| I know you've worked hard on your site and business, but unfortunately,
I have a concerns regarding your company and site name. The first issue with your name is, the phrase "Yellow Pages" is actually
trademarked in many countries, although not in the U.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_pages In many countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia,
and elsewhere, "Yellow Pages" (and/or any applicable local
translations), as well as the "Walking Fingers" logo first introduced
in the 1970s by the Bell System-era AT&T, are registered trademarks,
though the owner varies from country to country, usually being held by
the main national telephone company (or a subsidiary or spinoff
thereof).[1][2] However, in the United States, neither the name nor
the logo were registered as trademarks by AT&T, and are freely used by
several publishers.
Sure, you can legally use "Yellow Pages" in the US, but you should
consider if it will really be worth the potential international hassle?Since the trademarks exist in some other countries, you can still face
foreign legal challenges (or threats) from other countries. Sadly, this
kind of nonsense really does happen: http://www.anecdote.com/2007/08/yellow-pages-registered-trad... The second issue with your name is, no one will remember it. The phrase
"Yellow Pages" is known and descriptive, but in the US it is over-used
since a lot of companies use it due to the lack of a trademark. It fails
to be distinct. From a branding and marketing perspective, being plain
and generic is a death knell. For your sake, I hope my concerns on the name are unwarranted since
changing it would be a ton of work. Your video was excellent! The animation is fantastic, and the voice-over
is clear and preformed well. With that said, it's too long to be the
first thing people see/experience on your site. It's 2 minutes and 48
seconds but nowhere are we told its length, so watching your video might
be a two hour investment, or worse. --Your pitch is "Save Time" so
expecting someone to sit and watch a video is counter productive. I'd put your form first, top and center, then put the video below or as
a link to another page. It might just be my own old habits, but I'd
label the form input fields clearly. The "title=" attributes on the form
inputs are good (and helpful for accessibility), but unlike labels, they
require javascript or mouse hovering to be displayed. Labeling the input
fields with plain text solves this accessibility issue. "broadcast your search request to ALL matching local businesses."
I'd use "needs" or "wants and needs" rather than "search request". I'd
also capitalize the "b" in "Broadcast".You need to realize what you're competing with, namely someone saying
two words like "local plumber" into their mobile phone. To make the site more useful to users searching for services, on submit
also provide a list of the local businesses you are contacting on their
behalf, along with the sites and/or contact info of the businesses. This
helps to establish and increase trust, as well as makes the site usable
anonymously. It was great to see you have "Privacy" and "Terms" clearly listed. The text (copy) on the "About" page reads well regarding what your
company and site does. Having a bit more general information about
your company like history might be a worthy addition. The "What We Do"
of your company should be concisely expressed on your main home page
along with the search form. Grey text on a white(ish) background is very common (like here on hn)
but it's a terrible choice and is a well known accessibility issue. It
makes your about, privacy, terms, and other pages are hard to read for
people with even minor vision deficiencies. Your "Team" page lists one person, Lou Pereira. He might be a one-man
army, but until you have a team of people, I'd skip having a team page.
On your team page, your html source has a commented "angela.jpg" image,
which you may or may not want to remove. Though not on your main home page, html source (and php) on the team
page has a very common issue; you used a text editor or IDE that's
configured improperly so you are unable to see the trailing whitespace
on lines, and you're unable to see when you're mixing tab and spaces
characters on indenting. --How would I know? Well, I spent too many
years botching indents and line endings with characters I couldn't see,
until finally one day I configured vim to highlight my mistakes. ;-) Lastly, you've got a form checkbox to allow a phone number input so
searchers can receive text messages, so I wondered if another checkbox
to allow users to have their email and phone sent directly to the
businesses would be worthwhile? As always, writing up feedback for "Show HN" posts is a tough balancing
act since the criticisms always tend to stand out a lot more than the
compliments. I think you're doing good, so I hope the above is written
well enough to avoid seeming overly-critical. |