Show HN: BiFluent (Japan-based startup) - progress tracking for English learners | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: BiFluent (Japan-based startup) - progress tracking for English learners

bifluent.com

7 pointsdiasks210 comments

OP here. We went live with the site last week and emailed it to a few people we know in our target market. Feedback is in and we are doing a horrible job of explaining what the site is, the benefits of the site and how to actually use the site. One thing we are planning to do is create a ~1 minute video. Other than that though, I would love your feedback/ideas on how to make our onboarding process suck less.

Also, if anyone will be attending the Tokyo Hacker News Meetup tomorrow night, feel free to give me your feedback in person.

A video would be a really good idea, and I'd also recommend a trial that doesn't require a sign-up: if this were in any of the languages I'm constantly trying to pick up and it had a way of engaging me immediately without a sign-up I would have spent at least 20 minutes on the trial - I went down the site and did the english tests and it wasn't clear whether I got all the answers right! So, I would put a really clear call-to-action above the fold that takes you through a basic test and asks you to login/sign up on each step to save your progress.

I liked the format and variety of the questions: if you do well with this consider making french/spanish/portuguese/chinese/japanese/russian versions please!

Thanks for the feedback. I've considered doing a guest registration, but then decided to just put some sample questions on the front page that users can try out. Seems like we should possibly try out a guest registration.

Yes, if we can find some success in this market we plan to expand to other markets and languages.

The language market has huge opportunities still to be found - I pay for a private language teacher because I like the custom attention, and I'd pay for a service that could enhance genuine learning. Good luck!

The pricing page helped me make some sense of things, but I still don't have a good idea of what I get by subscribing to the service, which is probably the big thing that might deter me from digging deeper into the site, signing up, etc.

I agree with the reply above, in that I felt a little lost by the practice questions being the majority of the front page experience; the video might help, but collapsing things down so I can quickly get an idea of what the 'speaking' 'vocab', 'writing' and testing services are about might help me make more sense of the site, faster.

I'll come find you tomorrow at the meetup, in any case :)

Am I right in understanding that your service only offers tests? Does it actually teach any english or is just a way to track your current level?

Yes, you are correct. Right now (our MVP) we only offer tests. In the future we have plans for some other tools that are more geared toward teaching. We also hope to be able to teach through the results of the test (i.e. we offer explanations and tips for each question a user gets wrong or skips). With other tests, you typically only receive your score, but we want to offer transparent results that you can check every question and answer set and try to learn from your mistakes.

this is targeted for Japanese people who are learning English right? seems like some sections overview aren't fully localized. and why is the free tier called "Stowaway"?

seems pretty cool though, would love a similar service for people learning Japanese..

Yes, right now we are targeting Japanese learning English as we have experience in that market. If we are able to achieve product/market fit we definitely want to expand to other languages and countries. We are still working on fully localizing the app. Thanks for checking it out!

I'd definitely ask that question of some of your target audience; whether they'd prefer English or localized explanations, etc. If they're targeting TOEIC, or have passed it, I think it's okay to have some faith in them.

Of course, training wheels don't always hurt, either. :)

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