6 ms·

Oh, I get how boring this is but the decision was to take the boring part out first and allow the users to later focus on the real process! Anyway, noted and I'

Oh, I get how boring this is but the decision was to take the boring part out first and allow the users to later focus on the real process! Anyway, noted and I'll try to think of another solution!

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
brudgers 9y ago
The product is quick and easy to use...even if my grandpa's use case probably doesn't match any of the three primary options :). The aesthetics are tasteful. My design advice is to get rid of the part that is unpleasant to the maximum extent possible. That's what good design does. It's one of the things Hacker News gets right. How useful are email updates with static text versus a dashboard that can slice and dice data? Sure some people will want email because that's the way they have always done it. Some people will want email updates because it fits their use case. But everyone won't so it can be opt in. Or to put it another way, it's not clear that most people will have the problem that email notifications solve or at a finer grain, that the problems that come with email notifications are less painful than the problems that email notification solves. Riffing a bit...email notifications could be an upsell. The conundrum I encounter with free platforms is investing time in building something when there is not an obvious revenue model.
- anges244 9y ago
  The revenue model is simple in this case. For everyone that wants to use a full website (custom domain, analytics, no attribution), a small price is worth it. Adding the notifications on the dashboard is the next step but for now receiving it directly was much easier and instant. I think any grandpa would love to receive contact emails! Haha... By the way you had me worried that it looks like an email catcher website and added a features page. Hope this is a good step but anyway, you are the one to blame!:-P
  - brudgers 9y ago
    0. It's the 'a small price' plus a free tier that concerns me in terms of sustainability for a business. It makes sense of Walmart to provide and maintain and support free software because the free software: a. does not cannibalize sales transactions. b. does not have design incentives to be delibrately bad/frustrating/incomplete c. does not allow the creation of bad business metrics like "Look how many free users it has!" d. *does* create a virtuous cycle where there is revenue for support and maintenance proportional to its use. The free tier of a paid product does the opposite of each. Not only is the paid tier "competing with free" the company itself is actively anchoring the price to 0€. 1. 10,000 free users and 1000 paid users means supporting 11,000 users on the revenue from 1000 (and that's assuming an optimistic 9% conversion rate and an optimistic 1000 users). With the current pricing that's less than 50k a year before expenses. 2. The revenue model in #\1 suggests a significant probability that the business will be underfunded. Underfunded businesses tend toward ceasing operations. I mean if the business gets to 1000 paid accounts a year from now at a steady rate, that's only 25k in the first year. 3. Where I am going is that the as a business proposition, if it is worth investing the time in building and managing a website on PageRocket, then it is probably worth 50€ a month and with 50€ a month per paid account, there is money to run a business and incentives to make the product worth 50€ a month or 100 or 200. Of course, if the goal is passive income, then that's a different model. 4. There was an interview with Jeff Atwood (I think on Hanselminutes but maybe Software Engineering Daily) where he described the three things a landing page has to do. The two I remember are it has to tell people 'what it is' and 'why the person should care'. A lot of goes in to those will be subject to interpretation by the visitor. "Oh a box to type in my email address" leads to a lot of quick assumptions that it is probably better not to have people make.
    - anges244 9y ago
      I think you are right but since it's an immature product, we had to decrease the price significantly. The goal is somewhere between passive income and becoming something more so maybe that's why the mixed signals. Have to take a look at that, I guess. I know and we did the math on how free users impact our finances but had to somehow launch it and get attention. What would you suggest? Trials and increased pricing? By the way, thanks for providing your feedback!

Oh, I get how boring this is but the decision was to take the boring part out first and allow the users to later focus on the real process! Anyway, noted and I'll try to think of another solution!

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

brudgers 9y ago

The product is quick and easy to use...even if my grandpa's use case probably doesn't match any of the three primary options :). The aesthetics are tasteful. My design advice is to get rid of the part that is unpleasant to the maximum extent possible. That's what good design does. It's one of the things Hacker News gets right. How useful are email updates with static text versus a dashboard that can slice and dice data? Sure some people will want email because that's the way they have always done it. Some people will want email updates because it fits their use case. But everyone won't so it can be opt in. Or to put it another way, it's not clear that most people will have the problem that email notifications solve or at a finer grain, that the problems that come with email notifications are less painful than the problems that email notification solves. Riffing a bit...email notifications could be an upsell. The conundrum I encounter with free platforms is investing time in building something when there is not an obvious revenue model.

anges244 9y ago
The revenue model is simple in this case. For everyone that wants to use a full website (custom domain, analytics, no attribution), a small price is worth it. Adding the notifications on the dashboard is the next step but for now receiving it directly was much easier and instant. I think any grandpa would love to receive contact emails! Haha... By the way you had me worried that it looks like an email catcher website and added a features page. Hope this is a good step but anyway, you are the one to blame!:-P
- brudgers 9y ago
  0. It's the 'a small price' plus a free tier that concerns me in terms of sustainability for a business. It makes sense of Walmart to provide and maintain and support free software because the free software: a. does not cannibalize sales transactions. b. does not have design incentives to be delibrately bad/frustrating/incomplete c. does not allow the creation of bad business metrics like "Look how many free users it has!" d. *does* create a virtuous cycle where there is revenue for support and maintenance proportional to its use. The free tier of a paid product does the opposite of each. Not only is the paid tier "competing with free" the company itself is actively anchoring the price to 0€. 1. 10,000 free users and 1000 paid users means supporting 11,000 users on the revenue from 1000 (and that's assuming an optimistic 9% conversion rate and an optimistic 1000 users). With the current pricing that's less than 50k a year before expenses. 2. The revenue model in #\1 suggests a significant probability that the business will be underfunded. Underfunded businesses tend toward ceasing operations. I mean if the business gets to 1000 paid accounts a year from now at a steady rate, that's only 25k in the first year. 3. Where I am going is that the as a business proposition, if it is worth investing the time in building and managing a website on PageRocket, then it is probably worth 50€ a month and with 50€ a month per paid account, there is money to run a business and incentives to make the product worth 50€ a month or 100 or 200. Of course, if the goal is passive income, then that's a different model. 4. There was an interview with Jeff Atwood (I think on Hanselminutes but maybe Software Engineering Daily) where he described the three things a landing page has to do. The two I remember are it has to tell people 'what it is' and 'why the person should care'. A lot of goes in to those will be subject to interpretation by the visitor. "Oh a box to type in my email address" leads to a lot of quick assumptions that it is probably better not to have people make.
  - anges244 9y ago
    I think you are right but since it's an immature product, we had to decrease the price significantly. The goal is somewhere between passive income and becoming something more so maybe that's why the mixed signals. Have to take a look at that, I guess. I know and we did the math on how free users impact our finances but had to somehow launch it and get attention. What would you suggest? Trials and increased pricing? By the way, thanks for providing your feedback!