ASk YC: Your opinions on my website. And a few questions. | Hacker News Reader

ASk YC: Your opinions on my website. And a few questions.

staging.dashbard.com

6 pointsshabda11 comments

The screenshots need to be clickable to get a bigger version.

Looks ok, offhand, but what's the compelling reason to use this instead of something else that's already out there, like basecamp?

>The screenshots need to be clickable to get a bigger version.

Ah, should have thought of that. :)

>Looks ok, offhand, but what's the compelling reason to use this instead of something else that's already out there, like basecamp?

There are amny features which can be useful, and which basecamp lacks. It might be their business decision to not build those features, but those features can make this target a different subset of people for whom having the features is absolutely needed.

Maybe you should highlight those things somewhere?

Hey guys, So I am almost ready to go live, and want YC opinions before I do. Your opinions and feedback(good/bad/ugly) very welcome.

You can login as demo/demo

And now to the questions,

1. Should I launch it in this situation. I ws hoping to launch it after I had some more features. But I am already 15 days late, than the deadline I set for myself.

Why I want to launch it now:

Of course I want real users so that I can not just be coding in vaccum, but solving real problems of real people.(TM)

Why I should wait:

Umm, I do not want to screw the launch. First impresiosn are last impressions.

2. How should I advertise this:

Options:

Social media: Umm, IMO, this is not a low involvement app, and would require substantial pre sell, before people would like to use this. Plus social media wont really be the people I am tragetting.

Adwords: The current bid prices for "project management application" is in the ballpark of 5$ per click! Even if I can get an awesome convert ratio of 10%, the cost to acquire a cutomer would be 50$. Ouch!

Advertising on blogs which target this market. Ok I think I will try this.

3. What should I charge for this, and when should I start charging.

When:

I want to offer this for free for sometime(say three months), after that I want to charge for serious usage. But I do not want to give away a lot of hings for free, coz once I bring on a paid plan, there would be backlash, unless there is substantial value add. Also once you set a price, in people's mind you set an implicit value for the product. So keeping this free for a long time does not seem wise.

How much:

Cant really think of an answer to this, before I can think of an answer to "when".

[PS. Sorry about the formatting. I can never get the post to display nicely on news.YC]

I will need to think of a better business model. I don't think you'll be able to compete will the big players.

The only way i think you will be able to compete would be to offer all the great features plus those of your own for free, and look monetize in some other form.

I think your 3 month out look is extremely optimistic.

good luck, hopes it works out.

Initial, "first 3 seconds" impression of the front page is a good one. There are few things though:

The "JOIN NOW" part of the login section needs to be toned down. It looks like a desperate attempt to grab an attention of 80 yrs old with an eyesight problems. Besides you are using 3 font sizes in this section, which makes it look clumsy.

"Signin" should be "Sign in", "Logged out sucessfully" is misspelled too.

Try resizing your browser window and see how the page looks at wide and narrow widths. It does not look that good and this needs to be fixed.

Upon logging in however I can't say it's ready to go live. It just feels like a prototype rather than a shippable product. Even not considering the functionality, it's just not polished enough and does not look visually appealing.

If you launch now, I can pretty much guarantee you it's going to be a failure. However, if you are at liberty to treat this project as an experiment, I'd suggest to go ahead and launch. Learning from the failure is one of the best and quickest ways to get a real world experience.

I have tried it at various width of 1024 * 768 and above. Wat width did you have problem with. (We are not really targeting 800 * 600 really)

With a very wide window the front page is all clumped to the left side of the window, which looks odd. With a narrow window the "Sign In" dialog jumps to the bottom of the page.

It's OK to assume that a visible area of the page should be X pixels wide. But it's not OK if the content starts jumping around when the window is resized.

For example, I never have any of the browser windows maximized, so they routinely end up being narrower than 1024 pixels.

having done it myself, I think to do lists are the web's hello world... albeit longer and more complicated (this was the same advice I was told the 1st time I publicized my 1st rails app on YC); you actually have some good ideas though

quick suggestions:

-for the basic to do ui though I'd check out http://todoist.com

-instead of the current quick entry ui u have now, why not just make it less clicks to enter any tasks (like an always showing add to do)

-it would be nice for projects to have to do lists (a la basecamp)

Until you get your UI stuff worked out I'm not sure you can charge yet

My thoughts about your questions: 1. Launch - its fine in its current state and you'll be able to get feedback.

2. I'd use PayPerPost, StumbleUpon, maybe Adwords...here's what YC users say: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=104627

3. For this question I'll refer to Chris Anderson http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?curre...

Side Note: I wish it had better time tracking - that way I could use it for my freelance web work.

>3. For this question I'll refer to Chris Anderson http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?curre....

Umm, is this not exactly what I am thinking, provide basic usage for free, charge for serious usage?

>Side Note: I wish it had better time tracking - that way I could use it for my freelance web work.

We are planning this feature, I think billable time can be an extremely useful feature.

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