Ask HN: Review my startup - UsrJoy | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Review my startup - UsrJoy

22 pointsmiddayc35 comments

Hi! I would really appreciate any feedback on the webapp I just released. I started with it a while back. I was using a well known solution for feedback then, but one day realized it's not really focused on feedback, but providing a community/forum area behind my service. That is a valid focus and I know companies that want exactly that, but what I wanted really was the app optimised on getting me the feedback from my users.

http://www.usrjoy.com

Any feedback, especially critical is more than welcome! I am interested in feedback on app itself and also on the frontend/message that I (try to) make.

The service is in public Beta now. It has a number of beta users for few months already, so it's tested in the wild to some degree. But we are actively improving it and making it more robust each day.

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I've actually been looking for a good feedback solution for a while. I like the look of the app a lot, and I'll try it out in the wild soon. The one thing I find weird about it is "Just $12 / month or less". Normally apps give price floors, not ceilings. Was there any reason for this?

Also, who is your target audience here, nationally speaking? I saw "$12,00" on the signup page. If this is aimed toward US customers, it should be $12.00, not $12,00.

The price is USD yes so it should be 12.00 . Thanks for reminding me :). Fixed now.

If you try it be sure to tell me if something bothers you. If then this post is outdated you can also email me at janko DOT itm AT gmail.

I had price floors at the other already released app, but changed it to ceilings because I always felt bad, like I micro-cheat them right there at the front page. By telling them the cheapest price, but then they see the "default" price per month is actually higher and only if they pay for multiple months they get that price.

I really admire the thought behind that, but I think it will just confuse people. People are used to seeing discounts when buying in bulk. From a psychological perspective, people see that as "buy more = pay less". This way, to some people at least, it looks like "I'm getting penalized for not committing to this for longer".

I will think about it. Maybe I will just say price is $12 and remove "and less" and keep the prices the same. To remove the confusing part.

Looks great -- a couple of points.

I agree the front page is too busy. I think the screenshot is somewhat confusing -- am I looking at the customer facing website or the backend.

The videos being hosted on blogspot falls foul of our over zealous filtering at the office.

Can you configure the 'any feedback' tab to be at the side - it took me a minute to notice it at the bottom.

When clicking on 'urgent' I think there should be more visual feedback than just turning the border red, maybe reflect it in the send button.

The wording 'send away' sounds wrong to me -- too much like 'dismiss'. Just 'send' would be better.

Thanks, Great points.. I will think how to best implement / solve them!

This looks really nice, the drag & drop interface is gorgeous. I see a few rough edges (as others have already pointed out), but with a bit of polish I could see you taking a good bite out of uservoice and getsatisfaction.

I release stuff really early usually and then iterate with usage and users feedback. I agree there are rough edges and there are also open ends, which will get closed or built-upon while we gain more knowledge about what's needed. Thanks!

The pricing seems to be causing a little confusion. How about making it easier and putting a nice big "Start your free trial today" button? Once you have people clicking that button, you can upsell, or upsell down the road once they've adopted the service.

I also think you are making a big mistake by not doing the recurring billing! I have a gym membership that I've used probably 30 or 40 times in 10 years! Stupid, right? They bill me every month and I accept it. In the past, I've used LivePerson for web interaction and we got to a point where we barely used it - but kept the service going because...well...automated billing. Anyway, paying customers are hard to get, so once you have them, it makes sense to try to keep them. I'm not saying to make it difficult for them to cancel. Some may even prefer to have automated billing so they don't have to keep being proactive about paying. Just my thoughts.

Your call to action is too low on the screen - it needs to be in the main view area w/o requiring me to scroll down to see it. Maybe a good place for it would be where the post-it testimonial currently is located. Then, consolidate some of that other stuff into a div that shuffles through different items (testimonials, videos, etc...).

Why is this valuable to me? (it's a question I want answered when I visit your page).

Great job though...congrats on getting something out there. I think the overall look and feel is very nice. With some copy help and a few rearranging of items I think you've got a great thing going for you.

Clickable: http://www.usrjoy.com

This looks awesome!

However: please get a native English speaker to read through your text and suggest improvements. There are already a number of things you should change listed in the comments here, but I've noticed a bunch of typos and grammatical quirks which probably shouldn't be there. Text is important, and it'll make your service seem a great deal more professional.

Thanks!

I was aware I will need a proffreader to go through texts, but I wasn't aware it's so obvious and noticeable. I will try to find someone ASAP. Thanks for heads up!

Shoot me an email (in profile) with a list of pages to proof read. I'm not a content writer, but I can probably find and big errors. I'd be happy to help out with that if you'd like.

Thanks for your generous offer! I will contact you today once this settles down a little. It's very kind of you but I don't just want to "send you a list". I am not loaded with money but I believe there must be some form of compensation. Thanks again!

Upvoted for kindness!

There have been some previous "Offer HN"s where someone offered to do that.

Not sure of the specific one you're referring to, but jacquesm has a nice list here: http://jacquesmattheij.com/Pay+it+forward,+HN+style

thanks guys for info!

I'm sorry to say that and also sorry for the careless wording but I'm rather unimpressed by the demonstration video.

Drag-and-dropping tags to items seems rather unnatural and we can see messages in Slovenian.

I couldn't see clearly if it was even possible to get the whole conversation for a message which is IMO quite necessary.

Is it possible to see all the conversation items received using a given email address?

Do you provide any Dashboard or statistics of any sort?

More generally, I'm wondering what is your solution's selling point over a simple email client? Honestly, if this was what I want, I would simply write a form by myself and have a script send plain old emails to feedback@mycompany.com and not pay 12$ or less :)

Technically, how secure is your service? Do you provide HTTPS? Is there an API? Data export of any sort?

1) Don't worry for careless wording :)

2) Drag-and-drop might not be good mechanics for everyone and I am aware of that. I am otherwise always in favour of lowest/simplest interface decisions (and in 90% cases I saw I didn't like drag-and-drop usage), but it seemed the most natural thing to this specific usage to me (basically connecting many to many items). But as I said, I am aware some will hate it.

Well I am from Slovenia and my browser is in my language so "File Open" form is in Slovene language yes. I see that this might look odd on video but at this point I am more trying to get the message across (what it's about / how it works) than to impress / sell it so someone, so I don't care.

3) What do you mean by whole conversation?

4) No. And there is a lot of things on the same level that are not there yet. Something I call "filters" (and is quite needed) is in the making but is not yet done because I haven't yet found good answers to some questions for example.

5) Not at this point.

6) Yes, you could write your own solution of course. You can probably see some differences compared to sending feedback directly to email. Sending it to email has some benefits too compared to this, but in general we can do much more with it. Some of these things can already be seen, some will become more apparent when usrjoy gets also the less core functionalities.

7) There is no HTTPS there right now. This is first public beta release. There will be. For comparison in our other service that is more mature we have HTTPS, API and Data Export and we intend to do the same here. I am strong believer that user's data is hi/she-s own.

Thanks for your questions. I asked for critical feedback and I got it :)

The drag and drop delete both unnecessary and the reverse of what someone would intuitively do. A simple button/link per item makes far more sense.

yes. This is one dilema I had. In fact two. You usually drag items to trashbin. And if you are deleting 1 item one click is more optimal. (you can here more optimally and consistently with other tools/.. delete >1 items however)

The first dillema is 95% decided. Because we value consistent interface more (there will be other tools). The second is currently not there for the sake of less duplication and cleaner interface, but because delete is the most common "tool" we might add it to the feedback items so you can delete with one click.

Landing page has too much text. It's a simple concept that shouldn't need one line to explain. The product looks great, but the landing page can benefit from some good copy, starting with the headline. Something like, "Get great feedback and build a better business" may work better.

cool. I like this advice. When answer is less of something I know it's usually right. I also like the proposed headline :)

Thanks!

The "any feedback" tab's behavior is a little wonky. And (from what I can tell) that's the feature that paying customers will get, so better get it right!

-Having the "any feedback?" text get underlined on hover makes it feel like a normal hyperlink, not an ajaxy widget that pops up. Need to highlight/change/bounce/etc. the entire tab on hover, not just the text.

-Likewise, the tab should activate by clicking/hovering anywhere in the orange color tab area. Not just by clicking/hovering the text. Makes it much easier to hit, and again makes it clear that the thing is a tab/widget and not a simple text hyperlink.

Hi, I have to admit I haven't thought of these two things by using it. But they do both make sense and if I imagine it working like that it feels much better. I will improve the behaviour. Thanks a lot! :) (a little ashamed that I didn't sense this at all)

"$12 or less" really is confusing. And there's no explanation? Why? Because it's free first 3 months or something like that?

Because it's $12/month if you extend subscription for 1 month, 9/month if you extend for 6 months, and $8 if you extend for 12.

I didn't expect this to be confusing at all so thanks for telling me! I will think about it and improve.

I personally don't find it confusing. It actually made me eager to find out what are the plans. Once on the plans page, one first finds the 12$ a month plan and then the other, less expensive, plans which totally makes sense to me.

Not confusing to me, but certainly uncommon.

One thing that I find confusing though, is the wording for the starter plan: on the first page and in the introduction of the plans page, it's called "Starter Plan" but at the bottom of that very page, the wording suddenly becomes "trial period". Did I miss something?

Also, the link at the bottom is labelled "Starter".

Edit: Actually, if this really is a 90-days trial, you shouldn't call it Starter Plan at all. IMO, a plan with a duration limit is not a plan at all.

good to know you don't find it confusing.

And even more cruicial to know what you find confusing. Because that really shouldn't be made confusing and you understood it wrong.

Starter plan is $12 / month and has the 90 days FREE trial period. (The plan is not limited to 90 days of course, but is free for 90 days).

Basic plan is free forever.

I will look into wording and texts and try to make this more understandable. Thanks a lot for exposing this!

I didn't click on the sub-page to view the explanation, and I personally think most of your visitors don't as well.

Too bad this thing fell from position 15 to 40 so suddenly (while I was writing reply, AFAIK in 1 step). I really appreciated the feedback I was getting.

I guess the internals of HN are more mysterious than I thought ;)

The "any feedback" tab is broken on the iPhone, as CSS fixed position doesn't isn't supported on mobile phones. Another reason to move it to the side.

Is it just me or users sigin button at the top instead of popping up (I suppose) lands me into the seperate page containing user name and password.

The interface is pretty neat though :)

Edit : It'd be handy for the new users to keep the video on how to describing the process on how it works.

hm... it's meant to move you to another page :)

But now that you say it. I can see that it visually looks like a menu item where popup behaviour is expected. I will try few other looks. Probably turn it in something more link/button like. Thanks!

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