Ask HN: Could you give me some feedback on my startup? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Could you give me some feedback on my startup?

6 pointsvolpav17 comments

Hi guys,

I just (re-) launched my startup - PriceFlurry (a place where people can find and share information regarding prices on any goods or services), available at http://priceflurry.com.

The initial launch didn’t bring me any users and so I tried to improve a bit. As part of this release I’ve made a WP7 app, a mobile version of the website (http://m.priceflurry.com) and also released the REST API to the public (invite-only for now).

Any feedback (positive or negative) is greatly appreciated.

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I also like the idea and look, but have you thought about a different launch approach? When your content needs to be geographically dense to be useful, makes sense to limit your launch. For a non-FB example, you can look at companies like Uber, or even today's YourMechanic launch. Yes those are both service based, but it seems like you require a lot of users in one location to be truly useful just like them.

On a similar note, I put in Madison, selected car repair, and my search didn't return any results. Just kept on loading--not sure if this is due to traffic or just no results available.

Keep it up though! I can see real potential in this, I think you just need to keep tweaking to get there. I have faith :)

Thanks a lot. Yes, we have a plan of pushing it locally first (because otherwise it was like we are trying to swallow a watermelon). We will hopefully start with it in October :-)

First of all, congrats on never giving up. I like the idea of PriceFlurry, but right now there are too many clicks. Here are a few suggestions: 1. Instead of an empty location, populate the location with a default city, and/or get the location using IP or geo location in the background. 2. Put a few small icons for heavily used categories such as entertainment, food, travel and an icon for "more" which will open a current box when clicked. 3. I think you can put the input boxes just beside the description on the upper pane. Easier for users to read and start interacting sooner.

Great input, Thanks a lot! Everything in the backlog already ;-)

I think this looks perfect for gift shopping but not general shopping - show me a broad category of stuff between $x and $y.

For general online shopping it feels all wrong, too inspecific and of course it doesn't fit entering the price range when I'm probably just looking for the best deal.

In both cases I have to wonder about 'location'. There's arguments for and against it, but it's the #1 criteria when the #1 location is I would think probably just "online".

Thank you for your feedback. Yes, the main idea is that price reviews a "bound" to physical locations so of course it doesn't make sense if the good are sold online. And very good catch about the "Best deals" option (although the term "best" might have a different meaning to different people).

I believe that this service will be extremely helpful for people who are travelling. Imagine a situation: you come to a new country, you don't really know that's the average bill in restaurant in the city center, how much the tour guide to that castle costs, etc. This kind of information might be hard to find online (actually, this is when I come up with the idea - when I was planning a trip to Czech Republic and simply couldn't figure out how much money do I need to take with me). You just fire up "PriceFlurry" app and get the _sense_ (that's important, reviews are recommendations rather than something you can trust 99%) of how much the staff costs.

Again, thanks for your comments.

For planning trips this could be interesting but that's such a tiny niche - most people aren't going to leave their country even once a year.

I actually travel extensively and would only have had 3 opportunities all year to have used this, and maybe a dozen over the last 8 years. Worst of all, I don't need this anymore for any country I've already been in.

Thank you for your input. The trip planning was one of the use cases. The thing is that it doesn't really matter what kind of price review is that since I'm not limiting the users in what they can post (obviously because I don't know what other people are looking for to buy). Maybe it's even a short term offer that will expire in a week and nobody will be able to leverage it. But that's fine because people will get an _overview_ of how much things can cost in that area (someone will make a conclusion that since there was such a good offer, maybe there are other good offers that are simply not listed on PriceFlurry).

small nitpick or advice: Always use Show HN instead of Ask HN if you want to showcase your project/startup etc. Ask HN is usually to ask questions.

I looked at your app. i like the idea. One UI/UX comment: when i use the pop up to select categories (car wash etc.), I was confused between the "Apply" button and "Ok" Button. To close the window, you have to hit "Ok" which you specify as a comment but I kept looking at the "Apply" button. Why not remove that button and let the search box autofill the search criteria/tags and once done, just hit "OK".

Thank you very much. Actually I think the whole category selector is a bit hard to use, gonna fix it in the next update (according to your comments and what I already planned).

np. Btw, I really like the name of your app. PriceFlurry is catchy.

Hehe, yeah, don't remember how many pages from my copybook went to the trash before I got "PriceFlurry" :-)

For location, I typed in "San Jose". On the search results page, that got changed to "250-282 N Market St, San Jose, CA 95110, USA". Intentional?

Looks like this is a crowdsourced Milo. Is that accurate?

Yes, it's international. And yes, you're correct about how it's similar to Milo. But I believe that putting prices closer to actual consumers (and not proposing them through retailers which often can be just a paid marketing campaign and the prices are not necessarily the "best") via letting them collaborate on posting this kind of information will essentially create a better overview of "how much" and will give consumers a better choice. I like telling people that PriceFlurry is like Wikipedia for prices (in regards to the concept). Don't laugh :-)

> Yes, it's international.

I asked if it was intentional -- I tried to search for all of san jose, but the system instead searched on a specific block :)

Sorry, got it wrong :-) That's the way it works - you type in an address which becomes a search center. You can bring up a map (an icon on the right) and specify the search area (by changing the radius) but the address will always be precise.

Btw, I know it's empty but if you want to see how the search works and how the result page looks like (if you don't feel like you want to post something), try specifying "Aarhus, Denmark" (the place where I currently live) as an address and setting a price range from $1, you'll get some results.

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