
You cannot read this, but you can tell how it appeals to you - jorgenhorstink
https://www.moneymonk.nl
======
drharris
Non designer here. I like the overall design, but I do have a few things I'd
personally change (nit picky, might not change my desire to click through):

1) The top screenshots coming into foreground is a nice touch, but something
seems choppy about the animation. I think it's less to do with the currently
hovered image, but what happens to the previous image you had selected. It
seems to just drop away in one frame, which looks awkward. Maybe moving it to
background instantly, but putting a delay to slide back down would be better;
it's difficult to visualize though.

2) Nobody really clicks through carousels anymore, and waiting for them to
move automatically is irritating. Not sure what would be better, but consider
something else if that information is important.

3) The sticky header at the top is not my favorite thing, and this may just be
personal preference. I will actually close a website that does that to me. I
may be alone here.

~~~
Toshio
> Nobody really clicks through carousels anymore

Is there a data point to back up this statement? I know I definitely do click
through carousels, if I'm intrigued enough about what might be there.

~~~
prawks
In my humble opinion, I put them on par with pagination of articles (not
good).

Of course you click through _if you're intrigued enough_. I'm not sure
carousels are meant to create intrigue about a product. I'm not really sure
what their purpose is. Every carousel I've seen has been probably better off
being displayed all at once rather than one at a time. This is the Internet,
many people (barring disabled/elderly users, who shouldn't be ignored) are
used to consuming a lot of data simultaneously, most don't want it fed through
a tiny straw.

I see them as a design fad that are typically asked for because someone's
friend/competitor has one, or "ooh, ahh" 'ed at by clients who didn't know
animation on web pages was possible.

~~~
drharris
Yeah, this is my typical feeling on it. I think they do have a use case
(primarily as an image slideshow for something unimportant like a header
image), but they are way overused these days. But, I'm not a designer, so they
may know something I don't. I am a user though, and they seem like noise on
the page to me, so maybe I know something designers don't, too.

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groovy2shoes
"You cannot read this"

That's a little presumptuous, don't you think? I can read it, as can many
other people who have commented. Don't assume no one here can understand Dutch
or any other language for that matter.

~~~
jorgenhorstink
You're totally right. It was a little presumptuous. You know the saying:
"Assumption is the mother of all..."? From an autistic, mathematical point of
view you are right, but if I look into the stats of my Google Analytics, I see
less then 4.1% Dutch. If I take into account that especially Dutch people
would click on a link ending with .nl, I think I may assume the percentage of
Dutch HN readers is even low.

What I meant of course is: most of the people cannot read it. So, lets trigger
them to judge the design, just by its design. This gave me a lot of new
insights I want to thank everyone for :)

~~~
LukaD
I'm German and I know that most germans could read this. :) It's funny how
similar Dutch and German are.

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dochtman
(I can read it; and, I also like the anchors in the main nav.)

The pricing table seems a little silly, since most of the points are similar
across all three price levels... It's a table for the table's sake, I guess.

Also, I personally think the pricing is fairly steep for what you're offering.
I actually have an eenmansbedrijf and I spend very little time per year doing
invoicing and taxes, let alone per month. Maybe you need different price
differentiation, i.e. make it cheap for < 20 invoices / year. That would
actually let me ease into it.

~~~
MJR
The pricing is based on the length of the term that you want to pre-pay. If
you pay monthly it's going to be be €19, if you pay yearly it's €190 - saving
you 2 months of fees, if you pay for 2 years its €342 - saving you 6 months of
fees. It's a standard pricing paradigm, but I do agree that this specific
table doesn't really highlight the fact that it's the same PLAN for each price
point. They should lay out this information differently so that you can see
it's one plan and make it that there are discounts for pre-paying.

~~~
jorgenhorstink
You're both right. Personally I hate it when I go to a restaurant and they ask
me if I want some bread already, or when they ask me if I want ketchup with my
fries. Yes, yes, yes, of course. Why they ask? Because when you get the bill,
you see 50ct for the ketchup.

I don't like such an experience. This is exactly why I don't differentiate in
functionality, but only in price based on the commitment. Our target customers
are freelancers, our companies with at most two employees.

We only have one plan: THE AWESOME PLAN. Depending on how long you're willing
to commit, you get a discount. I agree the table could point that out a little
bit better.

~~~
mattmanser
It's not about what features are and aren't included.

You offer different plans to make one sound like a bargain, you offer an
expensive one to make the others look relatively cheap and you offer a cheap
one too. No-one chooses the cheapest wine.

It's a human psychology thing, nothing to do with features. If you aren't
using this trick, you probably shouldn't present it like that as it's
confusing.

You can use support levels instead or something to make an expensive premium
plan if you want to take advantage of this marketing 'trick' that everyone
else uses.

~~~
jorgenhorstink
I offer a cheap plan for monthly payment (the product is very low margin,
especially compared to the large players in the market where one would easily
pay at least 75e per month for the same functionality), a small discount if
you're willing to commit for one year, and even a bigger discount if you're
willing to commit for two years.

In the beginning we need cash flow, cash is king. So we hope lots of people
buy the 2-year-deal. We are not trying to trick anyone. And I want an easy
product, not a complicated one with different kind of support levels etc. No,
I target a very specific audience, where there is no room for feature
differentiation, imho. But who knows, this is just my feeling right now, we
might change the offers in the future.

~~~
mattmanser
My point was you're using a product display that is linked to a very specific
marketing tactic without using the tactic. So it makes no sense.

------
mtrimpe
When scrolling the "Probeer MoneyMonk 14 dagen vrijblijvend!" button moves
into the header but only for a very short time.

I don't think many poeple will actually click through the carrousel "Dit kan
MoneyMonk voor jou betekenen..." so it might be better to condense it down a
bit and make it into a long-form page.

Also, that the screenshots at the top move up is nice but I still can't see
enough to figure out what they're actually saying...

But al met al zeker wel een mooie site...

~~~
jorgenhorstink
Hmm, I guess I was wrong you cannot read it ;) The button moves to the header
to make sure a Call To Action button is always visible. The CTA in the header
disappears if a CTA button on the website is visible.

Good point about the carrousel. I might want to track some events to see if
people actually use it. But if it is a long form, doesn't that hurt the
experience? On massive long page?

You are actually able to click on the screenshots, but I guess we could make
that more clear? Thanks for the feedback! Much appreciated!

~~~
mtrimpe
Ah OK. I have a 30" monitor so for me there was no CTA visible for only a tiny
fraction of the page. As far as the carrousel is concerned, ideally you should
just A/B-test what works of course.

Concerning the business model I just wanted to say that I feel the biggest
opportunity in this area is actually for a site where you can just send all
your digital correspondence and have it either stored or processed by a
bookkeeper.

You can combine that with a service that will receive all your mail and
digitize it for you or offer a discount on a Fujitsu ScanSnap (doable for
yearly plans e.g.) and have the scans sent straight to your service.

In the Netherlands Yuki gets close but their UI is bad and costs are too steep
to also send non financial documents there.

------
sjmulder
I can read it and it does appeal to me. The flow and explanation is really
good. I’d like some more screen shots but then the lack of them might make
people more likely to sign up and see for themselves. Bookmarking for later.

By the way, I dig the anchor name of the pricing section.

------
CamperBob2
Locks up Firefox 18 with a "busy script" warning.

~~~
dochtman
It's fine in Firefox 19 (Aurora), OS X.

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speedyrev
You will be happy to know that with Chrome and clicking the translate button,
your site translates well.

~~~
teilo
That's because Dutch and English grammar and syntax are remarkably similar.

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TomPC
The site has some issue's ;) <http://imgur.com/PvdrJ>

~~~
TomPC
hint: try to resize your screen

~~~
jorgenhorstink
Thanks! Dunno how I could have missed that one :)

~~~
cpfohl
body { min-width: 980px; } seems to fix the problem

(Temporary hack while you add in @media queries, I assume)

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wwdevries
Within the Netherlands there are far more appealing solutions, such as
MoneyBird. They've been rockin' at it for a few years now. To be honest, to me
MoneyMonk looks like a limited clone of MoneyBird.

(I'm a happy customer of MoneyBird)

~~~
jorgenhorstink
I am glad you are a happy customer of MoneyBird. This tells me there is at
least a market of 1 person ;) I am quite surprised you can tell from only a
couple of screenshots, MoneyMonk is a limited clone.

Of course there are similarities, giving the fact we target the same audience.
But I really think we have a different kind of product. This sort of
competition is only a good thing. It keeps us all motivated to make the best
software for our customers. In the end it is the customer who wins.

------
icambron
This served as my annual reminder that Google Translate really is very good.

------
roel_v
Does it keep a ledger, i.e. double entry? As far as I can tell no, how would
one generate a balance and profit-and-loss statement from this?

~~~
jorgenhorstink
Well, it actually does. Where classical accountancy software (Unit4, Exact,
etc.) focusses on the ledger aspect, making it hardly impossible for human
beings to use the software, we take a different approach.

We thought: what is accounting about? It is about registering financial facts.
That's what we actually do. We optimized the user interface for normal human
beings registering financial facts. We are then able to derive the entire
accountancy fundament with double entries, ledgers, etc.

Suppose one transfers 100 euro from their bank book to the cash book. This
should be registered using a cross post (don't know if this is the correct
term). No human being (freelancer) understands this. But if they can select:
oh, this was a cash withdrawal, Money Monk knows how to register the financial
facts.

------
jlengrand
I can read this :D

~~~
jorgenhorstink
And you're living in Utrecht as well I see :) If you want to grab a coffee the
other day, drop me an e-mail. My username at gmail...

~~~
precisioncoder
I spend a few days in Utrecht, it was lovely, welcoming, and really relaxing.
We went kayaking through the canals, one of the best experiences of my life.
I'm hoping to make it back sometime soon.

------
jw79
Looks nice. Small note: the top logo does not fit in IE8.

How does moneymonk compare to moneybird?

~~~
jorgenhorstink
As I said in another comment, I haven't tested in IE entirely. Going to buy a
windows laptop today :). I don't know MoneyBird that well (except for the
invoicing part), so I can't tell you exactly. What I do know is, we have
streamlined the entire process of sending invoices and reminders. We take a
fundamental different approach to MoneyBird.

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Zr40
I'm not the target audience, but I can read it. Love the anchor names!

~~~
jorgenhorstink
Thanks :) I would never have thought anyone would actually notice the silly
language joke at all... If you happen to know Dutch freelancers who still do
their accounting in Excel, you know where to send them to ;)

~~~
davedx
Hi! ZZP-er, still using Excel. (Well, Google Docs).

However, my first language is English. I do struggle a lot with Dutch taxes as
my speaking is generally better than reading/writing. I wonder if it would be
worth you offering an English localization of your site? I know there are a
lot of ZZP'ers in the Netherlands whose first language is not Dutch (my gf
works for a recruitment company, and they recruit heavily from Italy, Spain,
and India).

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werner34
is this the dutch version of billmonk?

~~~
jorgenhorstink
I had never heard of it, but billmonk seems to me more for personal use.
MoneyMonk is accounting software targeted to freelancers and people running a
company without employees (ZZP is the Dutch abbr), including tax reports etc,
creating invoices.

~~~
TomPC
Im freelancer in the NL and i'm using MoneyBird, for dutch / english
freelancers. What do you offer more than MoneyBird? Open API || a link with
dutch banks?

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Toshio
Congrats on the pretty design. As a student of UX, I would be fascinated if
you could summarize in a short braindump the UX design principles and thought
processes that went into making this. You already mentioned how you think
about the CTA in another comment, how about all the rest of it?

~~~
jorgenhorstink
Thanks! Good suggestion. The original design framework (color scheme, font's
etc) is made by someone else. That design was absolutely beautiful, but not
from a conversion point of view. There were no clear CTA buttons, etc.

The past couple of weeks I've been reading a lot of great articles online,
viewed a couple of inspiring TED talks and other video's, and I used that
information to build the landing page.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to recap which articles I read, which video's I
watched, and I'll write about it in a blogpost.

~~~
euroclydon
I'd like to read that. What is your blog URL?

~~~
jorgenhorstink
My blog is a little bit rusty (non-existing). Tomorrow I'll put a simple blog
online :) <http://jorgenhorstink.nl/>

