it was all web designer input and there was none regarding the actual concept, business model or use of the application
That's not because the users of this site are web designers. Mostly they're developers. It was because the design of the site was so bad that most visitors got held up there. This also explains the low sign-up rate, which you explain as a property of the audience. I think it is more likely a property of the site.
I agree. Based on this posting I went to look at the site and it's clear that this is not ready to be public. It needs a private beta with some really critical thinking going on.
Also, the main page has an it's/its mistake on it which makes it look unready.
It's not surprising that the benefit didn't pop out.
Yes, I did mention exactly that in the post "Granted, the blame is mostly ours, due to a less than attractive design and muddy benefit message, maybe most could not see past that to get to the business proposition."
This is dead on. A site has to be extremely innovative and useful for me to sink even the time to register into it. Conversely, even a decently useful-looking site with an overly complex registration process usually gets bypassed as well.
Extremely fast-registering sites (like Hacker News, for example) have spoiled me. ;)
I'm glad you've brought your site to be picked apart by the News.YC group. Judging by this blog post you're doing exactly what you should be doing: Listening to the suggestions and adapting as needed. Good luck with this!
thats all there is to the registration, an email address and password. With that the user can save their work history from which their graph is built. they can then find companies that are in their graph, get feeds from those companies regarding milestones and openings and save companies of interest. keep track of companies they submitted their resume to. they also can edit and add companies to the database,
That's not because the users of this site are web designers. Mostly they're developers. It was because the design of the site was so bad that most visitors got held up there. This also explains the low sign-up rate, which you explain as a property of the audience. I think it is more likely a property of the site.