Please Rate My Startup - LoyaltySpace.com
loyaltyspace.com
loyaltyspace.com
LoyaltySpace is a complete, simple, and affordable solution that helps small businesses to increase sales by running their own customer loyalty program.
LoyaltySpace supports both plastic card loyalty programs and an innovative mobile phone based loyalty product.
That is a lot about you and a little about them. Successful sales is frequently a lot about them and a little about you. Relatedly, features do not sell software; benefits sell software. Don't tell them that you can "build a customer database" ("I sell freaking pasta, what do I want a database for!? 'Subsequent marketing activity'?!"), tell them the improvement they are going to experience in their lives from using your product. ("You'll get eager customers who want to hear from you giving you their contact details so that you can sell them more stuff.")
Similarly, "Create tailored offers" => "Increase sales by directing the right offers to the right customers."
I think a simplified value proposition as a tagline is a must. For instance: Square: Accept Payments Anywhere, Basecamp: The Better Way to Get Project Done, Grasshopper: Sound Professional & Stay Connected--The Virtual Phone System Designed for Entrepreneurs.
--Loyalty Space: The simple loyalty program for increasing sales...or..Real Easy, Real Results...or...(Customer) Loyalty Programs Made Easy..or..The Easiest Way to Build Relationships and Drive Results..etc., etc. Something along those lines, brainstorm a bunch. If you are going to do any advertising A/B test your top 5 in the copy. Check out what other successful companies are doing.
If possible show, don't tell. An awesome video would be great where that carousel currently is. Include some shots of the product actually being used. See Square's videos for definition of awesome videos.
Then I'd put a carousel type section below(but still above the fold if possible), with sections for the businesses in your "Consumer Facing Businesses". I'd list the businesses vertically on the left with icons plus text. Each section loads content to the right with (fictional or real if you got them)examples of problems/needs being solved by your service. Ex: Salons-->Meet Jane, Jane needed a way to fill empty seats in her salon on slow days. She uses her customer database to see which regulars are due for a new cut, and then sends them a custom/personalized discount offer via text message if they come in this afternoon. In no time at all, Jane's seats are booked for the rest of the day with customers grateful for a great deal.<---Copy should be a lot better, wrote this quick.
Customer Testimonials are huge too. Get some as soon as you can. If you know someone loves your product you can even write it yourself, let them have the chance to edit, and sign off on it. No more than two sentence.
About section could use a lot of improvement. In fact I'd pry call it "Why Loyalty Programs" Include some stats from respected sources on benefits of loyalty programs. Cut out as much copy as you can, and try to condense it all above the fold.
Check out Grasshopper for a great "how it works" section.
Include a clear CTA on almost every page.
I run a startup (http://doleaf.com) that also deals with small businesses, and they require A LOT of handholding. Plus, they'll always want to talk with you and tell you how to do things (which is both good and bad). All that time should count in your head as work time (believe me, it's way tougher than writing code) and you need to price things as such.
I suggest you definitely consider multi-tiered pricing based on the number of members in the loyalty program. Ironically, I think your bigger clients will probably need less handholding, but they can help subsidize the time you spend working with the smaller ones.
Overall, I think this is an excellent idea. Are you considering accepting customers in the USA? This might be a good fit for some of the nurseries I work with, and I'd be happy to pass it along to them.
If you're new to pricing consider reading this short free ebook on pricing written by the CEO of Redgate software: http://www.neildavidson.com/dontjustrollthedice.html. It will help you think through how to approach pricing your product.
Your pricing should be based on what economic value you deliver. Since that value will be different for different customers you should tier your pricing.
Figure out one or a handful of the key levers that drive that value. For example, in your case it might be number of their customers that are part of their loyalty program or the total transaction value tracked or something else. Someone with 1,000 customers tracked vs. 5,000 are going to be getting a different amount of value from you and ought to be paying accordingly.
Pricing is difficult - I want to be able to show ROI to something like a small cafe or restaurant.
Tiers might be the answer but at the same time I want a really simple pricing scheme, and will probably defer the choice till the user is more familiar with the system when they have more knowledge about what they might need.
I'm a mailchimp customer and that's how they work. Once my list reaches a certain size, I pay a higher monthly fee. Nothing complicated about it. Plus, I don't even have to "decide" anything. They automatically calculate my tier based on list size. I'd say you're in a nearly identical boat.
It required a lot of sales up-front to land a deal, and then the willingness to pay was ridiculously low. My end realization was that, given the effort required to land a customer and the number of customers it would take to reach break-even profitability, it was basically impossible to make money on the idea.
Your idea is slightly different, so the numbers may work out for you, but I would think about how many customers you need at $27 a pop (in USD). Basically, you are going to need a cheap distribution channel that can sell thousands of subscriptions to even come close.
True re price sensitivity of the small business, but in a way, the target market is the fundamental USP. Nameley, take a tool that the bigger guys are using and make it available in a scalable fashion to small businesses.
Re thousands of subscriptions... If I could take 100 at that price I'd be happy with the outcome.
Plus I think there's a number of related areas I could move on to off the back of this.
Thanks for the comment - really useful. Also, if you have 5 minutes, feel free to include more info on your experience or link up with me be email twitter etc.
Your landing page needs simpler, bigger, attention-grabbing text.
Also, I'll second the comment below about the big bright signup button. The CardStar link above has a nice example that you might draw inspiration from.
EDIT: Just watched a video from a link on HN:
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/05/draw-your-ideas.html
And the website behind Jack Dorsey's new idea:
He makes the point in the video that 90% of America uses plastic to pay for stuff, but only 2% of America can accept payments from plastic sources.
If you can come up with a killer common-sense line like that (and a killer landing page like Square's), that will become the raison d'etre for your concept.
I wasn't aware of CardStar - a fair amount of overlap there.
+1 to that killer application in a sentence. I'm not quite there with my elevator pitch.
I'll be in your shoes in a couple of months, just finishing up college now so I can't really work on my numerous ideas. Can't wait to get into it!
You might also consider keeping a blog of your progress, like this guy with Bingo Cards, of all things:
Even though his product isn't pitched at a HN-type demographic, the process of how he develops his ideas makes for an interesting read. It's a great way of generating free buzz - writing passionately about your startup with no BS. Something you may wish to consider also.
Quoted because I only get one upvote.
There are several grocery store chains in my area. One of them does not have a loyalty program; they still have traditional sales. The price of certain items is reduced, and no plastic card or other identifying information is required to get the reduced price. I shop at that chain almost exclusively, in large part due to the lack of a loyalty program. It's not so much that I'm worried about privacy - I simply find them highly annoying.
Sorry, LoyaltySpace. I think your startup sucks. I don't want more stores doing this.
I have built a system to manage customer loyalty programmes for small businesses.
By implementing my software, they'll be able to:
Improve sales by directly rewarding recurring purchases.
Be slightly more data driven in their approach and marketing - sending tailored offers and marketing.
Use the mobile channel - SMS and Mobile Web to push out offers and build a relationship with their customers.
There is a definite gap in the market for this. I have spoken with tens of potential customers who have looked for a similar system, but have been put off by the high setup costs and tie ins. These are businesses such as restaurants, salons etc, who want to try loyalty marketing but want to be sure of it's use before making any big commitment.
Anyway, would appreciate any comments about the idea, website, sofware etc.
[NOTE: There are still a few rough edges in the software to be cleaned up over the next day or so. My existing handful of customers out of my beta testing and development are on a seperate instances running older software.]
http://www.loyaltyspace.com/faq.html
Thanks - Ben
The website is too word heavy; try asking a few friends to read a paragraph you have written, then summarize it back to you. Usually you'll get a more concise answer that could be used instead.
Like everybody else, I recommend you re-evaluate your pricing. The mailchimp example somebody mentioned is perfect. The paragraph you have between Indicative Pricing and Pricing is completely unnecessary.
The How It Works page also needs to be pared down. The goal should be to get small businesses to sign up, then have it be so simple to use that the operation acts as a guide. I would change Sign Up to be a link, then have Register Customers (signs up telling them to use mobile phones, register on the site, NO manual input from the business owner), Tailor Marketing Offers, Reap the Benefits. Or something similar, it just needs to be simplified, a lot!
Again, I love the concept and hope you have the drive to see it through!
Maybe ping me a mail if you are interested - happy to keep you in the loop and may be able to repay the favour next time you need feedback.
If you have some beta customers, I would recommend you post quotes from them on the site. Nothing will help win over small business owners better than their fellow business owners. If they are willing to share any specific numbers with the outside world, that would help even more. For example, "loyaltyspace has increased my customer frequency rate by 10%". Other people validating your product makes sales SO MUCH easier.
One thing I was hoping to see under the "how it works" section was a qualitative/emotive story that would demonstrate the ROI to the business. This should help sell the product by showing a use case that the business owner would understand and quickly be able to attach numbers to and CLEARLY see how loyalty will make them money.
Each business owner will have different numbers, but each uses the same levers to get those numbers. Identify those key levers and continually emphasize how you help them maximize those levers. For example, key levers could be customer acquisition, customer retention, avg. order size, avg. order margin, etc
Yes, you do need to explain the technical piece as well but my guess is the owner first needs to be convinced that they "need" the product before they dive into the more technical "How do I set this up?"
Now that is a perfectly valid approach, but I don't think you want to do that.
Instead assume that your customers already know what CL is and instead focus on what your product does that others don't. I.e. what set you apart in the CL field, not just what is great about CL.
I guess I do want to sell both concepts - but definetly need to re-balance the two slightly.
Homepage Slideshow:
- The screenshots are hard to read. The perspective looks nice, but I'd prefer a straight on shot.
- Font used in captions is hard to read.
- Once a user interacts with the controls turn off the automatic transitions.
Subpages:
- Why is there a large empty space on the left? I would move the photos to the left side, and make the text column about 560px wide.
Misc:
- As Patrick pointed out, there's nothing to click on the homepage! Make a big, obvious call-to-action button.
- "Questions" is an odd thing to call the contact widget on the left side. I expected it to be an FAQ or some kind of help system. Perhaps labeling it "Contact Us", "Get In Touch", or "Inquiries" would be better.
Interested in being on one of the episodes?
I put up the first episode and am pivoting based on the feedback I got from the HN community: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1379942
If you are interested, email me: marc {at} ideatin {dot} com
If anyone else, that is building something/has an idea/or has built something is also interested, feel free to reach out to me also.
You use a lot of buzzwords and goal orientations but one has to dig around a bit to see what the actual product is.
Attract repeat visitors to your companies website,
I'm a bit torn on the images - stock photos are generally rubbish but it adds a bit of context.
Creating my own photographs is probably not the best time or cash investment.
Point taken though - maybe I'll look for better stock images!