Ask HN: Everyone loves my startup concept, why is no one using it? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Everyone loves my startup concept, why is no one using it?

nota.io

44 pointsm4nu94 comments

OK, I've gone to your page and had a look ...

    Nota features an innovative toolbar
    to help you get the job done

What job?

    Area Selection Tool: Lets you highlight any part of
        a web page. And best of all it takes a screen
        capture of the selection!

For what?

    Text Highlighter Tool: Shows copy changes and catches
        typos in text heavy pages. (Yeah, we're looking at
        you "Terms of Use" pages.)

What?

    Take the guesswork out of web development, with Nota.
    Nota records every click, scroll, and keystroke, giving
    you the clues you need to efﬁciently understand and
    repair user issues.

WHY?

the thing you're missing in all of this is the question of what problem you're solving. I assume you're solving a problem, but:

* How do I know I have your problem?

* How do I even know it's a problem to start with?

* What is the problem?

* What is the context?

* Who is your audience?

In short, based on my visit to your landing page, I have no idea what problem this product is solving.

So I left.

Does that help?

The problem of so many startups.

Thanks for that. This landing page can sure be optimised quite a bit. Though as today the main problem is not so much converting users from landing page to sign-up but rather getting current beta users (that do not complain in any sort about the app) to actually try it in they day to day workflow. I am striving for feedback, and if no one use the app I can't get any.

Then

a) Why didn't you ask that explicitly - you need to think really hard about

a1) the questions you ask,

a2) why you ask them,

a3) what answers you expect,

a4) why you got something other than expected, and

a5) what you will do with the answers.

If your question/answer pairs aren't actionable, then your questions are wrong and you need to ask something different.

b) You need to engage your existing users directly. Don't spam them, but send an email along the lines of:

b1) Hiya - you signed up for XXXX and I was wondering how I could help you today? Or better,

b2) I noticed you haven't used YYYY, which I think is one of the most useful features - can I talk you through using it and save you time and money?

You're getting downvoted, which is a shame, but you need to understand that your landing page and branding issues are the exact same issues that you're describing, too. People may sign up for beta, but may not know how to integrate this into their day-to-day workflow. Who's your audience? Web designers? Developers? Do you have an example workflow, so they can see how Nota fits in?

You need to open their eyes--don't expect folks who signed up for your beta to just see what it is to make the leap of, "Oh, I can use it for this!" TELL THEM WHAT TO USE IT FOR. Show them how to use it. Do you have a Getting Started guide? I couldn't find one. You tell me it integrates with Jira, GitHub, and Basecamp. Super. Integrates how? Show me!

Tell me who I am. Tell me who I'm soliciting feedback from. Tell me why it's better right on the site. Don't expect people to just "figure it out." None of your beta users are familiar with your app. You are the only expert.

"if no one use the app I can't get any"

I did sign up and was left puzzled by what to do next - I wanted to try the functionality but the only example I could see was to send feedback to you, and I couldn't see the tools mentioned on the home page.

I suspect nobody can work out how to get started with your product!

That is strange. There should a sample project called "tutorial project" right on the page you land on after your first registration. Did you try to give the page a refresh ?

Yep, I have little idea on what or when I would actually use your service.

Not a programmer, but from what I have read on various forums the problem seems to be you have a client.

ooh... you were supposed to scroll down? i opened page and thought "nothing here till i hit that damn button" and closed it. ^_^

I can't count how many times I've had to tell designers that their great design idea of resizing the first "tile" to perfectly fit the viewport was a UI (and conversion) disaster.

It's also a well known problem referred to as a "false bottom." See number 15 here: http://goodui.org/

I would have left you this feedback live on your site, but no widget there, which I feel is a missed opportunity.

Anyhow.

Talk about how web designers in specifically should be using this rather than getting their feedback over email with non-descriptive explanations like "I feel the paragraph was overshadowed by the icon." "What icon?" "The green one." "On what page?" "The home page." "Oh yay after 3 emails I finally understand what you meant!"

Get Beta Access doesn't read as a button.

The hero shot is a lovely photo and I don't want to crush your soul about it, but it sells a lifestyle of working on Macbooks in hipster cafes, not your software. It is impossible to tell, at that point in the sales process, that the fake website which gets 100% of the screen-within-a-screen real estate is not actually the point of the shot, but rather, the UI that gets 10% of the screen-within-a-screen real estate is the point. That UI is unreadable to me, both literally and figuratively. Your animated explanation later on the page is superior in explaining what your software actually does.

You should probably sell this face-to-face to designers at meetups/etc. Give away two dozen beta accounts to actual people in real life, with that crazy founder gleam in your eyes. If they don't use it, pester them about why. Answer the objections in onboarding -- e.g. don't have a website that I need feedback on right now, didn't get the snippet installed, etc.

Indeed, if you're not even using your product yourself - showcasing it front and centre, then why would I want to use it? Including it would be the perfect demo opportunity.

Completely agreeing with this comment. The first thing I wanted to do was see it in action myself (and by see, I mean use). As soon as I couldn't there & then I left.

The "Right tool for the job" example also was more damaging than useful in a way. You have this huge blowup circle to show the toolbar. But that's over 50% whitespace and even hides the demo you have running behind it.

Don't market to "everyone". Market to a very narrow, carefully defined market. And it doesn't matter if they "love" it. What matters is that they need it, and need it enough to pay.

Who are you seeking for beta customers? How are you reaching and inviting them? What kind of feedback are you getting from them?

My target market is small (2~10 employees) web agencies. I worked for such companies and build that app to address the pains they have with the feedback loop. So far I have mostly been doing cold mailing to very targeted market and made some promotion through listing site (betalist, reddit). I had about 300 users out of this. The type of feedback I got so far sounds like: "Great app will save me lot of time!!" yet after 1 month since the launch I have 2 "active" users.

Have you spoke to those users that stopped using the site. Seems like they're you're biggest chance to find what's wrong. You can get as many users as you want, but if you can't keep hold of them then you'll still have problems.

Find out why they started, then find out why they stopped. Maybe it wasn't right for them in the first place, in which case you can focus on the people it is right for. Maybe there's something they thought it had which it doesn't, it might be worth adding that in if it's consistent for everyone. Good luck!

I've seen several strategies like this to improve startups/sideprojects Keep statistics on people who have: signed up but not set up your product <- Contact these to see if they need help setting up signed up and set up your product but stopped using it <-Contact these to find out what's wrong with your product

The best way to do this is to send a personal email to the users. You should be able to get some real feedback and if you're responsive to their suggestions get some customers for life

Thanks, as mentioned above I am trying this but not getting so much success with it so far. I probably need to crunch bigger numbers to get significant results.

I did do send them personalised email - in which I actually poured way to much time - and I am usually getting or not answers or "I'll use it soon" type of answers. " Will continue putting more energy down that path tho. Thanks.

It's tough, but eventually it should pay off and once it does then you should be able to focus your efforts on stopping it happening in the first place.

I've always found it's a good idea to keep in touch from the start at an early stage (not too much though, don't make them regret they signed up in the first place). You won't always get a reply but people will be more open to your emails when it's less out of the blue. Try to make them relevant to the stage they're at though (just signed up, just started using stuff properly). You could probably automate some of the earlier parts too. I find people are usually pretty happy to help when they think they're making a difference.

Hope it works out for you!

The problem is, nobody wants to be the evil guy that rips another guy's dream to shreds. That's why, when asked directly, people will always say that your thing is a cool idea, looks great, etc.

It is said that entrepreneurs need to develop hard skin. I propose that this hard skin should extend to ignoring this kind of vapid feedback. Because with our typical starry-eyed optimism (/ denial), we often see these as validation, when they're really not.

One thing I've learned is also to always listen to the 'assholes', you know the guys who tell you that your thing sucks, looks like shit and so on. They are often valuable resources because at least they are being honest - if you engage them and try to get them to flesh out their criticism. Some of the best feedback I have ever gotten was this way.

Well I thought about that. Tho I am getting spontaneous feedback from people telling they love the app. Actually the few I've asked feedback to, more often than not don't answer..

I am Ok with dismissing the idea or pivoting if I have too, but I can't do that without understanding what went wrong.

Some random comments:

"Feedback right on the site"

This made me wonder what site you were referring to - maybe "Feedback right on your site".

"The Right Tool for the Job"

By this point I still wasn't sure what "the Job" was...

Also, having a product that collects feedback on web pages that doesn't immediately allow me to play with the tools is a bit frustrating - I won't sign up just to play with a text selection/highlighting tool even if it is pretty cool.

>> This made me wonder what site you were referring to - maybe "Feedback right on your site".

Or maybe more dummy-proof; "Do you run a web site? Get feedback right on your site"

>> Also, having a product that collects feedback on web pages that doesn't immediately allow me to play with the tools is a bit frustrating

And why doesn't this site itself use this tool to get feedback? That could be also a nice demonstration.

Finally, I scrolled thrice, and didn't really get what the tool is about. Maybe the site has a communication problem, which prevents conversions...

Scrolled through it, no idea what it does.

Agreed - doing a quick video showing what it does would be helpful.

First it was hard for me as well to figure out "what it does" or to be more precise "how it does it" but there is this little animation on the landing page which illustrates it pretty well.

@nota.io: you could make that animation bigger or make a video out of it.

+1 for this. Here's my thoughts while browsing it:

I scrolled down, and to be honest if you hadn't mentioned feedback at the top, I would've thought "web design collab tool", with the area/text highlighting.

Oh hey, you follow with that impression too.

> Take the guesswork out of web development

So I'm to be developing a website, I guess with other people, so it is a collab tool (thats the feedback)? Ok.

It hooks into Github? How? Why? Eh, lived 22 years without it, probably don't need it.

I wanted to give you feedback that there is no feedback mechanism on the right side of the page but ironically you don't give the user opportunity to apply your product to your own site.

Yes, unfortunately a "public" version of the widget would mean a serious refactor (which is btw on the list of potential pivots).

You appear to have a feedback tool that allows users to select part of the page. That isn't clear, but...

You've made a website feedback tool that allows users to tell the site owner what they think is bad about the site. Why aren't you using it for this thread?

What is this? What pain does it stop?

I can't tell from the domain name, or from the website 'above the fold'. Even scrolling down, I'm still not sure what it does.

Also, you have no signup at the moment?

Just my 2 cents:

When you go live, identify your client group (at first sight, it's agencies and freelancers)

- Create a seperate button for agencies and freelanciers Agencies, signup here, freelancers: signup here.

- Create different pricing to match the client group

- Create a "use-it now" script, eg. a editable-text that they can copy and copy paste it in a website. Give it a trial account (or beta).

- Sell to your target groups, i think you can do something with this, but you really need specific group targeting.

- Change the button: Get early feedback into the register texts and buttons: Register for free here (input: Name & Email) -> Button: Register

- Change some text: Collect feedback on your site... Try targetting web designers (who hate the overuse of mail for adjusting to the clients preference -> put this as a section on the front page). Example for a section: Optimize your website feedback (collect early client feedback)

It's not immediatly clear what it does, it summorizes the tools, not the goal itselve (eliminating email by a better workflow for receiving client feedback for example).

And last but not least, marketing marketing marketing :)

Gotcha. Thanks for that. Apparently my landing page is due for a re-design asap..

What does your site/product do? The first thing I read is something about a toolbar ... a toolbar for what? :)

I guess the smallest version of it is: sticky notes on a live website to ease the web developer / client feedback exchange process.

That is radically better copy than anything you have on your website right now. It is instantly clear who the intended user is, what pain it purports to solve, and what the core workflow will be like. (It is often the case, by the way, that founders describe their stuff better when speaking informally than they do on their home pages.)

Then put that on the site. Or something, at least.

Update the headline - "FEEDBACK RIGHT ON THE SITE"

Leave feedback? Receive feedback? So I can do what?

On the subhead - What does taking the guesswork out of the feedback loop actually mean? What will I be able to do once I take the guesswork out of the feedback loop? Make better design decisions?

A lot of the copy is too vague to be helpful.

"THE RIGHT TOOL FOR THE JOB"

What job? What are the pain points your tool helps alleviate? From the site, I'm guessing it's to find out the specific elements that are stopping visitors from converting or further engaging with the site? Poor design is expensive. A lot of people know what people do on a website, not lot of people understand why they do it. Sell up your solution as solving for the "why."

From browsing the comments it seems like you mostly rely on online feedback from the betatesters. I think you need to move one step back. You have identified a pain point (from your own experience) and a way to solve it but are you really sure you're targeting the right people and the pain is big enough?

I think you should find some people that you think have the identified problem, see if/how they solve it and meet them in person to demonstrate your cure. It's costly (time/travel) but I think it'll clear up a lot of things. You can learn A TON from this. Seriously find ~20 people and meet them in real life.

I've seen a stratup take beta user metrics and offer their most active users the first year free. If you give out 10 free years of service to your most active users and promoters this might actually give them the motivation to start using the product.

Also, once they've used the product for a year they probably won't stop when they have to start paying and by then they've given you the feedback you need. They might also give you some quotes to put on the front page to show how happy your existing customers are.

Well I'd give life long use to the right beta users willing to give me serious feedback. It's the very least I could do. I am currently trying that approach with cold mailing but not getting a whole lot of attention with that (actually none at all)

Try changing the message or try a cold-call, give you the chance to get instant feedback on why people don't use the product.

Looks like a great feedback widget like http://bugherd.com/ to me

Be patient and

KEEP AT IT: listen, learn, fix - repeat

I found this helpful - http://www.appsumo.com/copywriting-checklist-special/ - simple, concise and well explained guide to website copy.

Good luck, work, listen, learn and be patient :-)

Oh and take HN with a pinch of salt :-)

It addresses the same issue but with a completely different approach.

Thanks for the perspective. I will keep at it. Cheers

It's been mentioned several times but I think the main thing is telling what problem you're solving, as early as possible.

Also, your sign in looks like a modal, but it isn't. Confused me a little bit when i wanted to go back and almost made me stop completely. Probably just me, but might be worth a look.

Try asking the people that love the concept what they think of your sales site. Maybe you explained something to them which caught their attention that you're not saying on the site.

You might be onto something. Could this be easily converted into an annotation tool for machine learning purposes? It looks like you could use it to annotate images and text. You need an interface to create annotation schema. Then, you need to have two or more annotators per text/image. And finally, you calculate inter-annotator agreement and export the data.

I know that there are couple startups that got seed money for "annotating the web". For example "Rap Genius".

these things piss me off, i click on it, and it doesn't say what it is or why i want it.

it should be right there at the top "nota - it's bacon for your computer" or whatever. instead i'm supposed to scroll and look at pictures and i still don't get it. looks to me like more effort was put into making a fancy design rather than an actual product, because if it was a product it'd be obvious what it was.

that would be problem 1 i suppose.

Got it, shitty landing page. Fair enough.

I understood your site because I use screenshot browser extensions frequently.

Most people have no idea such tools exist. You are asking them to envision a concept that they never imagined is possible today.

Your animated graphic is clear to me, but it's not explicit enough.

You also appear to include features of tools like Clicktale, which is interesting and not prominent enough.

I agree that this tool must be live on your own site. :)

Take any notion of "beta" off your site. You want people to sign up thinking it's production ready and start test and improving your funnel based on a trickle feed of new visitors. Use A/B testing and talk to people that leave their details on why they did or did not use it and improve accordingly.

Watch this video for background: http://vimeo.com/54118238

Thanks, good point. That is the next step.

Unlike others, I understood the problem.

Your true problem is unless this web agency is cranking out landing pages for a living - your customer will probably spend more time getting your tool integrated than working with it. And they cease to become a customer when the project is over.

There is value in this, but besides maybe some server hosting, what are you doing that can't be accomplished with an open source JS package?

Well there is a whole bunch of value that goes with this. Event tracking, rendering of pretty damn accurate "screen grabs", reproducing of the environment.

I think you made a good point about the typical project live spam and I might be reason why people can not get to use the tool righ away. I personally see that tool being very useful for "intra team" communication as well.

The next use you described came from yourself. The rest of the thread is emerging with a consistent theme, "what are your customers saying?"

Yep I got that much out of it. So far I was not really lucky communicating with them. Will push further down that path. Thanks for the input.

Does this only work on static pages or is there a way to annotate dynamic pages as well?

While I don't disagree with a lot of the feedback about better communicating certain things on the page, I thought I would say that I understood immediately what your does. That's to say, I think others are being a bit hyperbolic when they say they have no idea even after scrolling.

Thanks. I know the landing page could be a lot better tho, but I do think that people with the pain the address do get how Nota could help out form the landing page.

Yep it'll work on static sites just as well.

To echo the feedback others have provided: your website makes it a challenge to understand what your product does.

Being obtuse about the point of your product is not an effective strategy unless you are in stealth mode and you have a simple landing page just to drum up intrigue.

I would clarify the problem and why your product's features supply the best answer.

I would love to such frank feedback on my startup. I am going same phase, everyone loves the idea but nobody seems to use it. Probably because either they are not actually convinced and are faking it or I am not solving any urgent "pain point" they have.

Thanks @m4nu, for this post, signed-up for Nota.io and checking it out

Thanks Shankysingh. Looking forward to see you there. Don't hesitate to get in touch if you need assistance. Good luck with the startup.

Maybe people you've explained it to love the concept, but I have no idea what your product does after scrolling through your your bootstrap page. I THINK you capture events to help analyze visitor patterns better, while helping to solve some common mistakes like mistyped words and such, but I really have no idea.

I'm using bugherd and would like to have the feedback part only as I don't need the bug tracking part (already using another tool for that).

So I'm definitively in your potential client list, but no demo on your website mean that I would probably have skipped it completely without creating an account.

Oh well I would love to hear feedback from you. As mentioned somewhere else in that bunch of comment I am more than willing to give away long term free use for any one willing to give this a serious try and share the experience with me.

The registration process is very small (basically one more field than a sign-in) and you can delete your account anytime if you are not satisfied. Once logged in you will see a tutorial that highlights the main features of Nota in under a minutes.

Will work on a screen cast of the app first very soon.

Thanks for sharing

Isn't JIRA Capture by Atlassian pretty much the same? Probably with better integration with JIRA, which you recommend in your page for issue tracking... https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/capture

Hey, had no idea what it did.. signed up anyway and it's something I can see myself using. Kudos to you. One slight niggle so far.. there's a typo in your confirm email. "glad to have you abroad" should be "glad to have you aboard".

Thanks that. 300+ welcome email and you are the first who got that one !

1) What does it do?

2) It's not on your site. Where can I see it in action on all sides? what does the widget look like?

3) will it even work in my local development environment?

4) what does it cost? Can I persuade my manager to buy it?

1- Let everyone involved in the site creation (Clients, PM, devs ) communicate right on the live site by using "sticky note" 2- It can't be use on a public site without major refactor 3- Yes it will. I have a "Mirror" feature plan so that you can even mirror issue from "stage" site to you dev 4- Still unknown yet. Probably will have a free plan with some restriction, but the "small agency" tier would be around 29/mo

With 3, it complained that it didn't find the widget on my development site - which left me really confused.

A production-capable version would be extremely useful to our team, even with minimal feedback - we're in a public beta of a new version of our site, and we're using A/B tools which would allow us to get that sort of feedback from a number of our users without being overwhelmed.

We might only want to use it for 4 months, while a beta runs. A one-off payment of up to £100 (GBP) would be reasonably easy, if we chose to use it.

What's keeping it from production?

Could you send me a ticket via UserVoice (bottom right corner) so that I can have you user ID and have a look at what might be wrong?

Nothing is really keeping it to be pushed to production. I was just hopping to get more feedback before proceeding to that step.

Thanks for the input.

Also, an idea - even if it's not ready for production, you could wrap a site in an IFrame, and use Nota outside the frame? that could give you a quick way to a production-able system?

Actually Nota uses Iframe to display the site. The widget can not be accessed directly form the site unless you have selected the "Widget on" option when creating you project. This is defiantly save in production. There is almost no overhead of having the snippet in place.

The tutorial project that you get to once you sign up - or maybe a video of it - needs to be front and centre before the sign-up.

I wasn't clear before I got to that, but now I've seen that I'm motivated to dig deeper...

Cool, thanks. That is helpful.

Probably because your site gives absolutely no indication of what it is you actually do.

No price listed. I usually don't sign up to anything unless the price is listed.

+1, always the first thing i look for.

I hate when i start to use a service and then the pricing is not even affordable or can be replaced by something a lot cheaper or even free (open source).

Faire enough. I didn't list prices because I was not sure but now I understand some prices (even if inaccurate) are better than non at all. I am thinking: 1 Active Project + 1 Archived Project, Unlimited users 9USD/mo 3 Active Project + 2 Archived Project, Unlimited users 19USD/mo 5 Active Project + 3 Archived Project, Unlimited users 29USD/mo

Well it depends on your use cases. As a general rule of thumb, if you don't publish prices it means it's too expensive for the common man (eg, it's aimed at businesses).

I can't really see any small time indie (I could be very wrong I've looked at your project a total of 5 minutes tops) using this. 20/30 dollars seems really low if you're only going to get a small amount of customers.

I'd read up on this thread posted here on HN just a few days ago, there's an incredible amount of info here:

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/04/03/fantasy-tarsnap/

Is there a way to allow clients to create annotations on a project without creating an account? Maybe through a private URL?

From poking around I didn't see a way to do that. Without that I wouldn't really use it.

You told me what features it has not why I would want it. Give me a value proposition. Also put the pricing on the front page and offer more than one option, 3 would be good.

It seems like you've thought about the experience for end users, but I can't see a way to actually try it out (from an end user perspective) from your homepage.

I still have no idea what your product does. Make at least a video(2-3 minutes) that defines the problem and shows how it is solved using your software.

Had a look at your site - Nice design, but quite bad "communication". Not getting what nota really is about and why I should use it.

Thank you. Will work on improving that.

No idea what problem you are trying to solve.

How is this different from TrackDuck?

Never heard of it. Googled it, their certificate is broken and it seems to be fetching stuff from fishy domains name. I stopped there. If you used trackDuck tho I'd love to hear your feedback about how/if it differs.

Hi! I am a CDO at TrackDuck. Very strange problem, what browser/os you use? From what domain you got ssl alert?

I've used their product. Worked pretty well. Didn't have the time to give your product a shot yet, so can't compare. I get no SSL errors on their page

You use Ask HN to post a link, smart.

No trickery intended here, just seemed to be the best way to go about it.

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