Ask HN: Review my startup
acruw.com
acruw.com
I have trouble knowing from your messaging who your target audience is, and whether I'm in it. E.g. needs for someone who travels casually and who is accruing miles towards a particular vacation would be very different for someone who travels for a living and has dozens of accounts to keep track of.
For me, I've mostly standardized on United Mileage Plus and therefore make sure that any reward programs I participate in are compatible with United's program. Therefore, United's site serves as the aggregator for all my mileage/reward programs.
I'll sign up and see how it goes.
I would say the ideal customer would be someone with at-least 3 programs. So for example, if you had points with United, Marriott and American Express, then I think you would find the site useful. However, the more programs you have, the more useful the site becomes.
The one feature I think anyone with at-least 1 frequent flyer or hotel program could use is the "points or pay" calculator (there's a "points or pay" link in the tab-like menubar).
Anyway, nice and clean layout.
You may want to let users know on the front page which rewards programs you support. I see that it's in the FAQ, but to see that information instantly might be more reassuring to the user (especially, the one that isn't going to look at the FAQ before leaving).
Personally, I would never trust your website with my reward site password (I think that's how the site works). I'm not picking on you, I simply don't trust any website with another website's password. This doesn't seem to be a hindrance to sites like Facebook that ask for your Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo password, although, unlike your site, they don't store the password (or so they claim). I don't know how you would possibly get around this limitation or whether you should bother trying, as you may get more users from the convenience of storing passwords.
Where you would be removing pain is if you could do searches for reward seat availability for me. Like a kayak.com but for points. I would use that for sure (searching for reward seats is real pain).
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=20k3o0z&s=4
But beyond that, I agree with the comments so far, excellent design and I wish you the best of luck.
1. adsense
2. affiliate marketing of airline and hotel credit cards (on your Delta "details" page, for example, you'll find a link to sign-up for the Delta amex card). A pretty relevant ad, given you're looking at the details of your delta miles and you're presented with an ad that allows you to earn 25,000 additional miles for signing up (or whatever the promo is).
3. Orbitz referrals on the "points or pay" page.
Create a paid-enterprise model (think RescueTime) that tracks corporate rewards on credit cards. That way you could maximize reward usage and possibly save on overhead costs.
on the design note, those are some really good images...did you make them yourselves? Also very clean overall design
Also...kudos on the short sign up page
Regarding the images: We got most of the icons from istockphoto (the planes, calendars, mini charts, etc.).
I've put up a screenshot: http://cli.gs/152EXg . Look at the first blue rectangle's left side edge and the bottom right blue box's right edge.
Interesting idea, too :)
Pierre
I like the idea a lot though. I used to travel quite a bit, and mainly stuck to one airline due to the mileage.
i like the design. the messaging isn't that compelling for me however "track your balances".
when i sign up for something i like to think "what am i going to get?" tracking balances isn't something that i get. could it be something like "see where you can go [with your current points]"?
that would make me want to sign up.
They are talking to a lot of airlines and hotels.