Show HN: Stratos CMMS, web-based maintenance management software
stratossystems.com
stratossystems.com
It's a maintenance management system for people who maintain equipment, facilities, or installations (from golf courses to oil rigs to buildings). All these people need to schedule maintenance tasks, track repairs and modifications, and keep an inventory of parts. My system is simple, and easier to use than anything else out there.
I'm looking for any feedback at all, about the design, the idea, the execution so far.
I'm struggling to get my first customers, which is unexpectedly difficult. I know that it was a mistake to go this far without lining up a decent number of potential customers. I've had some feedback and done one big pivot and a few iterations; maintenance people who have seen it really like it; but that's not enough to get the snowball rolling yet.
I've been focused on web marketing, particularly with Adwords. I'm quite shocked and dismayed that it's costing me 4$ a click to drive traffic to the site; I have to find another way. My focus right now is on improving organic search ranking; once I make some improvements there I plan to start cold calling...
1 - based on the tagline, the picture of the guy managing a server, and the 4 features you highlight, it's still really unclear what your software does, who the target audience is, and what problem your software solves.
2 - your HN comment above does a better job of describing what you do but it's not communicated on your site. the sentence about "all these people need to..." is what your homepage should address head-on, instead of the various technical tag lines you have on the homepage right now
3 - re: struggling to get the first customer - just wondering how you came up w this idea and how you've iterated thus far if you don't have customers or users. when you say maintenance people really like it... what does that mean?
4 - re: maintenance people - are you talking to the individual maintenance man, the guy that is actually in the field doing the HVAC repairs, or are you talking to the operations manager that sends out work orders? i hope you're talking to the operations manager/facilities manager and not the blue collar worker, since the former is your customer and the person who is going to give you money.
5 - as for adwords - if you are bidding on the super generic term "CMMS", that would explain why you are getting a $4 bid rate. but, i also suspect that your "quality score" is fairly low and that also plays a huge role on your avg cpc.
6 - if i were you, i'd focus on on-page factors first, especially better communicating your value prop to your identified target audience. once you do that, then go out and find niche forums that facility managers, hvac professionls, and the like hang out. get in the mix and start conversations and ask them to use your software. once you have a few people actually using this thing and they are integrating it into their workflow, you'll have a better shot of converting these guys into actual paying customers OR pivoting to something else OR iterating to create better tools.
3. I've built a similar system for a previous employer, where I iterated the design of the software for seven years! I have a really good grasp of the domain, and when I saw what else was available in this market I knew I could build a better product.
Colleagues of mine who work in maintenance love this new system (though they're not the ones who would purchase it), and I've got one potential customer (maintenance manager) who really wants to start using it; they're waiting for corporate approval. But that's limited feedback I admit.
4. Absolutely agree. Tailoring the message to the managers is something I need to work on.
5. I'm targeting more specific things than CMMS: I tried a lot of keyword phrases and found that half a dozen of them like "Web Maintenance Software" had decent click through rates of say 2% and higher. I'm absolutely new to that game...
6. Thanks for your very down to earth and focused advice. It's unfortunate that the people I'm targeting don't have a big web presence. I'll keep trying!