That's probably indicative of a bigger problem then: the story isn't simple enough for people to grasp immediately.
I know GMail, Livejournal, and most YCombinator startups have a little explanatory text on the front page, but I've been a GMail user for nearly 3 years and a LJ user for 5 and have yet to read the introduction. I signed up for GMail because all my friends were saying "Have you seen Google's new webmail program? They give you a gig of space. Want an invite code?" I signed up for LJ because all my friends were saying "Do you have a LiveJournal? It's like an online diary thing." You could probably sum up GMail with 4 words ("Google. Webmail. One gig.") and LJ with two ("Online diary."). And all the really successful consumer web startups have one or two word summaries: Google ("Search"), Amazon ("Every book"), Ebay ("Auction junk"), Craigslist ("Find apartment"), Flickr ("Share photos"), Meebo ("Web IM"), Reddit ("Share links"), Wikipedia ("Community encyclopedia"), and YouTube ("Share videos"). The only exception I can think of is Yahoo, which may be why Yahoo's recent earnings were in the toilet.
I can't really think of any way to sum up Bootstrapacitor in 2-4 words, which is a real problem. The initial version of the logo had "Hold your charge" on it, but that sounded kinda hokey and doesn't really explain what the site's about. I suspect that putting a 2-paragraph description of the site on the front page won't help, because people won't read it anyway, and even if they did it's not convenient for them to share it. So perhaps the idea itself is flawed until it can be boiled down into a simpler concept.
I know GMail, Livejournal, and most YCombinator startups have a little explanatory text on the front page, but I've been a GMail user for nearly 3 years and a LJ user for 5 and have yet to read the introduction. I signed up for GMail because all my friends were saying "Have you seen Google's new webmail program? They give you a gig of space. Want an invite code?" I signed up for LJ because all my friends were saying "Do you have a LiveJournal? It's like an online diary thing." You could probably sum up GMail with 4 words ("Google. Webmail. One gig.") and LJ with two ("Online diary."). And all the really successful consumer web startups have one or two word summaries: Google ("Search"), Amazon ("Every book"), Ebay ("Auction junk"), Craigslist ("Find apartment"), Flickr ("Share photos"), Meebo ("Web IM"), Reddit ("Share links"), Wikipedia ("Community encyclopedia"), and YouTube ("Share videos"). The only exception I can think of is Yahoo, which may be why Yahoo's recent earnings were in the toilet.
I can't really think of any way to sum up Bootstrapacitor in 2-4 words, which is a real problem. The initial version of the logo had "Hold your charge" on it, but that sounded kinda hokey and doesn't really explain what the site's about. I suspect that putting a 2-paragraph description of the site on the front page won't help, because people won't read it anyway, and even if they did it's not convenient for them to share it. So perhaps the idea itself is flawed until it can be boiled down into a simpler concept.