Ask HN: Review our Web to Mobile Conversion Startup

[AlphaEvolve]

Hey HN,

Been following HN for more than a year now, and I am completely addicted. I love how like-minded we are in trying to resolve/help each others, from technical, business or even personal side.

I have a new venture that we are currently launching called WebtoSmartphone.com. It's still in the early stage (on production site), and we have been working on this for quite some times now. No VC/Seed funding, just bootstrapping aside of fulltime jobs + Ramen diet :) It's doing a pretty good job converting most of the websites we own (in our network).

I had the idea for the service based on the need of my firm to convert existing websites to mobile and keeping the mobile site as authentic as possible to the actual website, not a wap-looking site, and hassle-free. There was and is many options on the market and we can see in the near future more and more of those options. Our humble goal is to provide a service that is affordable, pleasant and easy to use and that constantly synchronize your website with the mobile site without having to keep or host two separate versions. This is why we went for "on-the-fly" conversion.

It was a technological challenge, but our developers (Kudos to Gero and Adrian!) did a fantastic job in helping us achieving our challenges.

I (we) need your help to review the following aspects:

1. What do you think of the idea.

2. What do you think of the landing page

3. What do you think of the checkout page

4. What do you think of the process in general

5. Most important is: What can we do better?

There is still work ahead of us in keeping up with the technical optimization side: development, improving conversion speed and Business side: Sales, Marketing, (By the way we are looking for white label partners, so if you are interested for that or just connect with us (we are socal based), please drop us a line to [e-mail], subject HN :))

This is my first time actually using "Ask HN", all your positives ideas and feedbacks are highly welcomed! We want to create a product that fits YOUR mobile needs.

Thank you in advance.

[bwh2]

1) The idea is good.

2) The preview really needs to work. I tried a few sites (yahoo.com, reddit.com, drpepper.com, google.com) and only Google worked. Your product right now is that preview.

5) As a potential customer, I would rather have the first month free than a money back guarantee.

[AlphaEvolve]

First of all, bwh2, thank you for your feedback!

1) Thanks :)

2) That is our challenge. We are working on this currently and will be releasing a newer version of the preview (emulator) very soon!

The main items we will be addressing in our next release are the following:

2.a) Preview Speed (It currently convert all data on page)

2.b) Preview Quality (Better engineering of pages previewed)

2.c) "Build your Mobile Site from Scratch" Module (for users that wants to)

2.d) Internationalization: Website will be translated and accessible in more languages.

2.e) "Self-taught"/AI Conversion Engine (Not all websites are build the same, therefore our ultimate goal is to have an engine that convert better everytime it converts based on aggregations on sites structures)

5) Thank you! I will work on that right away starting today and update you here as soon as it is implemented.

[bwh2]

I would suggest pre-caching the conversion results for a bunch of popular sites. Grab the Alexa top 1000 or something. Basically, I can understand why my random site takes a little longer, but not big, fast, popular sites.

[AlphaEvolve]

bwh2: Great idea. My question is: Would it be kosher to pre-cache? ;)

There is a powerful caching module for the sites you access from your mobile phone though. I will have to ask my developers how to implement this in the preview.

[AlphaEvolve]

link: http://www.webtosmartphone.com