- Aaron Epstein, a visiting partner at YC, reviews startup websites and provides feedback.
- The first website reviewed is SEO Buddy, a tool for improving search engine optimization.
- Feedback includes suggestions to make the subheadline more readable, provide clearer differentiation from competitors, and highlight the main features and benefits of the product.
- The second website reviewed is Computus, a crypto tax tool.
- Feedback includes the need for a more visually appealing design, clearer explanations of services, and the importance of building trust and credibility.

The video provides feedback on three different websites. The first website is critiqued for lacking trust and credibility, and the recommendation is to improve the design and content to build trust. The second website is confusing and unclear about its purpose, and the suggestion is to make the screenshots more prominent and consider targeting a specific audience. The third website offers audio and speech synthesis services but lacks clarity on its use cases and advantages over competitors. The recommendation is to provide more information for developers and improve the design to better communicate the product's features.

- The speaker highlights the importance of talking to users and understanding their reactions and preferences.
- The website for upcycling lacks clarity and does not clearly define its target audience or purpose.
- The speaker suggests focusing on specific examples and case studies to make the website more understandable and relatable.
- The website for pet insurance needs to clarify its purpose and provide more specific information about its services.
- The speaker recommends using familiar e-commerce platforms to create a more user-friendly experience.
- The website should provide clear examples and scenarios to help users understand the value and benefits of pet insurance.

- The first part of the video discusses the need to simplify insurance options for users and customers, focusing on their specific needs and costs.
- The second part critiques a consulting services website for using jargon and lacking information about their specialty, past clients, and ideal customers.
- The third part analyzes an app marketing campaign website, pointing out the lack of clarity in their one-liner and the confusion between marketing effectiveness and fraud detection.
- The final part reviews a website about water analytics, suggesting the use of a clearer and more focused one-liner and improving the "Learn More" button functionality.

- The speaker suggests that instead of asking people to email for information, a website should provide clear answers to common questions.
- The speaker recommends clarifying the purpose of the website and the target audience.
- The speaker points out design inconsistencies and suggests improving the user interface.
- The speaker provides feedback on a marketing system for restaurants, suggesting clearer messaging and examples of how the product benefits customers.
- The speaker critiques a website for earplugs, noting that the branding may not align with the product's use cases.

The first part of the video discusses a hardware company that is concerned about technology and the need for charging devices. They suggest adding imagery that reflects the common use cases and clarifying that their headphones are not electronic. The second part of the video discusses a service that styles Google Forms to match a website's design. The speaker suggests simplifying the website's messaging and highlighting the key features. The third part of the video discusses a service called Crawl, but the speaker finds it confusing and suggests clarifying the target audience and the purpose of the service. The speaker also suggests improving the website's messaging and design.

- The first product being reviewed is a virtual office space, but the reviewer is unsure of its purpose and how it differs from other communication tools like Zoom or Slack. They suggest focusing more on specific features and benefits.
- The second product is a food delivery service, but the reviewer finds it unclear and suggests providing more information about who the service is for and where it is available.
- The third product is a reading platform, but the reviewer is unsure of its purpose and how it differs from other platforms like RSS feeds or readability. They suggest highlighting the community aspect and the founders' engagement to attract users.

- Aaron Epstein, a visiting partner at YC, provides feedback on startup websites.
- Feedback includes suggestions for improving readability, differentiation from competitors, and highlighting product features and benefits.
- The importance of understanding user reactions and preferences is emphasized.
- Specific suggestions are given for improving websites in various industries, such as insurance, consulting services, and app marketing campaigns.
- The need for clear messaging, target audience clarification, and improved design is highlighted.
- Specific product reviews include virtual office spaces, food delivery services, and a reading platform.

- The speaker discusses the value propositions of different platforms and suggests focusing on the key value that engages users.
- The speaker provides feedback on a game-based app, suggesting that the website should provide more information about the product and its target audience.
- The speaker reviews a personalized reminder app, suggesting that the website should clarify how the messages are received and highlight the key features.
- The speaker examines a website builder platform, suggesting that it should clarify its target audience and differentiate itself from other similar platforms.

- The speaker suggests that the company could launch faster by focusing on one core use case instead of promising multiple features.
- They mention the successful early no-code app, LaunchRocket, as an example of conveying the purpose of the product quickly and effectively.
- The speaker suggests providing a more concrete or visual example of how the product works.
- They discuss the idea of a lunchbox delivery service for school kids in India and suggest adding more visuals and explanations to the website.
- The speaker critiques a goal tracking app for not clearly explaining its purpose on the website and suggests starting with a clear explanation of the app before discussing the larger vision.
- They mention the difficulty of understanding an app's functionality from screenshots and suggest using clearer visuals or focusing on specific parts of the app.
- The speaker suggests simplifying the description of a work and life organizer app and focusing on one main function.

- The speaker doesn't like the white on black design of a website and finds it too dark.
- They are concerned about the URL being difficult to say and remember.
- The speaker suggests that the website should clearly explain what the app does and how it can help users.
- They mention that the website has too many icons that don't convey its purpose effectively.
- The speaker advises the website to highlight its expertise in the fintech industry and explain why it is better than other ad buying agencies.
- They suggest providing case studies and customer testimonials to demonstrate the effectiveness of the service.
- The speaker provides feedback on another website, suggesting that it needs to clearly explain what it offers and who it is for.
- They recommend focusing on a specific use case and finding users who can benefit from the service.
- The speaker reviews a website for a professional resume platform for influencers and finds the one-liner description to be solid, but suggests using static screenshots instead of GIFs for better control.

- The speaker suggests making brand reviews and metrics more prominent and direct.
- They recommend improving the design of the website to make important information more visible.
- The speaker suggests offering a free option for users to create their own personalized pages.
- They advise simplifying the language and terminology used on the website to improve clarity.
- The speaker suggests focusing on one main feature or purpose of the product instead of overwhelming users with too many options.
- They recommend embedding the product on the website to showcase its functionality.
- The speaker suggests adding a change log feature and providing guidance on writing effective copy for updates.
- They recommend incorporating a feedback system to gather user opinions on product updates.
- The speaker advises improving the clarity and organization of the website's content.

- The first website reviewed is a product feedback platform that needs to clarify its purpose and launch soon.
- The second website reviewed is a content sharing and tracking platform that needs to clearly define its target audience and value proposition.
- The importance of having a clear and concise one-liner on the website is emphasized.
- It is suggested to ask trusted individuals to critically review the website and to observe potential users using the product.
- Tools like UserTesting.com and Full Story are recommended for gathering user feedback and improving website usability.

The speaker provides feedback on various websites and apps, suggesting improvements such as clarifying the product's purpose, targeting a specific audience, and highlighting key features. They emphasize the importance of a clear one-liner description and recommend using visuals and user feedback to enhance usability.

Website design critique given live by Aaron & Eric
https://www.startupschool.org/posts/32309

Aaron, do you mind giving us a little bit of an introduction to yourself?

I actually went through YC in winter 2010, so 10 years ago at this point.

I was co-founder of a company called Creative Market.

It's a marketplace for graphic design assets where people, designers all around the world who create fonts and Photoshop files and stock photos and website themes, They come, they sell them on the platform, and it's a great way to get really great design work.

So now I'm back at YC as a visiting partner, and excited to help all of you startup school founders get some feedback on your designs and put together some really great work.

We've actually got 2 hours of Aaron's time, which is amazing.

We're gonna dive right in in a few seconds.

We're gonna go full screen, so you'll be able to see what we're seeing.

And we will go through a pretty long list of startups and review their websites.

So we're going to start with the first company called SEO Buddy.

And we're coming at this from complete 0, so it's as if we're seeing it for the first time.

It's like usertesting.com, if you've ever used that before.

Grow your search traffic and outrank your competitors with just 20 minutes of work per day.

Like I think you're trying to make it seem like it's not a lot of work, but when you're like, 20 minutes of work, like That sounds hard.

Yeah, that was my first reaction as well.

I think you're trying to target to the specific customer a little bit too early in the cycle.

You're visualizing the person who's already experienced the pain of having to manage SEO and search engine optimization themselves.

Yeah, so the sub headline is kind of a light gray on white background.

Instead of getting lost in endless reports and spreadsheets, SEO Buddy turns the daunting world of SEO into easy to complete daily missions.

Okay so this is for Growing my search traffic and outranking competitors, but I'm not exactly sure how and why.

I think it's good that you have like, hey, there's a free trial.

The color stands out, grabs my attention.

You've got the fire emoji, 111 companies signed up in the last month.

That's good for showing social proof and helping build trust with people.

I think there's some stat where Airbnb and booking.com and all those sites, when they put things like 95% of people did this action or there's only 2 left at this price, I think that significantly increases conversion rates.

Yeah, that's like good social proof to create urgency and let people know that this is something a lot of people are using.

My thought here is that the gray subtext is just hard to really sink into.

And because you've got such a long header right here, that it could be a bit shorter.

I think you could probably drop this second part here.

And maybe bump this up to make it a little bit larger and easier to read.

I can't tell whether these are news clippings or companies.

Yeah, and I've never heard of any of those.

So it lets me know you have customers, but not ones that I would trust.

They could just be your friends' companies or past companies you've even created.

1 thing some startup school companies have been doing is putting their startup school affiliation on the main page.

SEO's and rocket science, but it's not easy to be successful.

Like, you could flip the sentence around to say, like, SEO is difficult.

Yeah, I feel like this whole section also is probably telling your target audience something they already know, which is like SEO is hard.

But still, you know, we're like halfway down the page right now, and I'm not sure what's different about what SEO Buddy can do versus any other tool that's out there.

I feel like this is a pretty crowded competitive space.

And the main thing that I'm looking for is, what is SEO Buddy, and how is it better or different than any other tool that can help increase your search engine rankings.

So 1 way you could consider doing this is presenting what the world was before SEO Buddy and then what the world is with SEO Buddy.

You're kind of getting into it here, right at the top, that this is shorter.

So maybe what you could do is frame it as like, here's what you're probably already doing today, we turned it into this process that's much shorter.

Okay, so now we're actually getting into what SEO Buddy really is.

It's an all-in-one SEO productivity tool.

Helps you grow your search traffic, outsmart your competitors, and take control of your entire SEO strategy.

So you've got backlink monitoring, competitor research, content manager, and outreach tool.

But this is now I'm starting to understand like what your product actually is and does and why I should use it So I would recommend taking this and putting this like much higher.

Yeah, okay It's a little it's still a little bit crowded like In terms of trying to understand exactly what yours does.

yeah, there's a lot going on and I think probably what you're trying to do is you have a full featured product and you're trying to communicate everything that you can do.

But really it's usually better if you can be a lot more focused and focus on what are the top 1 to 3 features that are the main reason somebody would use this and just be really crisp and clear about those, the benefits that they provide.

That's another thing, like, don't sell features to people.

You know, you're saying track backlinks and keyword performance, like, that's a feature that you do.

What's the benefit that somebody gets as a result of that?

Maybe it's like they can rank higher, they can figure out what's working and what's not in their ad campaigns, lots of different things that you can do.

But frame it as the superpowers that you give people, rather than the specific literal feature that you provide.

Okay, anything to wrap up on this 1 before we move on to the next?

No, I mean, in general, I think it's pretty strong.

You have the talk to me thing if somebody needs help at the bottom.

I really started SEObuddy was to stay organized in my SEO journey.

SEObuddy creates sustainable tasks automatically tailored to your business that your team can accomplish in short sprints of 20 minutes or less.

The goal is to find the most relevant backlink opportunities to boost the authority of your domain and also to discover the best content ideas to produce for your keyword.

I hadn't actually seen something like that before.

Maybe you could experiment with this auto popping up on now.

You probably wouldn't want to roll the audio, but having that pop up would be a worthwhile experiment.

Yeah, OK, so Now we're further at the bottom.

And so you're starting to humanize it a little bit more.

Makes me want to support you if I know your story.

Right off the bat, Computis, the world's best crypto tax tools.

OK, so I assume this is for people that have a lot of crypto and they need to file taxes on it.

And you should just tell me what you mean, rather than making me click another link to find out what you mean.

There's not much going on here, so I don't really know what to make of this.

Definitely needs something to draw my attention to the top.

Generate tax documents, monitor expected tax obligations, and make sense of crypto investments.

I can figure out what I have to pay taxes on.

And I'm not sure what making sense of crypto investments is.

Maybe you could be more specific with that.

Oftentimes, I love to copy websites that I really enjoy or really like using.

This seems like you copied kind of a bootstrap template or something, but then kind of missed out on what's tying the page together?

Yeah, this seems super bare bones, almost to the point where it doesn't build trust and credibility with me.

And especially if we're dealing with something like, you're talking about tax advice and portfolio, that sounds serious where it's going to cost me a lot of money if it gets messed up.

So building trust and confidence is really important here.

So the first 1 that we just looked at, they had a bunch of logos where even if I hadn't heard of them, it's like, all right, people are using this.

You saw the face of the person that was behind it and heard his story.

I'm guessing this is probably like a landing page just to collect interest, so rather than like a live service, considering that you're mostly trying to funnel me towards a consultation, which is cool.

You're trying to gather interest from users.

But in order to get people to trust you enough to share their crypto story, I think you're definitely going to need to.

How would you recommend positioning this as a website where the founder could gather feedback versus launch their product?

Well, first of all, I would just, you know, you talked about copying some other site.

Like, first, you just need to hit a certain bar of like trust and credibility for anybody to give any type of feedback or put in their information.

You know, even things like having a logo rather than just typing the name of your company.

If you have any images of the product or something like that, that makes me think there's a real thing here.

So I would start there to build the trust and credibility.

Then I would figure out what's the main goal that you have on this page.

Do you want us to learn more, you know and open this PDF?

Yeah, like this should all be on your website And you should be driving people to 1 goal Which it's probably not learn more because that should be in the page.

It should probably be like schedule a consultation or put in your email and that should be the thing that's all the way in the

So I talk to founders pretty often that are in this kind of trap where they want to talk to users but they need a website in order to seem credible.

I think this might be an example of where it actually is negatively impacting your credibility Like if I were to have a friend if you if you were to get a warm introduction to me to a friend and And actually do user research that way that might even be more powerful than sending someone to a website like this.

Or just go fire up a Webflow template or something like that is a really good way to just get this base level of professionalism that people would trust.

They got all kinds of templates and stuff.

It's really easy to just knock something like this out.

Sapsan, a mobile app for creative people fond of arts and crafts.

Discover trends, discover local events, introduce your point of view, and share your feelings.

It sounds like this might be a dating app.

It's possible to join a mob or create 1 to stop the world from being regular.

Okay, So this is like an example of you are using a lot of vague words and terms that don't really mean things to people.

It's hard to visualize what this product actually is.

And so I was kind of with Eric like is this a dating app or something?

Oh, it's a mutual friend between you and yet unknown But already truly your folks.

Okay, so find local experts popular and private get opinions and reviews from celebrities And find like-minded people.

Is this an app to meet new people in person that you share similar interests with?

Or is this a community to engage around art?

And then I'm not sure where the celebrities part comes from.

Let's check out the YouTube or the Google link here.

OK, I think we might not be fully qualified to review a Russian app at this moment, because we're Russian.

Overall, like the design, the content that's inside the design does not really do it for us.

Yeah, so maybe some actionable feedback we could give here.

Take the screenshots that are further at the bottom and maybe pull those up higher.

At least if I can look at something tangible, I have a better chance of figuring out what it actually is.

So right off the bat, if the app is in Russian, even if you have an English language website, it just makes me think this is not for me.

In which case, maybe you don't need an English language website.

State of the art audio and speech synthesis.

Manfred's on the road again, making strangers wretch.

In front of the central station with his eyeballs powered up in the sunlight jangling off the canal motor scooters and kamikaze cyclists whizzing past and tourists chattering on it,

Reside the square smells of water and dirt and hot mess so the I

get a group did what you're doing like the actual one-liner is excellent like state-of-the-art audio and speech synthesis.

The problem is the demo that you show doesn't sound like state-of-the-art.

Like, there's got to be, there's just, like, compared to like Alexa or Google Assistant.

The other thing is I'm not clear what this is for It's state-of-the-art audio and speech synthesis, but is there like an API?

What are the use cases or the things that I want to know?

So yeah, my first question was just like, is it good?

So it's great that you have the preview up there.

But then we listen, and we're like, this doesn't seem as good as some of the other things that we've heard.

This is a day I've been looking forward to for 2 and a half years.

Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.

So cost effective, that's for sure, compared to a real person.

Okay, so now we're into an intuitive editor.

And here's some use cases further down the page.

So it looks like you could feed in audio files like a podcast and get the entire Translation or the entire voice.

I mean, from some casual playing around with the Google APIs.

I don't know if that's something that they offer.

It seems like this is for developers, but it seems like there's not a lot of information about how developers can actually start using this.

So I guess what I'm struggling with is to understand how this is different.

Like, there are many speech-to-text APIs available.

In fact, like iOS and Android include them by default.

I think it would be useful to call attention to what's special about Narration Box and what advantages you have over the competition.

And then your pricing, I don't think I saw any actual.

See all Y Combinator transcripts on Youtube

YC SUS: Aaron Epstein and Eric Migicovsky give website feedback