7 ms·

Show HN: A web-based Excel/Database hybrid

82 points by longneckdeer 14y ago

obilgic 14y ago
Great idea, I have been actually thinking about something like this for a long time. Great product, but weak marketing. It is targeted for non-technical small businesses, but homepage and everything looks complicated, and makes less sense for these people. There should be a one sentence which clearly explains what the product is meant to do. Customers are more interested in the end result, show them some examples of what they can do with this product. Unfortunately , this looks like a product for developers by developers.
hayksaakian 14y ago
It seems like this would be most useful for non-developers, but the use cases (I'm assuming that's what 'regic solutions' are), sit obscured at the bottom of the page. Look at how Twilio markets their paas to non devs.
- longneckdeer 14y ago
  Great suggestion. I think Twilio is a great role model for development tools. We'll try to learn a thing or two from it.
stuffihavemade 14y ago
I strongly recommend you offer a demo without needing to sign up. I was intrigued enough to take a look, but not enough to go through a sign up process.
- longneckdeer 14y ago
  We had a sandbox account log in at the registration page, but after some testing we found that it made a lot of people who would have signed up just go to the sandbox instead. The original page is here: http://www.ragic.com/intl/en/registerSandbox http://www.ragic.com/intl/en/registerSandbox For people who would like to use the sandbox instead.
  - sidmalanado 14y ago
    You could generate a unique key for each visitor as a sandbox user and then give the prompt to convert to a full account once the user has started interacting with the site. Be sure to make it non-intrusive though. See how they have done it on https://hollyapp.com/ https://hollyapp.com/ It took me a while to find that link again, but I thought it was worth it as an example. Good luck.
- olivier1664 14y ago
  You should show some applications without having to subscribing. I wanted to see the kind of applicationd you can produce, but I do not want to register while it is just to discover your product. edit: I just watched the video. I was expecting to see your product instead of a story board on CRM (Oh? what is CRM? But it is even better than Excel...)
EastCoastLA 14y ago
DabbleDB again. Don't break my heart.
- Rhythmic 14y ago
  HA! Exactly what I was thinking, but couldn't remember the service's name. Thanks for the mental unblocking.
- smiler 14y ago
  Exactly. Before a company invests in moving all their processes into a system like this, there needs to be some kind of legal statement that says 'should we ever get acquired / close down, we'll release the code to paying customers'.
jimmytucson 14y ago
Here's the discussion from the last time he submitted this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3959486 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3959486 Would be interested to hear how the product has evolved since then. Have they incorporated any of the feedback they received the first time around?
- longneckdeer 14y ago
  Yes, we've worked on A LOT of items from the last submission. The biggest problem was that it's not really easy for people to get started on how to build applications with Ragic. People don't like to read documents, so we added an "Interactive Tutorial". The interactive tutorial takes new users step by step to build a simple application on Ragic, pretty much like how you do it on a flash game or online game. If you click through the tutorial, you will have built a simple Ragic application. We really hope that this can help our users get the hang of it.
  - chj 14y ago
    I love the idea. the interactive guide is horrible. far from simple. Sorry for being blunt.
    - longneckdeer 14y ago
      Hi, did you run into some problems in the tutorial? Or because the steps of the tutorial is too complex?
      - chj 14y ago
        Yes, I signed up and gave it a try. However, what I expected is a freestyle drag and drop, not a workflow fixed at every step.
        longneckdeer 14y ago
        I see. It's freestyle drag and drop after you exit the tutorial. Fixed workflow is only for teaching purpose only.
andrewcross 14y ago
It took me a long time to figure out what it actually is. Similar to what other commenters have mentioned, the three things I'd recommend focusing on are: 1) Stupidly simple messaging. To do this, talk to the people that are already using it and ask them how they'd describe it to someone who's not that tech-savvy. Try and phrase what they say as close to word-for-word as you can. "Supercharge your database development" meant nothing to me. 2) A very clear list of use cases/examples. I didn't actually get what it was until I saw the expense report example at the bottom of the page. These examples need to be called out very quickly. 3) A stupidly simple demo before requiring any input. I'd have the call to action say "Try a simple demo" and definitely don't require registration before seeing it. Trying to get me to start a 30-day free trial right away makes me leave the page before I even try a demo.
- darkxanthos 14y ago
  I second this. Ran into the same problem.
- longneckdeer 14y ago
  Got it. We've put the simple demo and tutorial as a automatically installed application in your account when you registered. Looks like we need more clear explanation even before the registration. We tried to focus on the benefits of Ragic to encourage registration, but it looks like it's not clear enough "why" our product can bring this benefit.
  - andrewcross 14y ago
    From a user's standpoint, I think you're focusing too much on trying to get me to register. I won't even get to the demo if it requires me to register. I get it from your perspective, you want to get their info so you can follow up, etc. It's just risky since a lot of people won't get to the "Aha" moment and will just end up leaving.
    - Mesmoria 14y ago
      This is correct. I didn't register, so I didn't demo. In 15 minutes this app will disappear from my mind.
sidcool 14y ago
I think I don't want a registration process before trying the demo. That's the whole meaning of demo!!! Not trying to take away anything from the app. It might be wonderful, I didn't try it because of the unnecessary registration.
abrkn 14y ago
I am unable to receive a demo key at derp@derp.derp at this time. Please re-think your demo process.
eps 14y ago
Let me just compliment the design of your website, with design being not just the visuals, but the structure, presentation and the content as well. It is clean, simple (but not simplistic) and comes across as a frontend of a company with a substance. Not to technical, not too fluffy, good balance. I would however expand the About section to add some specifics - where and whos.
razfar 14y ago
Google Fusion Table is very similar to this, however, their API documentation is not very good in my opinion. I think a product like this is very useful if you want to give a client access to their database in the form of a spreadsheet.
EwanToo 14y ago
A couple of thoughts: Is Javascript really the language to use when you're seemingly trying to talk to non-developers - either small business owners or business analysts at larger companies? I can see lots of uses for Ragic, but I don't know any business analyst types who'll just knock out some Javascript code to do a function, when they're fairly happy to use Visual Basic for Applications. Finally, your samples all seem relatively small, which is understandable, but you don't mention how large a data set you can cope with - a lot of Excel based apps now seem to have 100,000s of rows of data (which is why they end up so slow).
Johnyma22 14y ago
Also see http://ethercalc.com http://ethercalc.com
polskibus 14y ago
The app seems pretty slow, it cannot be perceptibly slower than Excel for this project to kick off. You can find lots of low hanging fruits by running the Chrome audits.
bromang 14y ago
you should hire a native english speaker to write your marketing copy
- longneckdeer 14y ago
  We hired a native English speaker to edit most of our copies.
  - bromang 14y ago
    Then you should not hire them again! The quality is very poor. There are many grammatical mistakes and the style is quite clunky. It makes your company seem a lot less professional.
bromang 14y ago
I think you can also charge a lot more than you currently do
rb2k_ 14y ago
The speaker in the intro video doesn't seem to be a native english speaker. There are some grammar mistakes and you can hear mouse clicking when he switches slides. The information is there, but I think it needs a bit more polish in terms of phrasing ("Special need is nothing special.") and a proper speaker.
p0wl 14y ago
1. works like excel 2. looks like excel 3. has reports -> everything basic "business" data application needs seems like you will swim in money in a few months if you reach the right target market...
clark-kent 14y ago
It would be great if the software was open source, you can also still run a SAAS based on it. I wouldn't want to depend on a closed source Database for my data. And I say this because I like the Excel/Database hyrid idea.

82 points by longneckdeer 14y ago

Great idea, I have been actually thinking about something like this for a long time. Great product, but weak marketing. It is targeted for non-technical small businesses, but homepage and everything looks complicated, and makes less sense for these people. There should be a one sentence which clearly explains what the product is meant to do. Customers are more interested in the end result, show them some examples of what they can do with this product. Unfortunately , this looks like a product for developers by developers.

hayksaakian 14y ago

It seems like this would be most useful for non-developers, but the use cases (I'm assuming that's what 'regic solutions' are), sit obscured at the bottom of the page. Look at how Twilio markets their paas to non devs.

longneckdeer 14y ago
Great suggestion. I think Twilio is a great role model for development tools. We'll try to learn a thing or two from it.

stuffihavemade 14y ago

I strongly recommend you offer a demo without needing to sign up. I was intrigued enough to take a look, but not enough to go through a sign up process.

longneckdeer 14y ago
We had a sandbox account log in at the registration page, but after some testing we found that it made a lot of people who would have signed up just go to the sandbox instead. The original page is here: http://www.ragic.com/intl/en/registerSandbox http://www.ragic.com/intl/en/registerSandbox For people who would like to use the sandbox instead.
- sidmalanado 14y ago
  You could generate a unique key for each visitor as a sandbox user and then give the prompt to convert to a full account once the user has started interacting with the site. Be sure to make it non-intrusive though. See how they have done it on https://hollyapp.com/ https://hollyapp.com/ It took me a while to find that link again, but I thought it was worth it as an example. Good luck.
olivier1664 14y ago
You should show some applications without having to subscribing. I wanted to see the kind of applicationd you can produce, but I do not want to register while it is just to discover your product. edit: I just watched the video. I was expecting to see your product instead of a story board on CRM (Oh? what is CRM? But it is even better than Excel...)

EastCoastLA 14y ago

DabbleDB again. Don't break my heart.

Rhythmic 14y ago
HA! Exactly what I was thinking, but couldn't remember the service's name. Thanks for the mental unblocking.
smiler 14y ago
Exactly. Before a company invests in moving all their processes into a system like this, there needs to be some kind of legal statement that says 'should we ever get acquired / close down, we'll release the code to paying customers'.

jimmytucson 14y ago

Here's the discussion from the last time he submitted this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3959486 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3959486 Would be interested to hear how the product has evolved since then. Have they incorporated any of the feedback they received the first time around?

longneckdeer 14y ago
Yes, we've worked on A LOT of items from the last submission. The biggest problem was that it's not really easy for people to get started on how to build applications with Ragic. People don't like to read documents, so we added an "Interactive Tutorial". The interactive tutorial takes new users step by step to build a simple application on Ragic, pretty much like how you do it on a flash game or online game. If you click through the tutorial, you will have built a simple Ragic application. We really hope that this can help our users get the hang of it.
- chj 14y ago
  I love the idea. the interactive guide is horrible. far from simple. Sorry for being blunt.
  - longneckdeer 14y ago
    Hi, did you run into some problems in the tutorial? Or because the steps of the tutorial is too complex?
    - chj 14y ago
      Yes, I signed up and gave it a try. However, what I expected is a freestyle drag and drop, not a workflow fixed at every step.
      - longneckdeer 14y ago
        I see. It's freestyle drag and drop after you exit the tutorial. Fixed workflow is only for teaching purpose only.

andrewcross 14y ago

It took me a long time to figure out what it actually is. Similar to what other commenters have mentioned, the three things I'd recommend focusing on are: 1) Stupidly simple messaging. To do this, talk to the people that are already using it and ask them how they'd describe it to someone who's not that tech-savvy. Try and phrase what they say as close to word-for-word as you can. "Supercharge your database development" meant nothing to me. 2) A very clear list of use cases/examples. I didn't actually get what it was until I saw the expense report example at the bottom of the page. These examples need to be called out very quickly. 3) A stupidly simple demo before requiring any input. I'd have the call to action say "Try a simple demo" and definitely don't require registration before seeing it. Trying to get me to start a 30-day free trial right away makes me leave the page before I even try a demo.

darkxanthos 14y ago
I second this. Ran into the same problem.
longneckdeer 14y ago
Got it. We've put the simple demo and tutorial as a automatically installed application in your account when you registered. Looks like we need more clear explanation even before the registration. We tried to focus on the benefits of Ragic to encourage registration, but it looks like it's not clear enough "why" our product can bring this benefit.
- andrewcross 14y ago
  From a user's standpoint, I think you're focusing too much on trying to get me to register. I won't even get to the demo if it requires me to register. I get it from your perspective, you want to get their info so you can follow up, etc. It's just risky since a lot of people won't get to the "Aha" moment and will just end up leaving.
  - Mesmoria 14y ago
    This is correct. I didn't register, so I didn't demo. In 15 minutes this app will disappear from my mind.

sidcool 14y ago

I think I don't want a registration process before trying the demo. That's the whole meaning of demo!!! Not trying to take away anything from the app. It might be wonderful, I didn't try it because of the unnecessary registration.

abrkn 14y ago

I am unable to receive a demo key at derp@derp.derp at this time. Please re-think your demo process.

eps 14y ago

Let me just compliment the design of your website, with design being not just the visuals, but the structure, presentation and the content as well. It is clean, simple (but not simplistic) and comes across as a frontend of a company with a substance. Not to technical, not too fluffy, good balance. I would however expand the About section to add some specifics - where and whos.

razfar 14y ago

Google Fusion Table is very similar to this, however, their API documentation is not very good in my opinion. I think a product like this is very useful if you want to give a client access to their database in the form of a spreadsheet.

EwanToo 14y ago

A couple of thoughts: Is Javascript really the language to use when you're seemingly trying to talk to non-developers - either small business owners or business analysts at larger companies? I can see lots of uses for Ragic, but I don't know any business analyst types who'll just knock out some Javascript code to do a function, when they're fairly happy to use Visual Basic for Applications. Finally, your samples all seem relatively small, which is understandable, but you don't mention how large a data set you can cope with - a lot of Excel based apps now seem to have 100,000s of rows of data (which is why they end up so slow).

Johnyma22 14y ago

Also see http://ethercalc.com http://ethercalc.com

polskibus 14y ago

The app seems pretty slow, it cannot be perceptibly slower than Excel for this project to kick off. You can find lots of low hanging fruits by running the Chrome audits.

bromang 14y ago

you should hire a native english speaker to write your marketing copy

longneckdeer 14y ago
We hired a native English speaker to edit most of our copies.
- bromang 14y ago
  Then you should not hire them again! The quality is very poor. There are many grammatical mistakes and the style is quite clunky. It makes your company seem a lot less professional.

bromang 14y ago

I think you can also charge a lot more than you currently do

rb2k_ 14y ago

The speaker in the intro video doesn't seem to be a native english speaker. There are some grammar mistakes and you can hear mouse clicking when he switches slides. The information is there, but I think it needs a bit more polish in terms of phrasing ("Special need is nothing special.") and a proper speaker.

p0wl 14y ago

1. works like excel 2. looks like excel 3. has reports -> everything basic "business" data application needs seems like you will swim in money in a few months if you reach the right target market...

clark-kent 14y ago

It would be great if the software was open source, you can also still run a SAAS based on it. I wouldn't want to depend on a closed source Database for my data. And I say this because I like the Excel/Database hyrid idea.