[rhizome31]

I'm jealous too :) I've got about ~10 years experience in software, half of it working on web projects. I posted my app yesterday hoping for feedback and got exactly zero upvotes and zero comments. The lessons I'm taking from this:

1) get people to interact with the app straight away (aka. lazy registration)

2) keep words away from the homepage, they can go in the /about page

3) get a design

[billpatrianakos]

I think design is the most important thing. It's your first impression and you have to make it a good one. If there were a website that cured cancer but it looked ugly upon first glance people probably wouldn't stay on it long enough to figure out what it does or sign up to try it.

Lazy registration is also a good idea probably. I never once built anything that used any registration and I'm embarrassed to say I'm not sure how it works. I'm sure 5 minutes on Google would get me going though.