Hi Rick! The website looks great.I don't know much about homebrewing (but I've been interested in learning about it for a while); I think it'd be helpful if there was a section of your site with some beginner-level information about homebrewing. Or, make that a bigger feature of the site, with free beginner-level articles and require a paid-for account to read intermediate/advanced-level articles.
Another idea would be to allow your users to view and post reviews of homebrewing equipment. If I wanted to get into homebrewing right now, I'd imagine it'd take a while to get up to speed on which manufactures/models to look for or avoid. Since you're targeting a fairly niche market, this might provide a real value to your users.
Also, when I read the word software, I immediately thought of little apps like recipe calculators -- maybe you could build a small "apps" section on your website (for users only)? If you already had formulas and things on hand, it'd be trivial to code them up with JS. This feature would be even more useful if you eventually made a mobile version of the site so you could log in and use the apps (and see recipes, etc.) on your smartphone.
Hope that gives you a few ideas! Good luck with the site!
Thanks for the ideas! There are so many forums/discussion boards out there, I thought a forum or a review area would be a bit redundant but it is certainly worth another look.
I definitely plan to get all the calculators out there so that people can do one-off calculations or maybe even include them as widgets/etc on other sites.
The current next step is to create an html5 friendly version of the site (probably in jquery mobile) so that it's more easily accessible via phone, this was the major spark that got me working on the site in the first place, so it's definitely my next move. Perhaps native apps after that, or not if the mobile version feels native enough.
Another idea would be to allow your users to view and post reviews of homebrewing equipment. If I wanted to get into homebrewing right now, I'd imagine it'd take a while to get up to speed on which manufactures/models to look for or avoid. Since you're targeting a fairly niche market, this might provide a real value to your users.
Also, when I read the word software, I immediately thought of little apps like recipe calculators -- maybe you could build a small "apps" section on your website (for users only)? If you already had formulas and things on hand, it'd be trivial to code them up with JS. This feature would be even more useful if you eventually made a mobile version of the site so you could log in and use the apps (and see recipes, etc.) on your smartphone.
Hope that gives you a few ideas! Good luck with the site!