Rate my startup - Poplytics | Hacker News Reader

Rate my startup - Poplytics

poplytics.com

20 pointssammville16 comments

More of a web app than a startup. It's the sort of thing where this app can be part of a business, but doesn't appear to be a complete scalable business by itself.

You need a professional copy-editor and designer. The design is good for a wireframe, but it doesn't look slick enough to make potential users want to associate themselves with your brand. The copy has a lot of strange capitalizations mid-sentence and doesn't flow smoothly.

The site doesn't explain the value proposition very clearly. "Learn how to increase satisfaction 40%" is a much more concrete explanation of the benefits.

Agree on copy and design but SurveyMonkey has done ok with this category (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/surveymonkey). Granted they have a 12 year head start.

I service I use daily with very similar functionality is KISSinsights. They are always rolling out new features, and I think if you want to differentiate yourself you are going to have to list the benefits of switching to your service versus the many others. The main question you should be answering for me, in big and bold, is "why should I use your service".

Could not get past the lander copy. You seem to capitalize words completely at random.

Poplytics makes it easy for you to Receive instant Feedback

Create a Survey, ask your own Questions or use Templates Embed the unobtrusive Widget code Collect Feedback to help you satisfy your customers, readers

Hey there,

A few quick suggestions:

Cut out the text below the green bar. Triple the font size of the 3 steps, and put numbers next to them. Arrange them horizontally, and put screenshots below them. Change the red title to "Poplytics: collect feedback from your users in three steps."

Buy a sexy theme on themeforest. This design just doesn't cut it.

Proofread for capitalization.

Good luck!

While much of what you are going to read from me is the same from other users, perhaps my opinion will help in that it's simply an additional opinion.

My first impression is that the design will need to be redone. As someone mentioned, you've got something prototype-worthy, but it will need to be significantly beefed up before it is shown to customers. If you can't do it, get a designer on board.

My second impression is that this is wufoo. I'm not sure exactly what you are offering that Wufoo or Google Docs doesn't already offer besides sharing a widget instead of a link. Have you surveyed customers to determine if they would respond better to a graphical survey (like a widget) versus a link to a survey? I'm not sure a widget would lower the barrier of entry enough for me to increase my desire to fill out a survey.

Finally, I agree you will need a copywriter/editor to clean up the text. Capitalizations are weird or explanations are a bit confusing. Cleaning up the copy will help significantly.

Best of luck!

I don't think I understand why people would pay for a tool like this: If I want to collect data from the users of my site, I'm going to write the survey ui myself: matching with the design of my site exactly and feeling seamless is crucial to being able to expect my users to take it.

If I were doing something non-professional, just surveying people I know, or what have you, I'd use a free Google Docs form. It looks far better and is easier to use than survey monkey, automatically is in a place I can deal with the results, and isn't trying to make money from me or my cohorts.

I don't know how much you like the name, but I would suggest another name that is easier to remember. At the very least a name that is easier to spell or pronounce.

For me to remember the URL an hour from now, it's going to take a good few minutes to memorize the spelling. I also don't know how to pronounce it, so it makes it much harder for me to tell someone else about your site.

There are a lot of better-known tools to do this - you will face tough competition unless you can do something that they don't.

I recommend that you find a specific niche and become really good at that industry/niche. That will help you build out things that others don't have.

I hate to say this, but the name... it makes me think of a bad visit to to the doctor involving a rubber glove.

The rest of the concept sounds good, however forcing people to register before they can do anything is a nonstarter - I'd make that the final step.

The first thing I thought of was apoptosis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apoptosis

Name :(

like prophylactics, polyps, pap smear, prostate etc.

I think the challenge here is remembering this when I next want to create a survey, not something I have any immediate need for.

Access code is: samxbeta

Thanks - I was about to e-mail you. So far, my feedback is that you would definitely benefit from some help with your copywriting. In addition to the previously mentioned errors, you need to think a little bit about what your benefit is to your customers. Consider telling a story instead of reciting bullet points - "Company X wondered if their customers liked the new search page design. 15 minutes later, they knew, thanks to Poplytics. 10 minutes after that, the old design was restored." I think you also need to do some research into what sort of needs your customers have, and position your benefit statements to address those needs. For example, you mention satisfying customers. That's probably a real need. But is it the most important one? What about "answering those pesky questions the guy in marketing always asks" or "gather visitor's ideas about how to improve any page on your site?"

Finally, at first blush this does seem similar to KISSinsights. And there may be some overlap with UserVoice and Get Satisfaction. You might want to think about what problems you solve better than those companies.

Best of luck!

At first glance this is the exact same thing as KISS Insights. How are you better?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com