| Overall: | 16 | 4 |
| Design: | 8 | 1 |
| Navigation: | ||
| Usefulness: | 3 | 5 |
16
4
Our number one goal at Startup Lab is to provide our customers with GREAT ideas. Our team of 'idea consultants' brainstorm to come up with a combination of: a great idea, a catchy domain name, and an eye-popping logo. Consider it an 'idea in a box'if you will but it's definitely a great start to getting your own entrepreneurial venture up and running. But the best thing is we don't stop there. We offer a suite of add-on services such as complete web design, content management systems, business services advice and much much more. It's a challenging world for a entrepreneurial novice to navigate and our goal at Startup Lab is to make it a whole lot easier.
1. Do you understand what it is that we do when you arrive to our home page?
2. Is our website design user friendly? Could it be improved?
3. Do you think that our 'ideas" under www.startuplab.net/ideas are things that you might consider purchasing?
4. Are there other services, things you might want us to provide/sell/offer?
Catchall -- Please send us an email at info@startuplab.net if you notice anything that looks weird. You are the first group to play around with the website.
1. It was pretty obvious to me what you are offering when I first saw your home page. Some of the explanations at the top were a bit wordy and people may not read them... You might want to think about moving the three get started icons up and add brief descriptions on each to explain what you do.
2. The design seemed fine and I liked the logo. The navigation was easy to find/use. I'm not sure about the "who are we?", "don't have an idea?" section at the top of the landing page. Some are questions that link to logical places. Others are statements, one of which (resources) does not even link anywhere. "Get connected" just links to your blog which had a main nav link just above. One of them even linked to a 404 (http://www.startuplab.net/success). Maybe these don't need to be links in the first place?
3. Nope. I'll explain more below
4. Not that I can think of.
I have a problem with the basic premise of your site so I'm probably not a member of your target audience. Your "is it that simple?" blurb mentions "The first step - thinking of an idea - is the hardest." I think that is fundamentally incorrect.
Most (but not all) of the people I know in the startup community are coming around to the fact that ideas are a dime a dozen and by themselves do not hold much value. Execution of the idea is what matters. Your deep domain knowledge and expertise, which lead you to the idea in the first place, is what has value. That's why you shouldn't worry about knock-offs (which will show up the minute you get a modicum of success). Heck, if you just wanted to take someone else's idea and try to make it your own, just recreate Facebook or Twitter.
From what I could see your ideas do not really come with much information to back them up. I saw you include a 30 minute consultation with an idea consultant but I have a hard time believing that will be enough for an outsider to really grasp the idea.
Also, if the ideas are really that good, why put them up for sale? Why not just implement them yourselves and have a bunch of really awesome products?
I'm sorry if this is sounding overly negative, I just do not see how this could really work for people. Your /success link was broken as well so it makes it hard to see the "proof".
All that being said though, you are offering potentially good domain names with decent enough logos at potentially reasonable prices for some people. I would argue that you could get a better value for a logo out of 99designs though. I think if you could somehow find a person that ALREADY pretty much had an idea that you have listed but you have the perfect domain name/logo for them then you might make a sale there. A consultation for 30 minutes in that situation might be worthwhile to the purchaser to fine-tune their idea and meld it with yours.
I love what you're trying to do here because it seems like you're trying to help startups which is awesome. Good luck with it!
"I saw you include a 30 minute consultation with an idea consultant but I have a hard time believing that will be enough for an outsider to really grasp the idea."
Totally agree with this. I would want a way to be able to continue to get advise from you. The idea doesn't seem detailed enough to say "here and go"...things will come up and it might turn out to be the best failed idea ever!
"Also, if the ideas are really that good, why put them up for sale? Why not just implement them yourselves and have a bunch of really awesome products?"
Exactly what I was thinking!
Brian, thanks for the feedback. I think that many of the points you brought up are valid. Also thanks for pointing out some of the broken links. We need to fix those ASAP. Our site is still kind of a work in progress, so some of the feedback you've provided is definitely considered as we continue to develop our business. I think we are definitely trying to create a major value add with our consulting and in attempting to help out any budding entrepreneurs.
Once again, thanks for the advice, I truly do appreciate you taking the time to review our site.
Chris Stuart
StartupLab.net
I agree with Brian's analysis as well. I just don't see the business prop being something that I as an entrepreneur would ever consider using. I guess there is a category of newb that would find this attractive, but the reality is ideas are cheap/worthless in general and the ones that aren't don't get sold in gumball machines, on ebay, or on sites like this.
1) Yes, I understand what you are offering.
2) I think your design is fine
3) I'm not sure what exactly you are offering with your idea. I see a price and some description. I don't understand what all is included. Do you release all rights to the idea? Are you providing a business plan with the idea? Are you guaranteeing the idea will be successful? Is it just the description and domain you are providing? If the last one, I would probably not pay for this. I can think of ideas and domain, maybe it will take me time, but it's free :-)
4) Can't think of any.
J, thank you for your feedback! True many can go out and create a logo and find a domain on their own. But we are attempting to provide a service for those that are looking for some assistance in starting up a new business. True it's not for everyone, but we hope that for some we can offer a truly unique and helpful service.
Thanks again!
Chris Stuart
StartupLab.net
The homepage icons can use work! Give it a more web 2.0 feel. You can find modernistic icons on various stock sites. Nice idea. Try finding your target audience on entrepreneurial sites such as Entrepreneur Connect. Change latest tweets widget to work seamlessly within theme of site, remove the orange background and make it white, just like launchly has it on the right side.
You have a nice enough looking site that is easy to navigate. It was fairly obvious what you are about in the first few seconds of viewing your home page.
Your "develop an idea" link, front and center, links to a 404 error page.
In your main navigation bar, half of the menu items have pop-up descriptions, the other half don't. Be consistent.
I think your blog is / can be far more valuable than your "ideas". I would not buy one of your ideas. However, I'd love to spend time digging through the blog on how to make an my idea a success.
I'm not sure who your target audience is. If you are aiming for the small guy, there is no way they will be able to make most of your ideas like "fantasy dork" a reality. The data costs would be prohibitive. Anyone with enough money and desire to make it a success doesn't need the idea. They may need help with the programming or design or business.
It does not look like you have a search engine site map. You should create one and link to it in your robots.txt file. Since you are running Drupal, check out the xml sitemap module which is easy to configure and does a great job:
http://drupal.org/project/xmlsitemap
Your idea has potential. I would refocus your efforts on becoming an consulting site. Let someone have their own idea but want to come to you for information on how to make it a success. If you have good blog posts, you should be able to get conversions on designing logos, consults, contacts, programming, etc.
Or, finish this site, then start banging out your ideas one by one and make money on your own ideas. If you able to do a good job with the ideas you have, you can always sell them for a lot of money each a year down the road.
Good luck!
1. When I landed on the home page, it was pretty obvious what your site is all about and what it is offering.
2. Yes, the design is neat and pretty much user friendly.
3. You could provide a bit more details on the preview table.
4. At the moment, I can't think of any other service as such that you could provide.
All the best for your site.
I really like your idea and the collaboration of ideas on the site..I would suggest that maybe each page has a sign up for your newsletter on the right hand side like the homepage so people always have the option to sign up as it is a way to constantly inform your subscribers of anything new.
As more substantive feedback: what I've heard is that successful startups never end up doing what they started with. So how useful is it to have someone generate an idea and hand it over?
Also, the ideas I looked at (DrinkCritic and DoggyStop) looked like they'd have a lot of competition. How does one beat the competition?
I know this sounds skeptical.
Wow, nothing says 'startup' like Papyrus (font used in ideas list description) - being sarcastic of course. That font is usually associated w/ new age spas etc. I suggest you change to a more readable sans-serif
For that price you need to be more specific about what you get and when you get it, how does the domain get transfered to new owner etc.
Thanks JY! I guess i understand what you're saying about the text...i might change it at some point. I did take your other suggestion though and created a "How it Works" page here:
http://www.startuplab.net/how-it-works
I hope that clears up some confusion
Thanks!