style for this type of website is to have the Your personalized view of the programming world and sections underneath in a highlighted box with the other elements, Use your personal posts-filter, etc, as small, clickable boxes underneath.<p>See: <a href="http://tweetingmachine.com/" rel="nofollow">http://tweetingmachine.com/</a> (not the best example, but first one I can think of)<p>hope that helps, cheers
As others have already stated, you need to make the important info stand out, and cut the rest. Read a few design blogs to get some tips.<p>Aside from that, how is tagmask different from reading your favourite programming reddits? i.e. reddit.com/r/python+django+haskell+ruby+rails ?<p>reddit has more features, is easier to use, and has a larger community.<p>How is tagmask going to differentiate itself?
I wrote one post on landing page optimization. You may find it relevant: <a href="http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/landing-page-optimization-tips-increases-sales-conversions/" rel="nofollow">http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/landing...</a><p>(I also did a Mixergy course on the same.)
I would get rid of the full text. Create a few sliding banner with h1 headers with one including a sample of how it looks then move explanation details in a separated "How it works page" available as a top nav link.
yeah i agree with other peoples mention of lists vs solid copy, and i think a nice combination of headline font and body copy font would help, at the moment everything is very same same.