Show HN: My Ruby-powered web shop for cake decorating supplies
3 comments
Great work!
Some thoughts - 1. You should add "Web shop for cake decorating supplies" somewhere near the top. Not sure where, but unless I had read your "Show HN" I wouldn't have known that the site was actually about cake decorating supplies.
2. Given that you are proud of and live in Canada, it would be great to include a "Made in Canada" sticker/banner near the bottom to alert me that if I live in Canada this will definitely be awesome for me.
3. Think that you did the english/french translations very well, it's easy to switch back and forth + it doesn't make the experience worse when you switch from one language to the other.
4. The spacing between hr elements could be a little more so that it gives the subscribe button a little room to breathe.
5. Given that almost all the elements are pink (very appropriate for your market I think), the main call to action that I saw on the front page was to subscribe to your email list. Perhaps a main call to action in the main box would be useful?
6. For the email list, the call to intrigue me asks "Looking for inspiration?" ... perhaps something more emotional like "fan of cake baking and decorating? want to hear awesome tips? subscribe to our free newsletter".
7. Your pinterest account looks great as does the twitter account. The one thing I didn't see was a blog? Perhaps you can start one and interview cake / cookie shops all over canada to get web traffic as well as give your twitter / pinterest account content to view?
Well done. Keep us updated with how things go!
Some thoughts - 1. You should add "Web shop for cake decorating supplies" somewhere near the top. Not sure where, but unless I had read your "Show HN" I wouldn't have known that the site was actually about cake decorating supplies.
2. Given that you are proud of and live in Canada, it would be great to include a "Made in Canada" sticker/banner near the bottom to alert me that if I live in Canada this will definitely be awesome for me.
3. Think that you did the english/french translations very well, it's easy to switch back and forth + it doesn't make the experience worse when you switch from one language to the other.
4. The spacing between hr elements could be a little more so that it gives the subscribe button a little room to breathe.
5. Given that almost all the elements are pink (very appropriate for your market I think), the main call to action that I saw on the front page was to subscribe to your email list. Perhaps a main call to action in the main box would be useful?
6. For the email list, the call to intrigue me asks "Looking for inspiration?" ... perhaps something more emotional like "fan of cake baking and decorating? want to hear awesome tips? subscribe to our free newsletter".
7. Your pinterest account looks great as does the twitter account. The one thing I didn't see was a blog? Perhaps you can start one and interview cake / cookie shops all over canada to get web traffic as well as give your twitter / pinterest account content to view?
Well done. Keep us updated with how things go!
Looks great! I'm intrigued though: you say you built it all from scratch in Ruby, does this mean you didn't user Rails or any other framework? And if so, did you end up building a custom Ruby framework/e-commerce app that you'll be releasing to the public?
Congrats!
My girlfriend, a friend and I launched it this weekend after building everything from scratch for the last months during nights and weekend. We’re very proud of it :)
So, if you live in Canada and you are (or your wife/girlfriend is) a fan of cake baking and decorating, give us try!