Ask HN: We aren't getting users to create stories on our content platform – why?

14 points by siddharthram 8 years ago | 28 comments

We are building a product TYMLINE (https://tymline.co/) It's a timeline based story blogging platform. Here, people create timelines to narrate stories of any kind like relationship, career, travel, hobbies etc as timelines which can be discovered basing on users interest.

We got about 10k visits with around 250 sign ups but only 10 new people have created timelines organically. Others either read a story or check the platform and drop off.

Sample timeline: https://tymline.co/SiddharthRam/siliconvalley?ref=hn

Where are we going wrong in the product?

Any suggestions or feedback to improve the product would be helpful for us to iterate further.

TIA

montrose 8 years ago |

By default, products fail to appeal to users, in the same sense that, by default, ten-digit integers are not perfect squares.

Is this something you and your friends eagerly want and constantly use? I.e. that you and your friends would use if you weren't working on this startup, and had merely come across it as potential users? If so, you should be able to get users from among your friends and their friends. And if not, it's a made-up idea (http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html) that you can't expect to fix by tweaking it.

My guess is it's the latter. This sounds like a made-up idea to me.

troydavis 8 years ago | |

I’ll second this. OP lists a few reasons that someone might theoretically want to create a timeline, but not why a random site visitor would. That 10 out of thousands of visitors want to create a timeline actually doesn’t strike me as odd, not because timelines are bad but because very few people need one.

If you started a site that advocated for, say, jumping rope as exercise, 10 out of thousands of visitors might go pick up a jump rope. You’re providing something that the vast majority of visitors don’t need.

If you want a higher adoption rate, either:

- solve an acute problem - something that many visitors woke up thinking they need to do today.

- come up with a specific compelling reason/use for a timeline. Not app features, but things I can do with a timeline - solve a problem. Focus on the strongest one. Dumb example: maybe the best use of a timeline you can think of is for someone to put it their resume or applicant portfolio. Once you’ve picked one or two, if you actually believe they’re compelling, focus on those.

- or get much more targeted visitors, like only those few people who are actively looking to create a timeline.

siddharthram 8 years ago | |

Thanks Montrose,

We built this product as an experiment to document experiences in a much easier way than writing a blogpost.People who are not interested in blogging could tell a cohesive story by stitching a set of posts which are easier to understand.

We are trying to experiment this and see if it could be used as a microblogging tool for experiences and stories as an alternative to writing a blogpost.

We will surely reflect on your feedback but if you have anything that we could look to pivot can be helpful for us to consider from here on.

thanks again

montrose 8 years ago | | |

What do you and your friends want so much that, if someone else built it, you'd start using it immediately?

matt_the_bass 8 years ago | | |

If it’s an experiment, then one possible outcome is lack of success. Maybe you’ve learned it’s not a solution with a lot of demand. This comment is not intended as a critique of your work, just pointing out a possible outcome may not be the outcome you wished for.

quickthrower2 8 years ago | | |

It seems so similar to blogging to me, I find it hard to see the difference, personally.

pseingatl 8 years ago |

They're not timelines. They are merely chronological narratives divided by paragraphs in outline fashion. The tool can't be used to create a real timeline either. The timeline is a gimmick; what do you offer the narratives that Medium doesn't?

siddharthram 8 years ago | |

Thanks for the feedback.

I didn't get the point when you say the tool cannot be used to create a real timeline ? Could you elaborate on what you expected ?

In medium, one has to construct the narrative which is not an easy task for everyone to do especially for people who cannot articulate well. Timelines have proven to be a form of narrative since ages and we wanted this tool to be given for people to construct a narrative of any life story they wish to say.

If you think it could have been done in a better way, I would love to hear your thoughts on what you expect over a medium in order to construct narratives easily?

It would help us in shaping the product. Thanks again

lovelearning 8 years ago |

It's an interesting concept - an entire timeline can focus on a single theme, unlike Twitter or FB feed.

I can see myself using this as a travel log to share with friends, _if_ I go on an interesting journey (which sadly I haven't done in a long time).

Using it for documenting progress in a hobby is also interesting. I have never done it before, so can't say I'll start now, but still it's a mildly attractive idea.

I don't see myself using this to document my career. Firstly because I don't think there's anything special about mine to document it publicly. Secondly, because it's already documented in personal journals - warts and all - and lessons learned which I don't particularly care to share with anybody. Thirdly, I don't have any great photos or anything to make my career timeline look interesting to other people.

I can't think of any reason why anybody would document their relationships publicly. Do people actually do that?

I think you should focus this product on serving travel and hobbyist communities, and market this to them.

siddharthram 8 years ago | |

Thanks for the feedback.

We had done a product hunt for valentines day and people have created timelines as we provide a private timeline feature.

Your thoughts on travel and hobby resonate with us and have seen early users using for that purpose. Could you try creating one timeline of your recent travel or a hobby and share us your feedback on creation of timeline. That would help us in improving the product further.

If you can share your email address or initiate a chat on the product we can take the discussion off HN and could serve you better.

TIA

stevenicr 8 years ago |

your home page just says real big "sign up to..."

I would think most people are not interested in signing up for anything, especially something they don't know what it is. (does anyone want more spam, or trust some place they know nothing about)

I would put the sign up smaller and the home page show the best 3 -5 examples of awesome uses for your timeline thing.

I looked at a few timelines, and all I could think to myself is, "tumblr" - with a slightly modified theme. Or wordpress, or blogger, or just about all the other "post here on our portal" things out there.

Not sure why people would want to post on your thing, or the other things actually.

If I was looking for a place to post my previous stuff, I would want to know more about cost. Wordpress.com runs ads on the side and you can go premium to remove them, get themes, etc. They have a strong track record for fighting for their users against lawyers and stuff as well, and mostly not censoring.

The cost of each place is different. Given that the content is controlled by others, we don't want to trust valuable content to other's land.

If you made it really easy to export everything automatically, and made it really easy for a group / gathering of people to share to a common timeline, I could see a group of people uploading candid wedding pics to a place they could all share easily.

Otherwise I don't know why people would trust content here as opposed to other more well known places. The others aren't perfect, but you can be sure that a certain level of trust exists for most content posted.

Commercial Spam is always looking for new places to post, but the well funded commercial stuff is already making stories on instagram and snapchat and similar elsewhere. I think it'd be a long time before you had enough viewers to catch their interest.

Just some random thoughts from here, I am likely not your target audience.

Airdrop party pics and share a url with new friends easily maybe, make them private for a fee? You'd need to be easier than Flickr to upload and share.. I dunno.

mycentstoo 8 years ago |

First, fix the landing page - you need to present value before you can expect a conversion. This means making something that is interesting and aesthetically pleasing.

Second, if this is a business idea, I'm not sure how you monetize this. Is it ads from user visits? If so, you are going to need a ton of user visits.

Third, up the social media game. If you want visitors you need to make these articles/timelines sharable and unique.

Fourth, I'm in agreement with others here when they say this is not a timeline. Medium/Wordpress provide the same functionality. This can be replicated in Wordpress/Medium just be including subtitles with dates in between paragraphs.

siddharthram 8 years ago | |

This is an experiment to see if timelines can be used for telling stories much easier than writing a blogpost.

The posts are sorted as per dates and creating threads is much easier here than articulating on a medium.

The restriction on content size and picture based storytelling keeps this quite different from MEDIUM. As we go further, notification system for posts and embeddable features will differentiate from other platforms too.

SyneRyder 8 years ago |

I don't see why I'd want to use this, instead of something like Twitter Moments.

But perhaps more importantly, there is nothing on the front page of the site to explain what the product is and encourage a signup. The Explore link is tiny and I nearly missed it (that is probably closer to what your front page should be like). And that catchphrase "Travel Your Memories" doesn't make sense to me.

But on the signup form, what is a "PHUSER"? I don't even know how to complete the signup form. Is that meant to say Username? (It should also be an Email Address, not an "Email id".)

siddharthram 8 years ago | |

PHUSER is a pre filled invite code which we kept. It doesn't make sense and confuses the users. Didn't think that through.

We are working on fixing the complete user flow and making it more user friendly. Will consider your feedback for sure.

Twitter moments is not much customisable but being a platform we can come up with numerous additions which will be personalised to the user.

Consider this to have all timelines of your stories at one place - sharable, discoverable and editable at any point of time.

nightfly 8 years ago |

Your logo in your nav bar is way too small, it's practically unreadable. I have no idea what I'd want/need an invite code and yet I'm being asked for one if I want to sign up. There is nothing on the home page that lets me see anything about how this product looks or behaves.

Pages seem kind of slow to load, it takes about 5 seconds to render each page in the "explore timelines section". Each page is also really heavy at like 4.5MB, several times larger than an image gallery site I frequent. Probably contributes to the slow load times.

Also, I don't really see any times on the timelines.

siddharthram 8 years ago | |

Thanks for feedback!

We will change the logo size. Agree on the landing page not explaining about the product. Will work on it.

We have the servers located at India and we are probably guessing the slow page load is because of this.

We are working on reducing the size of the page, which is something we have overlooked.

If the above teething problems are solved, can I know if you feel the product will be used by people gradually?

anthony_franco 8 years ago |

Out of 100 visitors, 90 will passively look. 9 will participate (commenting/discussing). 1 will create (post).

These are very general numbers of course and really depends on the actual service, but it’s a good rule of thumb to follow.

siddharthram 8 years ago | |

Aware about this. But if you could share some insights specific to this case it would really help.

sharmi 8 years ago |

Hi, one of the key reasons users don't use a product even If they like it is because it fades away from their memory. Only way, a social product will survive is if it can be part of their daily routine. Also, the initial friction to get going should be low.

Why not target segments that will derive greater value from your product like couples abt to get married who may want to create invitations. Software teams who would like visualize their release timelines etc.

eps 8 years ago |

At the risk of stating the obvious - this is one really dorky name and it's on a .co domain. It looks and sounds dispensable, so it's understandable few are willing to commit to using it.

siddharthram 8 years ago | |

Will consider this feedback. Thanks a lot :)

tinymollusk 8 years ago |

How did you acquire the visitors? Did they indicate interest with a search or click to get to your site?

siddharthram 8 years ago | |

A click to get to our site through partner events of few brands as they used our product for content marketing

Early users who created content and shared it on social media

Some initial content seeded by us garnered a lot of visits

tinymollusk 8 years ago | | |

If you're interested, I just finished a conversion tool designed to help sites get more signups. Won't know until we try, but I'm pretty sure I could increase your signups by 30-50%.

I'm soft launching this week and willing to set you up for free so I can test out my tech. My email is in my profile.

(same goes for any other HN reader who stumbles across this -- free optimization service for anyone who reaches out and is a nice person.)