My startups's new service for parents - A Story Before Bed
astorybeforebed.com
astorybeforebed.com
Use your brains, please.
(disclaimer: I don't have kids, so mentions of my kids are hypothetical)
- The DESIGN! It's beautiful, charming, and makes me want to snuggle a teddy bear. Your load screen ("loading book") has such lovely colors that I giggled - and THAT is rare praise.
- I like the bookshelf idea, with some exceptions: the popups that occur when hovering over a book are a bit jarring, because they don't fit in with your otherwise beautiful design. I'd like them to gently fade in, with pastel background, rather than whacking me with great blotches of white.
- On the popups, you have prices. I HATE the overlined "regular price whatever", it takes the site from feeling like an exclusive storyland boutique to Walmart. Get rid of that. In fact, don't put the prices on popups - those should just be a short blurb about the book. Make one price, and stick it somewhere on the page.
- Which brings me to the next problem - it's unclear what the price is for. Is it for one video? Just for reading the book? For recording as many videos as I want of that book? Make it clear what the prices actually refer to.
- I personally like the bookshelf, but I understand why others disagree. My only problem is that when sorting by ages, I'm required to scroll way down before I find 3-6 or 6-9, etc. You should find a way to make those "tabs" or something on the top (it's OK to violate the physics of your metaphor, as long as its pretty). The search box is also too white - like the designer was lazy to finish.
- The book reader is lovely. The books are crisp and beautiful, in full elegant color. What I'd love is a fullscreen version with blacked-out background, the way I can watch full-screen YouTube videos. BUT: How can I get rid of the annoying "record the book" panel? I don't want to record it right now, I want to READ it with my kids, because these books look lovely and I don't have them all.
- Which brings me to the only really substantive point of this post. I think the true gem of your site isn't really the whole "video" aspect - it's delivering a truly beautiful user experience of lovely children's books which parents can read to their kids, together, even if they don't own the book. My MacBook has a gorgeous, luminous screen, and I'd love to sit and read these with someone. The "recording videos" bit feels tacked on the end.
- So I guess my only real recommendation is to split the site, or drop the videos entirely. But IMHO your clear route to success is to deliver a gorgeous, lush user experience of excellent children's books to parents who want to read to their kids, but don't know what to read, aren't near a library, don't have time to buy books, don't want to buy books that'll only get read once, etc.
- If you want to make a second site that allows one to record readings of these books and send them around, that might work too. Another option is to make children's books the first in a large number of online books that deliver a really excellent online book-reading experience, with bookmarks, notes, crisper-than-crisp fonts, and a soul-soothing design. I haven't really seen a books site that looks like this, with such a nice reader - if I could subscribe a-la Netflix to ebooks on your web-based reader, and you kept track of my bookmarks, made me recommendations, and let me date girls who like the books I like, I'd definitely pay you every month.
Those are some rambling thoughts, but I hope you find something useful in there.
You really have an awesome implementation and a real market. I agree with caffeine in that you might want to simply sell access to the children's books for parents to read with their kids, on their laptop or phone, in full screen.
The presentation of this is infinitely better than any ebook reader or a Kindle and would be worth a lot of money to a lot of parents. I think some sort of subscription model would work wonders here.
Also "let me date girls who like the books I like" -- haha I missed this the first time I read your post. Careful Chris Hansen doesn't mess around.
Yikes :( I guess the post wasn't clear enough, I'll edit it. I meant that I eventually want "Kindle in my web browser", with regular (not just children's) books .. followed up with some kind of social reading that doesn't suck (which has not been invented yet). I like their book reader and attention to detail, I think they could make a really luxury "coffee house" feel to a book-reading website.
That said - maybe you're right, and there's room for social features on the kids' level. Organizing play dates between our kids if they both liked such & such a book?
(edit: apparently I can't edit my previous post. weird.)
Most importantly, the people who are responding with "i don't get it" (like myself), are not missing the point of what they're trying to deliver. In fact, we might be potential customers. What the site is failing to do is impress upon me why this is a useful service. The bedtime ritual is about so much more then just reading a story, as stated here over and over, by gasp real parents. When I'm away, I could just call and tell my kid a story over the phone, and frankly, they'd prefer that to having a pre-recorded book (I just asked them).
With all due respect to the developers, (and I do wish them the greatest success, it's a well-intentioned product), but honestly, this feels like a solution in search of a problem rather then the other way around.
I think it's great telling a story over the phone makes your kids happy. Maybe their site can give you something different every now and then?
I spoke with my 8 year-old about this and he ultimately found it compelling if it could take place in real-time, at which point my 10 year-old jumped in with an "oh yeah!" And I guess thats the missing piece for me. It's the real-time element. I can see having a story kept as an artifact, but for repeated use, the personal interaction is a key ingredient.
edited to add: And since you apparently already thought of that, here's another one:
Currently, you sell books for $7. You should probably also offer some deal like 3 for $20 or 5 for $30, because this will greatly increase your average customer value. (Your median number of books purchased is going to be 1, otherwise. Trust me -- nature of the beast.) After you've convinced folks $7 is the price for a book (too low, but we'll roll with it), and they've committed to spending $7, it is very easy to convince them to spend another $13 to save a buck.
Another reason you'll like this: cash flow. You see, many people are going to buy 3/5 book credits and record 1 (or 0) books. This means that you're sitting on their money in the interim. Depending on your local accounting rules, that can probably be booked as revenue (and can almost certainly be spent on expenses) today. Also, since they haven't picked a book off the shelf yet, I'm guessing you don't owe any royalties on the $13 which pays for books that haven't been recorded. (Check your contracts/legal advisors.)
(Some folks might be discomfitted by this advice since you may think the business is getting money for nothing. That isn't correct: they're just getting money in advance of doing something of value for the customer, in consideration of giving the customer a break on the ultimate price.
This is similar to how a shareware business sells you a license today which includes technical support six months down the road, rather than selling you a cheaper license today and charging a high per-incident fee later. We don't think the shareware vendor is being dishonest because the support hasn't been delivered yet, or because it may never be delivered.)
For my kid, the actual story is not such an important part of the bed time routine. The fact that I am in her room, comforting her while she winds down and spending some time before she sleeps, is key. Swapping me with an iPhone will probably not help.
Here you go: http://thepeopleoftheforest.blogspot.com
Man, sometimes I don't have it in me to do anything new on that.
Rather than critiquing it for not being a suitable replacement for parental story time, why not someone suggest it be used in libraries? Let the librarian record the stories and give the children access to them on the library's computers. For children who can't read, they still get a fun experience and it's more intimate than some tape recording.
This also has educational implications, in teaching children to read and maybe using the interface as a 2-way communication device for some sort of tutoring service where children learn to read by practicing with a teacher listening and watching them as they try. What about allowing them to do have real-time drawing capabilities, like you see on NFL games, circling words the child makes a mistake on, or underlining a sentence the teacher wants to emphasize for whatever purpose.
These iterations of this service are what make it a beautiful thing. I don't reckon it would be too difficult to add either of them as well. Would also provide it a more viable business model.
Of course with a little effort I was able to figure out what this does, but I'd change the wording to "Record yourself reading a book of your choice to...." so it's immediately apparent.
IMHO it's best to be active and there while putting them to bed, and so you may as well read the story yourself. If you do it well, they'll ask questions, interact, and learn things, laugh, etc. I can't see this being replaced by technology any time soon, and I don't know why anyone would want it to be.
I don't think we ever positioned the site as a replacement for a parent or grandparent who is there. That said, my three year old requests stories to be read to her "on the computer" where we record them together and then she watches them back sitting on my lap.
Or maybe this is it, and you need to add something happier about it? It makes me think of my daughters' grandparents who are quite far away, which is a bit depressing. The positive side of things, of course, is that 20 years ago they would have only got brief phone calls, and now they can do stuff like this even if it's obviously not as good as being there. So maybe some kind of positive spin on it? Target it more at grandparents? Just thinking out loud...
Why not a standard PC built into a teddy-bear, simplified and locked down for just this application? Sell it as a $500 dedicated device to the business (wo)man who's away from their kids on a business trip.
[EDIT] p.s. - wouldn't the iPhone screen make the text too small for the child to read along with the parent? Is reading along an important part of the experience?
I'm not saying iPhone wont work at all, I'm saying there's probably an additional opportunity (maybe better) for a bigger device, designed specifically for the task, and sold at a healthy margin (people who go on lots of business trips normally have above average income).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kwjYSn03-M
Original pitch:
Put all your focus on marketing now.
There is a significant difference in the development of a child's verbal ability when they are read to by a caretaker vs. watching the exact same thing on a screen. One is an active process, one is passive, and it engages them differently.
You can even tell by listening to a child talk whether they watch a lot of TV or not. There is a specific accent that they pick up, which basically amounts to a lack of enunciation.
Now, all that being said. I think your idea would make money. I thank many parents would love it.
But I think if you are not prepared to be abhorred by child development professionals, you should think again.
If the site owners have kids, they will understand all the vast differences in parental philosophy and choices. And they can predict some of the positive and negative reactions to their product.
I personally have a negative reaction. I also clearly stated that I thought others would have a positive reaction.
The point isn't the specific reaction of any given parent. It is the full spectrum of reactions that the general population will have. If they have children, this is a topic they probably already know. If they don't have children, they could be in for surprises.
So it is a valid question -- "Do you know your market?"
Letting users flip through a book before deciding to buy it is a great idea. It's the biggest thing that I'm missing when shopping at an online store.
Perhaps you should also offer the option to buy the book from amazon =) Best of luck!
"Why would I want this?"
My kids never really liked those books that came with a tape, and this just seems like a more convenient way of producing something they didn't want anyway. I'm not trying to be mean, you folks have clearly worked hard on this, and I wish you every success, but honestly I don't see the appeal. Bedtime is so much more then just a story.
IMHO, the best start-up service for parents (with regards to bedtime) is your local library.
As far as profiting from this site in addition to trying to get grandparents to pay for the online reading of the books it seems like a natural to allow parents to access the books in total to read to the kids themselves for a small 6 month membership fee. Then you expand your target market and your potential income.
This is an incredibly well done site. If this were my site, initially I would not try to market it myself, instead I would focus on licensing its use to other sites that already have a large presence in the kids/parents market such as Disney and Barbie. I would focus on selling the larger company as to your sites potential of being a marketing feature for the larger site and I would seek to bill the licensee company for the traffic vs. billing the grandparent or parent directly. You would simply become a feature on their existing site.
What a great holiday gift for a child this site would be. I would also come up with a marketing angle to sell access to the site’s books in full in large bookstores like Borders and in Wal-Mart alongside the physical books. I would use some sort of physical packaging that could go in the bookracks alongside the hardcopy books with a little teddy bear attached to grab the buyers attention.
Marketed correctly—I believe you have a winner!
People aren't afraid of scrolling, so you can use your vertical space better. You could put the description/call to action closer to the top/center of the page and make them bigger. I would slide the thumbnail images for the books below that. As long as people can tell that there are books there, they'll scroll through them to find one that works.
The set of 50 books on the bookshelf is an overwhelming wall of visual noise. You may want to curate/redact to get fewer books up there (those aren't all what I would consider great kids literature), get rid of the bookshelf metaphor (or at least tone down the contrast). Also, as all of the books are different aspect ratios, there's a lot of extra visual noise in what could otherwise be a tidy grid. Consider cropping them all to square.
Are any of the books available for free? It might help to have one or two free books to get people interested in the concept and to get more feedback/usage data from real humans.
Don't get disheartened. It's a cool concept. I started doing a similar thing for my kid with a digital camera, a mic, and real books but my kid learned how to read before I finished the audio editing.
I think it works pretty well with the copy on the right side. The bookshelf makes a bit more of an impact with how much space it takes on the page. Furthermore, if you move the text copy to the top, the bookshelf will extend to the entire page's width, which may just create even more noise on the page when skimming.
Though there's only one way to be sure: A/B test it!
I couldn't agree more, and yet so many ignore this step. Plenty of "great" designs, clearly better than "meh" designs even to the practiced eye, get clobbered by "meh" in A/B testing. Find good metrics, and then trust the data.
I like the idea of having some books available for free though!
Nice work though the site looks really good and it's certainly the type of product I could see my self purchasing.
Does your startup have a designer on the founding team?
This is one of the best startup ideas I've seen all year.
You guys are going to rock!
The market is even bigger than you think. I hate to be morbid, but imagine: grandpa gets sick with cancer and has one year to live. Quickly he spends a couple hundred bucks and leaves all the grandkids with special stories they can cherish the rest of their lives.
I think there is real generational network potential here as well, what with families spread out all over the place.
Now whatever you do, don't screw it up!
Also I think you could have a hit with moms if you do an autoplay feature. Moms need 30 mins of time to get something done. Moms dont like it when their kids watch TV. Your app should allow a Mom to click play and then deliver 30 mins of books to the child, uninterrupted. IMHO if it's a high quality experience moms would pay for this.
Another extension might be to offer a copy of the book with an audio-CD/mp3 of the person reading bundled with it.
I think there are so many variations possible (particularly in education sector) and that this idea will be in demand from children's publishers (licensing?) that you should do well with it.
To concur with the masses... great site! I like the idea and I think its more intuitive than some of the comments would suggest.
This reminds me of these interactive CD-ROM books that my little sister used growing up (shes 18 now). One thing that I liked at the time was how interactive the books were. Users could click on background imagery to engage little animations, etc.
Do you have any plans to make the site more interactive? Something very simple like highlighting the word as its being read (think of Karaoke) would add a lot of educational value and help, at least marginally with reading.
I see this service as not only replacing the parent when they're away, but also as a standalone educational platform for kids. You can even incorporate ages to scale the complexity of the interaction. So for younger kids, clicking a carton bunny may just show a bubble with the word "rabbit" while older kids get something more advanced.
Are armed services the target group? Have you seen interest from users who aren't away on such extended leaves?
I wonder how useful this service is for parents who only make 1-3 day business trips.
My question is this, what is your intended market? The only reason I see myself using this is if I where to die soon, and wanted kids to still have stories read by me, but I don't know if I would do it then. Maybe if I commuted a lot.
I'd be very interested to understand who the user is.
Thing is, French books would work better for them :)
Apparently, a common problem with before-bed-stories if you have more than one children is who gets to sit in the lap during the story. Normally, it is alternating every night, however, you have to remember carefully who got to sit in the lap the previous night, as children aren't quite the most reliable source of information in this case (they tell you anything to sit in the lap) and if you make a mistake, the one who didn't get to sit in the lap will be offended for weeks. This is very hard to keep in mind. So you could add a "who got to sit in the lap" history to help parents. I'm sure many of them would really appreciate it!
Hooked up seesmic so anyone could record themselves singing, since it's hard to learn songs just by reading them.
Hope you guys like it!
1. Focus on Design - The software is solid, but the aesthetics are what seem to make the service. It just looks like a professional project even though it is a three person team, working on it part time based on all the other projects they have on their site.
2. Kid as Customer - With so many social media/real time projects in the works it is energizing to see bits and pixels used in the service of different customer groups.
How many people commenting have invested a lot in the design of their site or are targeting an atypical customer base?
Liked the design a lot, browsed through the books, opened one and got confused about what "recording" was supposed to mean. Flipped through the end of the book, and went to the FAQ, got even more confused by the webcam requirement. Then went back to the homepage and noticed the video. Played it and finally understood what the site is for.
Your "welcome" message should be changed to clearly state that you here to do a video recording of a bedtime story for a child when you're away.
There's a note on "you can record and preview before paying", but I wouldn't want to go through the trouble of recording and figure out at the last minute that the thing is way beyond my budget.
[edit: found the pricing on rollover, it's slow enough that it didn't show up the first time I clicked around. I would include it also on the book page]
I guess I don't see what problem it solves, and IMHO it could promote lazy parenting. But I'm not convinced a kid would really be willing to use it to listen to a story. I don't think it'd be effective putting kids to bed.
As a side note, I think it would be nice to have a karaoke style presentation of the words available so that it's also educational at the same time. Kind of like running your finger along below the words as you read them.
I'm sorry to be 'down' on the service, but it just makes me kinda sad :/
I guess for parents who work far away, or abroad, it could be useful. Or it could just make the kids miss them more...
Would a kid rather watch a video of an absent parent telling a story, or have the parent who is present read them a story in person? I'd expect usually the 2nd option.
Is there any 'bed friendly' hardware that could run this? Ie a cuddly toy with an Internet connected PC built in? And by 'bed friendly' I mean not just safe to have in bed, but also one that isn't so frustrating to use that it causes a mini-stress just before bedtime. I'm guessing a parent who is away from their kids on a business trip might well shell out $500 guilt dollars for such a device.
When reaching the end of the story, the person wanted to turn back one page, but this is impossible - you can only go back to the start.
The hover popup never activated - the person would click on the story, and never see the popup. I would have a click bring up the popup, and make a button from the popup that goes to the record page.
I love sites that let me use functionality to play around and create, and then allow me to register when it comes to saving work or ordering. Wish more sites did this.
I can see myself using it having my kids read a story as a saved memory. I also can imagine my mother in law going nuts over this thing because she lives so far away from us.
It's really a good idea. Awesome job
This must be one of the few websites where the "starry sky" background image makes sense, BTW.
Also, if it were a desktop app, it would be much more like the book from that Neal Stephenson novel The Diamond Age ;)
Nice service for something like a 16th birthday gift though... "remember the times..." something like that.
Using the Justin.tv API you could actually give an option to have the parent talk to his/her kid live as well.
Imagine a mom who just went on a business trip to Tokyo. Maybe she could tell the story to her kid live, while they and even flip the pages for the kid.
- The small version of the support_open image is hard to read
- There are some weird errors in your css (and some that are easily fixed in your html). See http://vldtr.com/?key=astorybeforebed
There was another startup (totally forget who they were) that posted to HN some time ago with something vaguely similar (though not as nice looking). I think they were just providing an alternative UI to buying books on amazon though. I've always wondered what happened to them.