<story><title>Lessons learned from helping over 150 startups with marketing (from my Offer HN)</title><url>http://insight.io/blog/2010/11/lessons-learned-from-helping-over-150-startups-with-marketing-part-1-fundamentals/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>patio11</author><text>Serious Ravers Love Our Lasers -- Pew Pew&lt;p&gt;You may want to take off the &quot;pew pew&quot;.  I am not plugged into that community.  Alternate phrasing &quot;Like Glow Sticks, Without The Suck&quot;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Want an intense effect for your next rave?  Try a green laser -- it is magical in a dark room or at nighttime. 
Each laser pen is effectively a laser pointer with a detachable kaleidoscope light filter on the top. When this filter is on, the single, solid laser beam transforms into hundreds of different points of light on a surface.  Too dangerous to point at a face.&lt;/i&gt;</text></item><item><author>prawn</author><text>First thing I noticed was &quot;top product&quot; which is pretty generic. Might be better if that said &quot;green lasers - our top seller&quot; or similar?</text></item><item><author>user24</author><text>look at the site with fresh eyes.&lt;p&gt;Load the homepage and only allow yourself to read the most obvious 5 words on it.&lt;p&gt;What do you read? At the moment when I do that, I read: &quot;plurty cart checkout light gloves&quot;.&lt;p&gt;Just put a nice bright tagline under plurty that says &quot;Number 1 for rave lights&quot; and bam!</text></item><item><author>treeface</author><text>Thanks jscore! We&apos;re in the process of a redesign that will greatly simplify the whole thing, but I will see what I can do in the short term to make it more obvious what we sell. Thanks again :-]</text></item><item><author>jscore</author><text>Just adding $0.02 of my own about your site.  I went there really quick but took a while to figure out what you were selling.  I&apos;d simplify the design and add a headline somewhere about what the site does.  It&apos;s just too busy.</text></item><item><author>treeface</author><text>Ilya was kind enough to review my startup, an online rave gear retail site:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plurty.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.plurty.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Previously, I had this giant &quot;Sign up&quot; button on the home page, but what I had forgotten was that most of the value of the site came from the ability to &lt;i&gt;not have to sign up in order to buy our products&lt;/i&gt;. We built anonymity into it so much that you don&apos;t even have to enter your email address. This was crucial for us because nobody wants to sign up for a website that is unknown.&lt;p&gt;Also, Ilya pointed out that the most distinguishing feature of our site were the extended exposure images and that we should use it as a marketing tool. We are currently planning on replacing our text-only adwords campaign and using the images to get more clicks.&lt;p&gt;Anyway...just thought I&apos;d add my $0.02 and thank Ilya again. It was useful advice that we really needed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chc</author><text>My girlfriend got out of the rave scene not too long ago, and I guarantee you she would have bought it for the &quot;Pew Pew&quot; alone.</text></comment>
<story><title>Lessons learned from helping over 150 startups with marketing (from my Offer HN)</title><url>http://insight.io/blog/2010/11/lessons-learned-from-helping-over-150-startups-with-marketing-part-1-fundamentals/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>patio11</author><text>Serious Ravers Love Our Lasers -- Pew Pew&lt;p&gt;You may want to take off the &quot;pew pew&quot;.  I am not plugged into that community.  Alternate phrasing &quot;Like Glow Sticks, Without The Suck&quot;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Want an intense effect for your next rave?  Try a green laser -- it is magical in a dark room or at nighttime. 
Each laser pen is effectively a laser pointer with a detachable kaleidoscope light filter on the top. When this filter is on, the single, solid laser beam transforms into hundreds of different points of light on a surface.  Too dangerous to point at a face.&lt;/i&gt;</text></item><item><author>prawn</author><text>First thing I noticed was &quot;top product&quot; which is pretty generic. Might be better if that said &quot;green lasers - our top seller&quot; or similar?</text></item><item><author>user24</author><text>look at the site with fresh eyes.&lt;p&gt;Load the homepage and only allow yourself to read the most obvious 5 words on it.&lt;p&gt;What do you read? At the moment when I do that, I read: &quot;plurty cart checkout light gloves&quot;.&lt;p&gt;Just put a nice bright tagline under plurty that says &quot;Number 1 for rave lights&quot; and bam!</text></item><item><author>treeface</author><text>Thanks jscore! We&apos;re in the process of a redesign that will greatly simplify the whole thing, but I will see what I can do in the short term to make it more obvious what we sell. Thanks again :-]</text></item><item><author>jscore</author><text>Just adding $0.02 of my own about your site.  I went there really quick but took a while to figure out what you were selling.  I&apos;d simplify the design and add a headline somewhere about what the site does.  It&apos;s just too busy.</text></item><item><author>treeface</author><text>Ilya was kind enough to review my startup, an online rave gear retail site:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plurty.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.plurty.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Previously, I had this giant &quot;Sign up&quot; button on the home page, but what I had forgotten was that most of the value of the site came from the ability to &lt;i&gt;not have to sign up in order to buy our products&lt;/i&gt;. We built anonymity into it so much that you don&apos;t even have to enter your email address. This was crucial for us because nobody wants to sign up for a website that is unknown.&lt;p&gt;Also, Ilya pointed out that the most distinguishing feature of our site were the extended exposure images and that we should use it as a marketing tool. We are currently planning on replacing our text-only adwords campaign and using the images to get more clicks.&lt;p&gt;Anyway...just thought I&apos;d add my $0.02 and thank Ilya again. It was useful advice that we really needed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Johnnytops</author><text>As the co-owner of this site, I highly approve of the pew pew and have added it to the description. Now to figure out how to add a cross-browser compatible sound effect...</text></comment>