What is missing from the service?

Question

PHP

Good day.
I am developing a real-time messaging service, I am blogging on Habré. But, to put it mildly, the service is not popular. I would like to know what you expect from services of this kind and what opportunities do you consider to be sufficient for its use? What do you think is missing from the service?
I will be glad to any comments.

Answer 1

I didn’t really understand what it was, but I’ll say this about the site:
1. The connect button does not work
2. The only thing that a visitor sees when entering the site is WORK IN REAL TIME. For programmers (as I understand it, this is your target audience), this does not mean anything. Maybe you should immediately write what kind of library it is, and what is it for?
3. I start looking for information about what kind of project it is, what it does - I turn to the bottom. And the first thing I see - Our mission is to help children. It is certainly wonderful and worthy of respect. But! I thought - did I get there (I searched through Google)? What other children?
4. Go ahead - breaking news. I understand that this is still some kind of IT project, but what it does is still not clear.
5. Next - finally a description of what kind of project it is. Under the strange heading "About Us". The title is associated with the company/team, but not with what it is. Plus, the background of this section, on which it is difficult to read something, everything merges, I personally had to work hard.
I'm not a UI specialist, of course, but this is what caught my eye.

Answer 2

Why is it needed? I know Erlang :)
And on the topic:
Companies will raise the necessary servers themselves, it's easy and simple.
Poor students will use a bunch of similar services for $1.

Answer 3

Cool little thing, so drink something like JivoSite then based on it.
In general, it is immediately clear that there is not enough marketing, because the mission, about us, documentation, but what can I do based on this service?? So just when viewing the site does not come to mind. There should be something that shows the end value like "communicate with your customers", communicate with your partners", "create team chats", etc.

Answer 4

Good time, I read your publications on Habré and looked at your project.
Let's leave it out that subjectively I did not like the design, and as a result, the site is also somewhat inconvenient to work with. On the project itself, you have already been unsubscribed, I looked more at your actions. Everything written below is subjective.
1) During the entire analysis, the question did not leave me, what does it have to do with children and helping them, people who want to help children can directly send money to the relevant companies, etc. In your Habré, in the first article it is indicated that the service does not aim to enrich the creator, well, let's say. But it turns out that people who really liked your project and want to sponsor it, you can only send money to help children.
But then a phrase rushed in your comment about donations,

This section will be on the site until the tariffs appear.

I can refer to the fact that there is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution. But I will support what was said earlier, remove it.
2) Next is the question from the toaster, which you did not understand,

Who is it for?

You complain that you can't find your client, but you are lost in the question of who he is. Having described your client, you will be able to understand where to look for him
3)About articles on Habré
3.1)The first article described the project, but under the heading "Interactive site with post-hawk? Easy!" it was possible to describe writing a project using your service, with an example.
3.2) The second article is about reloading. If you have read up to this point, answer how much time you spent studying information about the experience of starting startups. In general, where does luck, which turned in the wrong place, is not clear. The MVP principle does not say that you have to do everything minimally so that the idea is visible. On the web, it works so that you get the minimum functionality that can be sold. And for sale, it must have a presentation. This idea does not include a scary website and zero marketing. It includes a refusal to support old browsers (the first article of Habr).
3.3) But the title of the article "Post Hawk. Reboot" is of interest only to your current customers, which at that time were 10 pieces. People who do not know about your company will calmly forget about the news that now you have improved and become better. The idea of ​​this material is suitable for email newsletters, or changelog / news.
3.4)

3. News yet and should not be opened.

Why are they there then?
3.5)

there are no funds for a good content manager yet

The content manager deals mainly with content, you don't have content as such, the news feed pulled here does not count, it contains changelogs and does not carry content.
3.6) And again, the title of the article number 3 will be of interest only to your clients, which are now n.
3.7) You have the opportunity to blog on Habré, with a huge audience. Why can't you write articles about solving problems, and at the end of the detailed solution, write that your service can do it instead of the developer. A reader who is looking for a solution to a problem might think he might be better off using your solution than writing his own bike. All your current articles are news for the site, not articles for habr.
4) You constantly make excuses in the comments,
etc.
Stop making excuses, it's good that you understand this, it's bad that you didn't do it earlier. But stop writing that your site is raw, there is no money, the public, for some reason, bypasses you. They asked for criticism, take note, correct it, but you don’t need to write reasons why before that you did everything at random.
5)

But, I want to believe that any product will find its consumer. While I just can not understand why mine does not find ...

Who inspired you to be so stupid? Many projects are lost, precisely for the reason that they did not find a consumer. Why did your project have to find itself? In companies, marketing departments sit for days thinking about how to convey the product to the client, and yours will move itself.
5.1) At the moment when you started looking for clients, you switched from the item "The main thing to do" to the item "Sell", and you wonder why there are no customers, because everything works so cool. It is the ability to sell that allows you to find a client and sell to him.
6) To your key question, what is the service lacking? The service, as a program code, did not give up on anyone. Service is needed as a tool. And the tool should be of a clear purpose, preferably advertised and having advantages over analogues, except for "So far - for free." (Habr article 1). The fact that after so much time after the launch of the project, you just now thought that marketing is needed is too sad.
PS

Good design costs good money, and this resource, unfortunately, is not yet available.

And where will they come from if you plan to give everything to charity.

Answer 5

I read your first post on Habré, where the description of the service itself - from the developer's point of view, everything is perfect, but recently I thought about one idea of ​​notifications from the site and I read Habr and I don't understand - can I use it to implement my idea or not, i.e. there are not enough examples besides the chat ... Well, you have feedback there on the site, I ask a question.

Answer 6

From a business point of view, your project is dangerous. Transferring traffic to a third party (i.e. your service), instead of doing this task on your own, is somehow not right. The same even very loaded chat is implemented through queue servers, or a redis(pub/sub) cluster with a node at the front.
The topic of donations is certainly nice, but what is stopping you, in addition to targeted messages, from transmitting, for example, advertising? The user himself will think that this is either his interlocutor or my service, he will not even have the slightest idea about hawk.