Another vote for no scribd on the landing page -- it looks foreign and distracts from the sign up button (your "call to action").
"How it works?" isn't really a question. Either "How does it work?" or "How it works:"
This might just be me, but WIGS is a strange thing to see on the header. I get that it's the name of the product, but it wasn't obvious from the main page that Sucuri made WIGS. Something more descriptive, like "about" or "about WIGS" or "about the product" would be better.
If you want me to check out the demo, don't make me type in the username and password. A form with some hidden fields and a button requires way less user effort.
Style looks good, says "security company." The (BETA) in the title doesn't really jive with that message, though.
Why is it free, by the way? I think any businessperson looking at a service like yours would be _less_ likely to use it for free than for pay if something of value is on the line.
The WIGS is an additional service to try to get traction to the site, since it is a one scan tool that people might try to see if their site is secure. I will probably move that to the "tools" page to avoid too much noise.
It is going to be free, and once we are out of beta, we will start with premium accounts with more features.
Pretty good service, is this going to be a free app?
One suggestion I can give is make this service active. At the moment, the only big advantage I see from using this is the knowledge really quickly that something has gone wrong through email/sms, after which I need to do something about it. My idea is that if you implement some sort of a web-hook or callback mechanism to it, I think the use of this service can really shine.
For example, if a defacement or a DNS change occurs, you can have it alert you AND take a certain actions until you fix it, such as shutting down the servers or taking down the DNS servers (these examples are extreme, but just for example sake). Just a though.
We are going to use the "freemium" model. What is now free, will continue free, but additional modules/features are going to be added only for the paid accounts.
The call back idea is very good and we will put it in our todo/research list.
Because it has a bunch of buttons that are irrelevant, which basically add too much unnecessary visual "noise" to the page.
Between the slideshow and the video, I would suggest going with simple screenshots of the control panel and a short summary of what the service is. Then have a separate longer page that explains features in a bit more length, and also have detailed description available in the Documentation section. Currently, the page simply has "too many characters".
Also the color scheme should not be white on dark. This is purely a perception thing. You are pitching clarity, reliability and simplicity - the color for these is white.
Also the page looks a bit sloppy layout-wise. The "exactly" from ".. showing exactly what .." actually sits on top of the slideshow.
The "NOW" part from "Try out monitoring NOW" sounds tacky. Also the dark-on-gray is not a very good color choice for an action button. It's gotta be bright and it should look visually pleasant.
The "WIGS" is effectively another source of the noise that detracts from your primary service. I would consider renaming it into something a bit more human-friendly or taking it out completely. The same goes for "security videos of the academy" link at the bottom. Why the heck would I care about some academy.
All in all, the site needs to be simplified and streamlined to focus on just one thing - your primary service. The service itself appears to be valuable, but (a) it's going to be a tough sell (as its value is in detecting abnormal conditions, i.e. its value is not tangible under normal conditions) (b) make damn sure it respects robots.txt, because otherwise with a one-minute polling interval you will be blacklisted in no time.
Thanks for the suggestions.. lots to work for on Monday :) That's exactly what I wanted...
Also, on the page having too many characters, I agree with you. I spend hours adding and removing messages from there trying to make it clean, but at the same time explaining what it does.
i don't think too much text is necessarily bad. it is possible to convey a lot of information and details on one page. look at most apple product pages or a page like
http://www.agile42.com/cms/pages/agilo/.
use the space on the page. use white space. go deep and let users scroll. keep the typography and graphics as simple as possible. be systematic with your typography and layout grid. keep the text columns narrow to make them easier to read.
your home page is a good start. did you work with a designer or just draw on good influences?
I thought the slideshow was different from what I expected and my eyes immediately went to it when it loaded. But it didn't strike me as bad, just keep in mind that because of the load time, it may be pulling people's eyes there instead of your page.
It doesn't fit. A lot of that information would be interesting, but it takes extra time to load, and because of the small size is hard to read. If you actually put the information on the page in an appealing way, I'd be much happier to look over it.
I agree with some of the others about the scribd slideshow on the front page. Maybe link to it instead? I have no problem with you using scribd/slideshow instead of a video. I believe scribd allows you to customize the player and potentially remove some of the excess buttons that others mentioned are irrelevant. Then again maybe simply moving it to another "feature tour" type of page would be sufficient to remove that complaint.
For me, in FF on OSX, the padding around the scribd player was hosed. The word "exactly" in your pitch-text actually runs UNDER the player for me.
Towards the bottom of your main page you have "What information is your web site is leaking?" That sentence needs to be reworded.
I am not a huge fan of the disabled versions of your icons once you sign in. For example, the email/twitter disabled icons look like you opened the original/enabled version in Paint and just drew a red diagonal line across the icon with your mouse.
I'm a bit confused by your graph when you are logged in as well. You are using what almost look like random symbols on the graph. For example, I see a red plus, blue diamond, and green diamond. Is there a corresponding red minus? Are there blue pluses? I just found that a bit confusing.
Other than those few complaints I think the site looks really well done. I like the design and think it's a pretty cool idea. I like how you take snapshots of the site's HTML to see if something was changed that should not have been. I guess I'm curious what happens when something was changed intentionally? Do I still get an alert that I have to then ignore?
Hopefully this won't be out of line but I would like to suggest that you try out my newly launched site, http://www.launchly.com to get additional feedback on your new site and track your launch. Launchly is all about getting you the feedback you need to succeed.
I will check that.. On FF/Ubuntu it is working well. I should have tested it on multiple browsers before.
As for the disabled buttons, that exactly what i did, but on Gimp :)
For the snapshots, you get alerts on intentional and unintentional changes. We have some algorithms to ignore common/normal changes (like polls, number of visitors, # of comments, etc), but it is almost impossible for us to detect if a change is authorized or not, that's why we alert on all of them.
*I will check out launchly now. the idea sounds great.
I use the Gimp too for my graphics work since I'm not a designer really. One suggestion would be to download one of the free icon sets out there like crystal or such and find a transparent bg png of a standard no/delete symbol and overlay that on top of your other email/twitter symbols in a new layer in Gimp. Here's a link that has some pretty good free icon sets: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/05/24/freebies-round-up...
Just a bit of feedback on it. I submitted it for review a few months ago when it was on early alpha and didn't get much feedback. Now we improve the app/site a lot and would love to hear what you think.
There is a demo account available too, with user demo@sucuri.net and pass demo.
*I am from a security/engineering background, so my design skills are still lacking..
Thanks for the response. Not looking for compliments, but comparing to most sites around (specially from startups that I see here) I couldn't get to a design that I really liked.
-Good point on the animated graphic. I will see how to add it.
-The scan right now is every 10 minutes (during beta), but we will allow every minute in the future.
-The flash (from scribd) was an attempt to make it more friendlier... will see how to improve it.
"How it works?" isn't really a question. Either "How does it work?" or "How it works:"
This might just be me, but WIGS is a strange thing to see on the header. I get that it's the name of the product, but it wasn't obvious from the main page that Sucuri made WIGS. Something more descriptive, like "about" or "about WIGS" or "about the product" would be better.
If you want me to check out the demo, don't make me type in the username and password. A form with some hidden fields and a button requires way less user effort.
Style looks good, says "security company." The (BETA) in the title doesn't really jive with that message, though.
Why is it free, by the way? I think any businessperson looking at a service like yours would be _less_ likely to use it for free than for pay if something of value is on the line.