Nice looking design. I've been involved in the music industry, and I grokked pretty immediately what you're selling--so you might not need to take the comments to the contrary here too seriously. It might be a bit wordy for musicians, particularly bass players, though, so you might try to pare it down a bit.<p>Any musician knows about the merch table, and they know they want the customers name and address fast and in a format that they can read (probably a quarter or more of paper mailing list signups are illegible and lost). They also know they've got a laptop on the road with them. You might make it clear that the installed software doesn't need internet access (because clubs don't consistently have wifi). I assume that to be the case, since I know you'd have no other reason for making an installable app.<p>URL is a bit long and tough. Couldn't get "scriggle.com"? Maybe try a different name, instead of adding a special character (hyphen is hard to remember, and scriggleit would be hard to read). Just a thought. I don't think it'll kill you, but word of mouth will suffer--and word of mouth is how this thing will spread. Musicians talk before and after the show with the bands they're playing with...someone will ask, loudly because clubs are never quiet, "Hey, what's that software you're using? scribblit? wiggleit? fizzlemit? Oh, squiggleit! I got it. Cool, I'll go check it out when I get to the hotel tonight." If you send stickers and cards and other logo-encrusted schwag to your customers, they might remember to hand them out when people ask...but I wouldn't bet on it.
The Scriggler is what's money. Show it off first, middle and last. Don't hide it after a bunch of text. Put the ad copy over background images of the laptop with the Scriggler on it. Honestly, it would be better if you had one of those images as your header instead of the album-cover satellite art. Which is great, and yes, it lets us know you're cool, but you're not in the satellite business.<p>Also, I now have 2 in a Room stuck in my head.
My one suggestion comes straight from the mouth of Steve Krug: <p>"Take out half of the words on the page. Then whatever is left, take out half of that"
Cool idea! Couple thoughts:<p>- Agree that the front page is very busy and wordy.<p>- I expected that you could click on any of the icons on the left (Code, Mail, Kit, etc.) to learn more about the offerings. "About" has more about the products, but I usually expect About to describe the founders or contact info, etc. <p>- I would leave off all the "coming soon" features. Announce them when they are ready.<p>- Agree with the poster that news.yc isn't your target market. I'd find some bands, buy them a coffee, have them look at your laptop & get their opinion.<p>- Bonus comment ;-) Bands must get sick of trying to get their gigs listed on all the different sites (myspace, purevolume, etc.), having a solution that could push that info to all those different sites would be interesting part of promoting shows.
Go easy on the egregious Flash animation.<p>Also, realize that you're getting feedback from Paul Graham fanboys and people who read "productivity blogs" and "startup news" websites.
The typography and the white-on-gray color scheme hurt my eyes. The animation is annoying: every time it changes, my attention jumps back to it and I'm distracted from whatever else on the page I was reading. Oh, and <grahambot>take half the text off your front page</grahambot>.
Nice! The only thing it lacks is a groovy favicon. Favicons can be one of the most memorable features of a website . . . and keeping with your target audience, I would suggest something like a music note. <p>Otherwise, very nice site design, and a great idea. I so want to hide behind my code right now . . . way to make people like me feel all kinds of amateur. :)
Looks great. It's immediately obvious what it does, and the site design is attractive and clean. One suggestion though would be to rearrange the features. "Code" is more of an advanced feature since not every musician will understand how to embed code into an HTML page, and so it shouldn't be the lead item.
Congratulations on the very nice idea and beautiful site.<p>Critique: The top logo area is so tall that it pushes down the rest of the content down to half the page at lower resolutions. Definitely check it out in 1024x768 if you haven't.
Hey, scriggleit.com designer here. Thanks for the incredible feedback, seriously. <p>I agree with 95% of you. <p>Thanks for the complements.<p>Feel free to drop me an email if your interested in some of my work bluecommons (at) gmail.com
TAGLINE- Say what it does right next to the logo. Or as a headline.<p>SCREENSHOT - Show what it does, first thing. Show a screenshot of the data collection screen at a table. Next to that (not in a flash sequence-- two pics), should the admin interface, etc. Something like BlinkSale's home page, mebbe? <a href="http://www.blinksale.com/home" rel="nofollow">http://www.blinksale.com/home</a><p>Overall tho-- nice niche, pretty design. <p>Congrats!<p>Speaking of the logo, I'm not sure how much the "it" part of it is clear. I'd go with a simple wordmark.<p>URL with a dash isn't wonderful, but I know how painful domains are.
It would be interesting, and possibly profitable, to take the user information provided to you by the bands and figure out which combination of bands would do well in an area if they did a concert together... <i></i>shrug<i></i>
I know what it was about instantly, but software geeks are not your customer. Your demographic probably needs some flash glitz but get to the point quicker.
Remember that album promoters who will use your site are most likely the one who promote their own work. So i would make that clear and loud. Instead of spending time and $ running around with posters and Flyers, this is the one place where they can do it all.
I like the SMS thing in it. You could add another simple feature where they can upload a piece of mp3 and distribute their own ringtone too. Good job man.