Ask HN: Review my startup - EventSnag

[escalona]

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for some feedback from the HN community. Just for a little background info, I’m a non-technical, single founder and decided to work on a startup.

EventSnag is essentially a Groupon for event tickets. I launched in San Diego a couple months ago. At the moment I’m focused on getting deals for live music and concerts but plan to expand to other events such as sports and theatre. The few deals I’ve ran so far have all done pretty well and the promoters I’m working with seem to be happy with the results.

I’d love to get some feedback from everyone. Any comments or criticism would be greatly appreciated.

To skip the sign up page go to: http://www.eventsnag.com/deals.html

[cpt1138]

Can't understand why this is not getting upvoted. Nice execution, great idea. How much of a discount are you negotiating. Since this is inherently a one-shot deal (no repeat customers for a one-time show) it probably can't be too steep, but it could be cool to fill up empty seats of shows that would never sell out on their own.

[apsurd]

Honestly, I try to vote up as many "SHOW HN" projects as possible but when I saw it was a Groupon for ___ I immediately lost interest.

That's not to say it isn't well executed or anything. I'm just trying to answer your question. I'd wager a guess that HN-folk like to see technically-well-executed projects, nerdy projects, and/or novel projects.

A Groupon clone fits none of these. Don't get me wrong though I know a lot of trash is upvoted. I just personally didn't upvote this because I don't care about another frickin deals site.

[escalona]

Thanks! Discounts usually range anywhere from 20% to 50%. Most tickets we get are not priced too high to begin with so we take at least $5 off. We're pretty flexible though and try to do whatever works best for the promoter.

[ammmir]

i'm not into deal sites, but here's some general feedback:

* page seems cluttered with a ton of boxes, maybe you could tweak the signup box to not waste as much space

* "Discuss this deal" box is really just a link it seems, i'd put it in the main section somewhere near the Buy button OR expand the box with recent comments about this deal

* i'd move up the "Your Savings" blurb higher up the page... the $/% savings are more important to me (as a user) than ability to share the deal or how much time is remaining

* header needs more work: combo box sometimes defaults to "No Selection" and the nav links don't stand out enough. took me a while before i wanted to read the text.. furthermore the font there doesn't match the rest of the page

[escalona]

Great response. I agree with most of your points. I'm considering removing the "Discuss this deal" box all together since it's never used. I think a comments box under the deal would be better.

[sebsoler]

Just some website testing feedback I can't scroll the deals.html page while surfing on my iPad, the page is cut off, really bad when I'm browsing in landscape, almost half of the page is cut off, can't scroll down

[escalona]

Thanks for the feedback. I've noticed this as well. For some reason the page doesnt render properly on mobile devices. Working on getting that fixed.