Outing my site: www.socialdeal.net - tear it shreds for me

justo_tx

justo_tx

My Member is Premium
Dec 19, 2008
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Dallas, TX
(for the TL;DR crowd, save yourself the trouble and hit the back button now)

So about a little less than a year ago there was a post about coupon sites and the general response was generally negative. Give it up, too hard:

http://www.wickedfire.com/affiliate-marketing/89827-building-deals-coupons-site.html
johu said:
I've on-and-off explored launching a coupon site (with a unique twist, since the market is so saturated, and tons of sites have locks on the best SEO for the most popular merchants), but my needs require a completely custom solution.
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conjamuk said:
Agreed the coupon niche is incredibly saturated possibly the most saturated niche. Don't waste your time unless you like competing with sites like Coupon Mountain and Retailmenot. They rank for virtually all coupon related keywords.
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kingfish said:
Fact) Coupon sites make a lot of money.
Fact) Your coupon site will not make a lot of money.

It's too fucking saturated and fucking hard to keep the coupons up to date. If you had some actual good idea and maybe a snowballs chance in hell of implementing it you MAYBE could do something there but probably not.
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mpbiz said:
your gonna have to come up with some kick ass out of the box spin on the whole coupons thing or you most likely wont get anywhere... those sites are too big, popular, and well known for someone to just pop up and start competing
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cardine said:
I think it could be a very good longterm project if you are an experienced affiliate marketer and you have $100,000 to invest. This isn't the kind of project that you kind of decide it would be a good idea to do, or that you figure out as you go along.
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Anyway, the thread stuck with me for a while and I decided I wanted to take a stab at innovating in this space, I figured if I could execute the IM lemmings that don't know how to think independently wouldn't be able to touch me and if my spin on it worked I wouldn't have to fight it out in the SEO trenches with the big boys. Enter, socialdeal.net. SocialDeal.net does leverage coupons and it does leverage cash back incentives, nothing new yet. But I took it a step further and tied conversion tracking to social signals like Facebook Likes (tweets coming in the next week or two). I'm not worried about Google for my traffic, I'm targeting people's social graphs and the credibility that comes with those links.

The site has been live for a few weeks, there's about ~6500 coupons in the site so far, and we've gotten a few sales but we're still working on building the user base.

Do me a favor and rip it if you want, I already have an outsized expectation that it will make bank. I want to hear from the haters so I can prep for pitches when seeking funding. Thanks.

http://www.socialdeal.net
 


First off, congrats for going for it. I'm sure you don't want a bunch of people saying "good for you" though (like that's gonna happen on WF, lol) so here's my honest opinion:

The template is a bit bland.

I think your logo needs to be bigger. If you're not too attached to it, I would consider a design contest for a new one.

You need photos on the homepage.

Nothing jumps out and grabs my eye - maybe a "hot deals" type feature?

Pay some people to like you on Facebook - 13 doesn't inspire confidence.

Good luck with the project!
 
At the moment it looks like a bland and uninspiring coupon site. If you have a competitive edge/take on the coupon niche - then present it to your customers and make it bold.

There is a tiny "how does it work" thing at the moment, fuck that noise. Replace the whole front page with a massive explanation of how your site is different from everybody else. I would have a video on the left hand side and then a text explanation on the right hand side.

Then underneath it have your most popular coupons, let people sort it by day week and month.

Socialproof your site, 13 people like it currently on facebook. It's a social site, I see 13 people like it and straight away I am clicking away from that shit.

The site itself is extremely bland and because of that it's not very brandable. Have a look at how retailmenot structures their site and learn from it.

It's an interesting idea, but it's also extremely easy to replicate - if your seriously looking to get funding then what are you going to tell VCs when they ask you "What's stopping the major players in this niche simply copying the social aspect of the cashback side of your business?". They already have the marketshare and if they were to do something like that, you're fucked.
 
You took the bull by the horns; few do.

Already mentioned but I agree:

-> 13 Facebook likes -- go buy yourself at least 5K right now

-> http://www.retailmenot.com/ is my only experiece with coupon sites, go there and notice how they have the coupons listed on the left hand side of the page. We all read from left to right; this is a must. I'm in a buying frenzy and want to save cash: give me what I want, right now.

-> I loaded your site a few different ways. I may as well be using dialup, its too slow.

And then:

-> a .net? You'll be an page 400 forever. No matter how you plan to get traffic that is not a good thing.

-> Your twitter name is different than your site's name. I know it can be hard to match the two with twitter, but I also think this is a must.

Justo great job seeing this through.

PS: VC funding will only be concerened with replacing you as the CEO and hopefully sticking up your ass in the process via stock dilution, splits, etc. The fact is unless you have a track record of success in Running a big company and/or have about $50 million in sales you ain't shit to them.
 
Funtastic,

Heres something you could do

- get more likes. I know a way.
- Get a VA to do 5 new offers a day and pay him monthly
- target specific stores (electronics, jewelry, etc) break it down a little.
- pair up with local stores. online marketing isn't all sometimes. Get offline presence as well.
- Give people a reason to get your coupons. Make up a story.
- Put a goddam search button.
- Jazz up the theme.
- Build up some sweet ass links.
- Forget about ranking right now. Think traffic.
 
Congrats man.

Since bullshitting you won't do you any good, I have to agree with most of whats been said.

From a branding and design standpoint it's pretty bad. It needs much more pop and a much simpler landing page to get people started.

Logo needs to be redesigned and bigger on lander. Also make the USP of your site much more visible, simple and give it more importance. "Earn cash back when your friends buy!

Put the sign up form front and center and the priority of the page. Get that email address.

Good luck, I hope you make tons of monies.
 
On the actual coupon pages you need images for the items not just the same etailer logo repeated 20 times for each coupon. You could easily scrape the item images and have a small thumbnail of each item. The site is very bland and boring and hard to stay focused. Remember people dont like to read. And how is this site different or better than something like FatWallet?
 
tencentpiece said:
At the moment it looks like a bland and uninspiring coupon site. If you have a competitive edge/take on the coupon niche - then present it to your customers and make it bold.

There is a tiny "how does it work" thing at the moment, fuck that noise. Replace the whole front page with a massive explanation of how your site is different from everybody else. I would have a video on the left hand side and then a text explanation on the right hand side.

Then underneath it have your most popular coupons, let people sort it by day week and month.

Socialproof your site, 13 people like it currently on facebook. It's a social site, I see 13 people like it and straight away I am clicking away from that shit.

The site itself is extremely bland and because of that it's not very brandable. Have a look at how retailmenot structures their site and learn from it.

It's an interesting idea, but it's also extremely easy to replicate - if your seriously looking to get funding then what are you going to tell VCs when they ask you "What's stopping the major players in this niche simply copying the social aspect of the cashback side of your business?". They already have the marketshare and if they were to do something like that, you're fucked.
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^^^^^ ALLA THIS.
 
good on ya for taking the risk, no one ever got anywhere not taking risks in life. Everyone seems to be in agreement about a few things, which i agree with:

- Boost your fans, jack it up to 4 / 5 figures at least
- the design is dead boring. Jazz it up without going all myspace on it :D
- Get a better logo. It doesn't have to cost a lot but make it memorable because if your site kicks ass down the road that will be part of your branding
- Always remember this when you building a site - AIDA (marketing) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- You need to break up the main list because if i read through it, after a while it all becomes the same thing and i lose interest
- Explain to people why they should share / use / come back to your webpage compared to the hundreds of others out there. What makes your site unique to a user?
 
Show only one offer from each major brand on your homepage. Repetition and the horizontal listing style isn't in your favor unless you can keep the list short and super high profile. You gotta recognize that less than 1% of your coupons will be in high demand, and you have to serve that first.

You need facebook and twitter like/tweet buttons on the detailed pages.

If you have the capital, offer a prize once a week for a tweet made about a deal on your site. Incentivize people to do your promotion for you.

Above all, carve out a niche or unique angle. Right now, its just another coupon site.
 
tencentpiece said:
It's an interesting idea, but it's also extremely easy to replicate
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That's a fair initial reaction that I assumed I'll hear quite often but conversion tracking through FB Likes isn't exactly "obvious" and I wouldn't consider it the type of low hanging fruit that most would need to make an outright copy worthwhile. FB started making social signal conversion tracking a little easier (but not much) midway thru our development. I won't iterate our workflows here, it's part of our "wide moat", but when you start to go through all the work flow logic of how visitors can enter my site, who gets credit for the sale and for how much the "gotchas" stack up fast. I don't think it's as easy to replicate as a first impression might indicate but anybody is free to give it a shot :D

mgtarheels said:
So basically, it's a link aggregator for coupons filled with affiliate links?
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If that's all you got from it I need to work on message delivery (which is true), assuming you didn't take the time to attempt to understand the concept. Fair enough, not all will.
 
GerardWon said:
-> a .net? You'll be an page 400 forever. No matter how you plan to get traffic that is not a good thing.
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SEO isn't supposed to be our primary driver, not that it will be ignored, incentivizing word of mouth social media sharing is what will (hopefully) transcend our site from being "just another coupon site".
 
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