Ask HN: Review my startup - www.JetDeck.co | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Review my startup - www.JetDeck.co

app.jetdeck.co

18 pointsfallingmeat23 comments

A CRM for business jet brokers.

While the industry may sound glitzy, multi-million dollar aircraft are most often sold with notepads and 30MB of hi-res email attachments. There are no such things as 'cloud data', 'analytics' or 'mobile apps' in the space and any software that is built for business aviation reeks of 1995.

JetDeck is a modern contact and inventory management application to fix the low-hanging fruit problems in an aircraft broker's day-to-day operations.

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A CRM for business jet brokers.

JetDeck is a modern contact and inventory management application to fix the low-hanging fruit problems in an aircraft broker's day-to-day operations.

My immediate advice would be to get rid of that little google ad bar that looks like a navigation. It's both confusing and sneaky, even if (maybe?) that was not your intent.

Other than that, I was completely confused as to what I was looking at until I read your description here in the comments. Sounds like an interesting biz, though I don't know anything about that to comment one way or another!

great points.

We're definitely not going to sacrifice usability for the beer money from adsense. Thanks

I've never understood the people that put adverts on projects like this. Adverts work at scale. If you have 100,000 people viewing your website every day people are willing to pay good money for access to that audience, if that audience is 100 people the cost of advertising to them is pennies.

If someone puts 100 hours into building something like this it's clear they intend on it becoming a legitimate business, this means every single person that visits at initial release is someone that could be a customer or could help the site reach the goals set out by the creator. Anything that can potentially jeopardise this (poor functionality, making it look amateur -- adverts) is pointless. Trading potential success for the advert revenue adsense will bring from a HN post (most posts about the HN traffic bump talk about ~10k page views, so let's say that generates $10 in revenue with a small advert bar) is nonsensical. It'd be better to go and pick pennies up from the street!

There was a person that posted their Youtube channel on reddit a few days ago and they wanted people to review it and give them pointers. I decided to check it out, so I clicked to their channel and was made to watch a 30 second pre-roll advert, I decided that 30 seconds wasn't worth it and closed it. The channel could have been amazing; I could have been the person that watched their video and shared it with my network and that could have triggered great things, but because of very silly short term thinking they lost that.

I agree. Since this was mainly a usability test, it's good to know how horrible an ad bar will be. The message has been loud and clear so far.

I like to colors and the layout. It's simple to navigate and all the data is very clear and easy to read.

A few minor things...There's no way to edit an action. You'd have to delete and re-add if you made a typo or forgot the date. To be consistent, you might want to add a button to the "Delete Spec" link; all the other actions look like they are buttons.

I was also slightly confused with the ad links, but now that I refresh the page, it looks like you took them off already.

Usability test failed, because what looks like a main menu is a bar of ads. That is just going anger anybody who feels they have been fooled into clicking an ad. I suggest removing it asap. You're going to lose people from your site before they have even looked around

Have you considered adding a web gallery? I wasn't expecting the full size image to download when I clicked on it...

That may just be me but I would rather have the original hi-res download be an option.

Just FYI, the "Welcome Hacker News User" window doesn't work well on my phone (Android 2.7.3, Cyanogenmod, default browser). It only lets me see the right half of the text, and I have to scroll over to see the close button. It helped that I already knew where it was, but if I hadn't been to your non-mobile site first I might not have found it.

I'm a bit confused. Is this a seller's screen or a buyers screen or is it the same for both? Is the "My Deck" basically my inventory? And if I add it in there is there marketplace sort of screen where I as a buyer (Not that I'm buying a million dollar jet tomorrow - maybe next week) would go and find what's available?

It's a broker's screen. The middle man. Buyers and sellers would never see this. However, the buyer would see the spec that is sent (which is not part of this demo).

The concept demonstrated here is to enter and manage my aircraft for sale and the contacts associated with it (from a broker's perspective)

FallingMeat is a HORRIBLE name for a jet seller....

With that said - you need to put in some example inventory to show both buyers and sellers what they would really see with a fully populated listing.

Show how after entering all the features of a jet - comparable FEATURE listings come in and tell the poster the pricess for that inventory (you could monetize this feature)

Need to make it easier to select MFR such as engine maker... i.e. select an angine after selecting known manufacturer.

Also - your engine would be FAR more powerful if you preload model configs from various manufacturers. So, i can ladder through a product list based on selecting a particular manufacturer.

The key to success here is in doing all the leg work to get the data from all the suppliers.

Link this info to maintenance records, charge fees for scans to this..

Call it AIRFAX - carfax for airplanes.

Or if you prefer, call it Flightr.com --- a domain you can acquire from me if interested...

Great point on the example data. Although I disabled emails from the HN test account linked to here, you can get an idea of what the 'purchaser experience' would be like from the JetDeck homepage (www.jetdeck.co) and clicking the "Try a Demo Now" button. This is a link to a demo of what the customer actually sees after a broker has entered the data in the JetDeck portal: http://www.jetdeck.co/specs/4425542.php?name=Sam

Another good idea on the pre-loading of configs. We've shelved that as a phase 2 feature for now, but wholeheartedly agree it's a big win that would make data entry way less painful. Sounds like you know something about aerospace, Sam.

You might want to put some limit on what other people can upload... especially for a demo. I mean, it's been a while since I've seen the Goatse.cx guy...

Edit: offending content has been removed (Sorry that you'd had to deal with all of that).

...likewise

So, a super nit-picky thing on the login page is the "Made Simple" text on the top right. It's styled too similarly to a link. I definitely had the urge to click it and I'm sure others will

Highlighted text (Close More Deals, Beautiful Aircraft Presentations etc.) is perceived like links, a different color would be less confusing.

Just an fyi, you link to app.jetdeck.co, which is a lot more confusing when you're not first given the information at jetdeck.co.

yeah, good point. that was a rookie mistake

How are you planning to reach your customers?

Great question. There are actually very few customers for this app. I have worked in this industry (as a broker, for an airframe mfg and now a guidance avionics mfg) for a few years and know many personally. Enough to build it 'virally'. So short answer: email and assisting the converts to invite others. Of course, the standard tools apply as well, but it's a very small niche for sure.

The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is the market data that will be crowd-sourced, not the size of our user base.

Sounds reasonable. I figured you got to be in the industry to pick this niche. Good luck! :)

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