Show HN: Beta – Office 365 Desktop Email Client

Hi, I'm Laura, CPO at Hiri. We are a Dublin based, email startup. Hiri is a desktop email client, built to eliminate the email overload and stresses inherent in work email.

Hiri works for those who use Office 365, with Outlook or OWA. Mac and Windows versions are available for download from our website for anyone who is interested. We would be delighted to get your feedback...from bad, to worse, to really ugly.

Or if you have any comments or questions please ask.

Curious: Why did you decide to build this off of Office 365? Was that a technical decision (is there something great in their API that you loved) or a strategic one? I can easily imagine the latter, but would love to know if the former also applies.

I really wished you didn’t make me fill out a form to download your software. Since I didn’t have an Office365 email address, I was hit with this:

http://cl.ly/image/3k1q2f1A3Q20

It would have been nice if you offered me a link to sign up for an email on 365 then. Ideally, you’d just let me download the software and get all this information later.

Definitely repeat your call to action (download) at the bottom of the page. I know it’s fixed at the top, but usually users read with their cursor and so my mouse was near the bottom of the page when I got through everything. Use Fitts’s law to your advantage and put a delicious call to action there rather than making me hunt / find what you want me to do at the top. Do this for both Home and Product pages. I would actually consider combining product and home page together.

The copy about your features is pretty good, but this copy I didn’t love:

http://cl.ly/image/0b3S2r2Y0v1K

It’s too generic mission statement for me. This page needs to get me to do one thing: download the software. I’m not sure this copy efficiently does that. If it were me, I’d replace it with this section:

http://cl.ly/image/3r1B0L3O2U3A

It’s not perfect, but these are things I’m more likely to say to someone else when talking about your product. Something I’m more likely to remember.

One question that did come to me when looking at the features: Does the delegate feature only work if other people also have office 365 email addresses?

The weakest part of the site is the video. It made me cringe a little—maybe a lot. It feels very generic and you took a super long time to tell and show me what exactly you were making. In situations where people are making decisions quickly and have lots of choices to choose from…I prefer messages to lead with what over why.

I know it’s tempting to lead with why because the passion for this startup and product is rooted in that reason, but you don’t get that kind of luxury, time or attention from users trying to solve a quick problem. Usually people are trying to answer two questions very quickly on a site: What is this? Is this right for me? I’m not so sure leading with this video accomplishes that efficiently.

My honest advice is to cut the video. I know you probably spent a lot of time on the video, but don’t fall victim to sunk-cost fallacy. If this wasn’t a Show HN, I would have probably left the page 10 seconds into that video.

Anyway, I’m going to create a 365 email now to actually try the app. Thanks for sharing and good luck!