Dear HN'ers, please check out my new startup | Hacker News Reader

Dear HN'ers, please check out my new startup

masteryourcard.com

Hi guys, for the past few months a friend and I have been working on a web application in our spare time that I hope will really help people put a dent in their credit card debt.

It's still in really early stages (like pre-alpha), and it's still got a bunch of bugs and spelling mistakes, but I was wondering if any of you could give it a once-over and let me know if anything screws up - and of course general feedback would be most welcome.

Its up at my domain now: www.masteryourcard.com. The 'take a tour' feature doesn't work yet, but there's a little summary of what it's all about on the Index page.

Here's a direct link to the Sign-Up page: http://masteryourcard.com/signup.php

Its all 100% anonymous, you'll never be asked for your personal or banking details. Even if you don't have any cc debt I'd really appreciate any thoughts you might have.

Great idea - few things:

- You could have problems with mastercard wanting to protect their trademark.

- Your homepage is pretty heavy on copy. The copy's a bit long on hyperbole, too. Maybe edit down a bit and add a banner pic/video. Webapp homepages are a bit of an art, but good ones are fairly formulaic, too. Lots of examples out there, smashing magazine is always worth a look for inspiration.

I didn't try your app (not really very useful for me), but I think if you fix your homepage, you could convert really well. It's a problem a lot of people could use help with.

Thanks gstar - any examples of some good webapp homepages?

Yes. Some are more webapp than others. http://280slides.com/, http://basecamphq.com/ (not to my taste, but might be to yours), http://vimeo.com/, http://www.campaignmonitor.com/, http://www.checkoutapp.com/

The list is endless!

I checked it out real quick because it actually looked pretty presentable/useful for other folks (I have 0 debt, literally, not even a quarter to a co-worker now). Playing with the test account, there's no way to view the annual interest rate for cards after you've entered them, or a way to change the interest rates. I tried and tried. Also, it's unintuitive to provide options in the edit card screen that weren't there for the initial creation, but to not display fields that were there for the initial creation.

ismarc - I will get that fixed, thanks! And if you have a chance to set up a new account (even though you don't have any debt yourself) and give it a proper run through some time I'd love to hear some more of your thoughts on design/usability.

I forgot to add above...the reason I was looking for interest rates was I was looking to understand how you were prioritizing what to be paid off. I wasn't sure if it was biggest + minimums first, or if it was prioritized to prevent growth of outstanding balance on all but one that was being paid down, or if it performed calculations based on "best" payoff options (high interest + low balance being prioritized over low interest + high balance, minimizing total interest paid over the period for paying off the balance, etc.).

I would highlight the method, use it as a draw point and explain it somewhere, and have the website be the tool to track progress with the method. That's the catch with credit cards, they have a limit, but the part that is never pointed out is the total amount you really end up paying including interest.

Deleted comment

Hi, I know I haven't set up the ToS yet, probably a bad move on my part as I guess this should be the first thing I should have set up. Will definitely take care of this today.

As for the tour link going to a 404, I mentioned this in my original post - I haven't bothered with it yet.

On the email address thing, I do see what you're saying, but I sort of feel like in this day and age you can claim your service is anonymous/doesn't ask for 'personal details' even if you ask for an email address.

As for the tour link going to a 404, I mentioned this in my original post - I haven't bothered with it yet.

Yes, just spotted that and deleted my post because of it!

Oh well. :)

You'll have a marketing challenge because of all the scammers and spammers out there. Instead of saying manage your credit card debt, maybe say personal card management software. My initial reaction is that you're looking at a huge disadvantage just because of other non-related evil doers.

To be completely honest, my initial reaction was that the site was a scammer, and I only came in here to flag it...

Luckily I realized that it was a real site from reading the comments.

Maybe you could revise the copy to make it less scam-like. I think I was thrown off by phrases like "100% secure", frequent use of "free", all the exclamation points, also the second-person voice "So if you want to say goodbye to your credit card debt.."

Hope these suggestions are helpful.

cgherb911 - 'personal card management software' - I like that, has a really nice ring to it :)

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