Show HN: Mocksup, my mockup prototyping & review webapp
mocksup.com
mocksup.com
I really like the design - it was easy to navigate and find stuff. But I had a hard time finding the signup button.
Mockups and Mocksup is a confusing read.
An additional note, though: your upgrade page doesn't render correctly when I click through to it via the account page (was looking for a Delete Account button).
We don't have an automatic way to delete accounts yet, could you send us a note here and I'll make sure it gets taken care of:
I think the home is a bit cluttered, I spent I'd say 5 minutes on the site without a clear idea of what it was doing exactly. A video would have helped...
It's really hard for me to see the benefit of spending $9/mo to upload HTML I already created vs just dumping it on a server and discussing via email.
that video is some crude thing showing how I did my portfolio in couchdb... maybe a crappy video like that does not deserve center placement, but if it's on there somewhere then screencast whores like me will be more likely to get involved :)
And yep, it makes perfect sense for me to keep the text + screenshot approach of the current tour (for those who hate watching videos, can't watch at work, etc.) but to also couple it with a video for those who aren't in the mood to read/click. Thanks again.
As an engineer, I didn't even think of designers providing images... I'm more on the other end of write the server, hack out a UI, work with decently competent front end folk to make it nice.
So, I would reduce some of the emphasis on the linking part. People understand linking and it's not an area that differentiates you - basic html/imagemap can be mastered by kids.
If it were my stuff... I'd make the mock video more about a few characters rather than the tech. Here's developer,designer,ceo,investor and here's how they use my tool to get something done, so you could focus on how it tightens the feedback loop which seems to be your goal.
I think production quality was fine, but I've got a pronounced substance over style attitude.
I think you might be leaving some money on the table in terms of the pricing, though-- I imagine that heavy users would be willing to pay more than $19/month for the "Unlimited" plan.
We undercut our competition by a good amount, so we've certainly been talking about it.
Note that mockups is not something that can go viral, so your marketing costs will linearly scale with every new customer. $19/month looks great if service is viral but for business apps like yours it can prove to be a growth bottleneck.
Rambling aside, suppose 6 months from now when the hype around the cool new mockup tool has died, how do you plan to get new customers? (Hint: whichever method you choose, chances are than you are going to pay for it and that will come out of your revenues)
Then again, I'm really glad Mocksup appears to be worth this discussion. Since this is a side-project for both of us I'd much rather you guys fuss at our pricing then just about anything else!
You (should) know your market better than anyone else, but be careful on competing with price. Competing with price is sometimes a crutch for actual marketing and a wishful shortcut in demonstration of value. Because, as mostly hackers, generally speaking we aren't great at marketing. And so, subconciously IMO what happens is we think "i'll let someone else market the idea with their higher price product, and then i'll swoop in with the cheaper offering".
Unfortunately, it doesn't work out that storybook. Markets aren't that transparent, and there is always an asymmetry in information. You're going to have to demonstrate real value and claw your way into relevance. So initially you will have to do a lot of "hand-to-hand combat" style marketing. And find key differentiators you can lead with that isn't price.
How about pricing it at $49 and then running a promo for initial new users? First 100 customers get it at $19?
As an aside, I spent $79 on Balsamiq last year. I think that is the most I've spent on software in the last two years (I stick with mostly open source / freeware). But it was a no-brainer for me... their marketing materials convinced me that the ROI was there. The value for me was probably much higher, but past $99 you enter some psychological pricing barriers.
http://www.startuplifeblog.com/tag/ltv/
But personally, I try to keep my CAC below 15% of my LTV.
Furthermore maybe the process to go signup could be one click faster if here was a signup button on the home page.. instead of a "login button/ see pricing plans button" I mean the pricing plan button works as a sign up it just doesn't say so.. maybe that is just me I clicked the login button at the top right since usually the login/signup is at the top right.
Good luck with this project!
Even better is the create a "clickable" website part. I didn't really see that until I made an account (though I just looked back and saw it on the homepage). I think it's really important to have this functionality. I used to copy jpgs into powerpoint to try to simulate this somewhat.
I agree with the comments about pricing above perhaps being a bit low. When I saw this "Compare" page: http://mocksup.com/compare, it's obvious that Mocksup has a lot more features, but is lot cheaper than the other services (none of which I had heard of). I guess on the one hand low pricing is good, but it's almost too low because it made me think, why would these others be able to price so much higher? That almost made me want to go to the other sites and compare, when I probably would have just signed up with yours right away (I didn't though as I was really impressed with Mocksup). Great stuff over all. I'm a new user.
RescueTime, the company I just stepped down from, has about 8% of its users visiting with 1024 screens. This percentage WAS trending down but has flattened (Netbooks? iPads?).
Also, the examples are blank for me. (not sure if that is an iPad or general problem.)
I'm not big on the product name though as my first thought was "oh cool mockups" which then turned to "oh wait it's a typo / misspelling of mockups". It's further confusing because you spell "mockups" correctly throughout your site. You also run the risk of a competitor buying mockups.com and building their own mockup software (logical development option).
You've put together a great tool and well designed site, don't sell it short with a typo'ed product name.
Best of luck Adam! I'll definitely be using this tool to link together photoshop comps to demo clients.
The pictures, while well designed and thought out seem a little laborious to click through..
My attention span on the web is really short and I'm feeling lazy just now so about the only thing that I'd consider doing to learn about a new product/service like the one you're offering is to watch a video about it.
I mentioned it above, but our old video was outdated and low production quality so I decided to shelve it until we could get something better. I'll get on it, thanks.
1. there isn't a inbuilt mockup tool. you could provide some default templates for different browsers, iphone, android, etc. that will really help us developer get straight into mock up.
I like the simple, straightforward approach in the web app, just let me focus on the mockup with its versioning & sharing features. Nice!
It'd be a great way to annotate/draw on top of designs live, while simultaneously talking about them with remote participants
I have to say in terms of ease of use and speed, I prefer Skype's native code to Connectnow's Flash/Flex by a long stretch