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

guerilla said:
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.
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Lot's of little UI tweaks will be hammered out when we hire a proper designer, but there have already been some good points that will be implemented.

guerilla said:
You need facebook and twitter like/tweet buttons on the detailed pages.
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FB is already on the detail pages, branded as "Recommend", we're working on conversion tracking thru tweets now, so fingers crossed, those will be there within a week.

guerilla said:
Above all, carve out a niche or unique angle. Right now, its just another coupon site.
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I don't really agree with that, but perception is often reality, is the concept of the site not coming across or is it and you still think it's just another coupon site? (As far as I know none of the big boys like fatwallet/RTM does cash back via referrals to your social graph but maybe I missed somebody)
 


And about the funding comments. I'm not really looking for millions, not that I would turn it down :), more like a $25K angel investment to pay for a thorough redesign and FB/Adwords campaigns to build a base audience.
 
Thanks for all the feed back and critiques so far! The hate (all warranted and constructive so far) is just throwing gas on the fire :D
 
justo_tx said:
...perception is often reality, is the concept of the site not coming across or is it and you still think it's just another coupon site? (As far as I know none of the big boys like fatwallet/RTM does cash back via referrals to your social graph but maybe I missed somebody)
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Honestly, it won't come across as Anything but a Groupon-wanna-be until people read deeper down into it.

You have to make it a #1 goal to give them reason, probably an off-site reason, to read down into it more. It needs to be central to your marketing goal & campaign. If not, they'll ALL assume it's just a smaller, less powerful, late-to-the-party groupon clone. -And why even give such a site a chance?
 
lukep said:
Honestly, it won't come across as Anything but a Groupon-wanna-be until people read deeper down into it.

You have to make it a #1 goal to give them reason, probably an off-site reason, to read down into it more. It needs to be central to your marketing goal & campaign. If not, they'll ALL assume it's just a smaller, less powerful, late-to-the-party groupon clone. -And why even give such a site a chance?
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Yeah, the cash back for referrals is the big message that I haven't been able to accurately convey yet. I'd already planned on making an adjustment so that each deal shows exactly how much cash you get back from your purchases and how much you get back from your friend's purchases. I'm making it my mission to beat visitors over the head with our concept (which is our biggest differentiator).
 
JoseArmando said:
Redesign.
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^ this.

Logo sucks, button suck, doesn't look trustable, doesn't look organized.

Every section has a few offers from the same merchant over and over and a tons of pages. Remove pagination, group the offers by the merchant - show the best one and make links - more offers from XX stand out more... Good start though.
 
tencentpiece said:
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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I didn't want to gloss over this, it's a huge point that has always been in the back of my mind. Yes, anything on the net can be copied. Fatwallet can say "hey they may have something there" and take a shot and eventually successfully emulate our feature set. But... there is a chance that FW or Slickdeals or whoever doesn't want to cannibalize their revenue by paying out money they don't have too, some of them will cross their fingers and hope we fail (a completely valid possibility) if we don't fail and they see they have to respond we'll be putting distance between us and them. FatWallet would have immense amount of "technical debt" (programmers know what that is) that would go into refactoring their CMS to do what we do with our on the fly URL generation. Again, I have to re-iterate that until you start going through all the possible work flows you just can't appreciate how many variables go into the tracking to make sure people get properly credited but we still keep the maximum amount of revenue. And FatWallet would have to go through all that discovery and refactoring and then roll it out to their existing content without fucking anything up in the process.

I'm not claiming that what we are doing is totally unique but I do claim that we are one of the few (there is another startup I know of doing this too) to actually go through with it, mostly because we don't have anything to lose and no existing revenue stream we need to protect. We're trying to disrupt the old guard.
 
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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While there are lots of other great pointers on this page including everything else GerardWon said, this is the first thing I thought of when I read your post.

If this is the name you want to go with then do whatever it takes to get the .com and twitter names or pick another .com that isn't taken and which has a matching twitter account or you're just wasting your time and resources IMO.

Second, I would look very closely at what the other major coupon sites are doing, identify their best features, their worst, and try to improve on them in your design.
 
Fatbat said:
While there are lots of other great pointers on this page including everything else GerardWon said, this is the first thing I thought of when I read your post.

If this is the name you want to go with then do whatever it takes to get the .com and twitter names or pick another .com that isn't taken and which has a matching twitter account or you're just wasting your time and resources IMO.

Second, I would look very closely at what the other major coupon sites are doing, identify their best features, their worst, and try to improve on them in your design.
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If this advice to get the .com is for branding purposes, I agree 100%.

The current design is indeed good. However, not good enough to raise confidence. Check all big coupon sites and create a doc with features you'd like to have and a wireframe. Then send it to some decent designer.
 
blogginginc said:
If this advice to get the .com is for branding purposes, I agree 100%.
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Definitely for branding, as well any marketing spend, and SEO. Mostly because people remember and type in .com by default. Also, because the OP doesn't own the .com, half of any marketing he does will only go to help the owner of the .com make any site he builds better, or inflate the eventual selling price of the .com if the .net ever becomes successful.

Something else I just thought of after my previous post... why singular? Have you only got one deal on your site? "Deals" sounds a whole lot better.
 
I like it.

Obviously the blue / green doesn't work.

It's a bit overwhelming, and I seem to get lost throughout it.

Consider directing your visitor once they are there.

For the FB like, are you using a plugin or straight XFBML? Hard coding it into the theme may help.

I've tried to get into this area myself, only locally.

Take a look at what I've done so far. Nothing exciting.
Citrus County Coupons - Saving Citrus County Florida Residents & Visitors Money!
 
Looks like you're hotlinking all your images.

Code: 
<img src="http://betasocialdeal.blob.core.windows.net/deals/s7793-w110-h60.gif" class="deal imgleft shadow"/>

A lot of good comments here already. Congrats on getting off your ass and doing it!
 
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i was bored
 
Go to fiverr and get everything mentioned for $5 (facebook likes, logo, etc, etc). There are some really good suggestions in this tread!
 
Didn't read any of the comments so probably already been covered but definitely get a 10k like package or whatever and disperse them over each individual listing on the front few pages and on your main FB page.

What's your main goal for the page? Without a clear path -> goal you'll probably find mediocre success. Def sign up for Virtual Split Tests and start testing different copies of your page and finding your best.
 
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