

Please review my site: Pinkdy.com (fertility calendar) - antirez
http://pinkdy.com

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jasonkester
This is the classic example of a site that should not have any form of
registration to try it out.

How about a big "try it" button, or better still a calendar on the homepage
where you can click a single date and it will get you started. I mean that's
all the input you need, right? Why force people to enter their email address
twice just to see what one of these calendars would look like.

Once a user has had a chance to try it out and decide it's cool, offer a
"save" button that prompts for an email and password in a lightbox.

~~~
huhtenberg
Perhaps it's just me and feel free to disagree, but this is a classic example
of a site that should have not existed in the first place. It solves a problem
that doesn't exist and it does it in a way that is inherently more complex
than it needs to be.

I cannot think of any woman I know that would even considered using this. It's
like a fridge that orders a milk for you - cool, but useless.

Perhaps, _maybe_ , if it were a part of a specialized established women's
site, then it would get some traction, but only as a smaller feature of
comprehensive set of services catering to, say, women trying to get pregnant.

~~~
yummyfajitas
In general you are correct, but some women need/want to monitor their cycles.

Consider a woman with a noisy cycle (28 days +/- 5) or with a mean different
from 28 days (29 days +/- 2). Such a woman may become nervous about pregnancy
on a regular basis: _"I'm 2 days late, and my flawed human memory doesn't tell
me that this occurs 30% of the time for me. Oh shit, am I pregnant?!?"_ The
service can remind her that this is normal.

It's also useful for women with regularity problems (a detailed timeseries
would be useful to show to the doctor), or women trying to get pregnant (not
always as easy as condom ads suggest).

Also, consider that you may know women who need this service, but they may not
discuss the need with you.

~~~
huhtenberg
Women with irregular cycle will _not_ rely on statistical analysis to try and
get pregnant. They will go and buy a basal thermometer or an ovulation test
kit instead.

The "oh, shit, I am pregnant" use case is laughable. Again, the pregnancy
testing kit is far more accurate than the statistical analysis and it can be
used few days _before_ the first day of the period. No service can do that.

The only case where stat analysis of the cycle is applicable is for people who
do not or cannot use contraceptives and do not want to end up being pregnant.
This is a negligibly small group as is, and I suspect that its subset of Web
2.0 aficionados is going to be close to zero.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The "oh shit, am I pregnant" case saves women the trouble/worry/expense of
using a pregnancy test. Similarly, basal thermometers/ovulation test kits are
expensive and annoying. This service occupies the space between "just hope for
the best" and "go to the drug store and start worrying."

Incidentally, while a pregnancy test will tell a woman if she is pregnant
before the period, _she has no reason to worry_ until a day after it should
have arrived (ignoring condom failure).

Why would any woman use a simple and easy cycle tracking service when better
methods are available at the drug store? For the same reason you might google
someone rather than paying $50 for a background check.

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DirtyAndy
There are three things I would look at first and foremost 1\. Name - pinkdy
really isn't that memorable and has little to do with getting pregnant. With
competitors like fertilityfriend and knowmycycle and mymonthlycycles you
probably need something that is a little more descriptive 2\. Landing Page 3\.
SEO

When I first read this I thought you were going into a market that was way too
crowded for you ever to succeed (in English at least). But actually the top
search results for "track menstrual cycle" and "track period" and several
other searches are not that strong and with the right SEO you should be able
to break into the top results. The landing pages of your competitors are
awful. Too much text and too much of it in light pink which is hard to read. A
simple high impact landing page could help you beat a lot of your competitors
- but that isn't going to help if you cannot drive people to your site with
the right SEO.

Two other ideas for you to think about. 1. what is the market like for other
languages? Maybe there is a lack of Spanish language competitors etc - it
might be easier to get going with them first. 2. I don't know if you can
create a widget that can be included on forums, but there are a lot of womens
forums around where they discuss all sorts of things. A lot of these women are
trying to get pregnant and if you can tap into them on those forums it could
be a good marketing opportunity.

Obviously as everyone else has said here, do get the English right, and it
could be worth checking if someone in a foreign country uses the site and for
some reason feels they want to sue you that you are safe.

Good luck.

~~~
antirez
This is a very good analysis. Thank you! About the other markets, indeed in
Italy there wasn't a single player and actually we are doing well here. I
suspect other bigger European markets are a bit harder to enter, and if we
should do the effort of good quality translation I want to play big trying
entering the US market.

The SEO and landing page efforts are really worth to try, and of course we'll
sort out the "Try It Now" thing :)

Thanks!

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patio11
Generally, I would recommend that for a customer-facing site you either:

1) Have a copywriter who is fluent in the target language write the copy

2) Have any translated copy checked by either a native speaker or someone who
is very, very, very, very good at the target language AND the problem domain.

I am _not_ an expert in your problem domain but I am a fairly good hand at
copywriting for software sites, and was tired of just doing native checking of
Big Freaking Enterprise Apps, so take a look at this for some inspiration:

<http://pastie.org/522774>

You'll note that I made copious use of HTML markup. If you're writing on the
web, you REALLY want to do that. It will make a world of difference in your
conversion rates. Also, talk less about features and more about benefits to
the user.

Also, in the US at least, PINKDY IS ALMOST CERTAINLY A MEDICAL DEVICE. I am
SHOUTING because you NEED TO KNOW THIS. I wrote you a disclaimer in there but
I am NOT a lawyer and offering your service in America exposes you to
SIGNIFICANT legal and regulatory risk.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
One can tell just from reading the headings that the page was not written by a
first-language English speaker.

This gives a low expectation of quality in the technical aspects of the site.
All that text to read, then I have to log-in (no doubt waiting for an email)
just to see visually what it does ... next!

------
antirez
A few months ago we created dinamicherosa.com, a fertility calendar targeting
the Italian web. Since we started to got users and even if there are already
big players in the international market, we are going to launch this English
version of the site, with separated accounts and forums.

The point is, we want to do more. The good point about our system is that's
very easy to use, but we could love to ear what are in your opinion the killer
features of this kind of services that no one implemented already (it's ok if
it is very hard to implement it).

Thanks for any feedback.

p.s. I understand HN is not exactly a place were there are a lot of possible
users for our service so it's very hard to do feedbacks about it.

------
davidw
You need to get someone to go over the English (record != remind, rapports !=
sex). (E purtroppo, io non ho tempo)

Also, requiring a login is kind of annoying for those who just want to test it
out.

~~~
antirez
Hello David,

indeed this of a good quality translation is an issue we must fix! It's
particularly hard given that the field is very specific and there are a lot of
medical terms.

About the login, do you mean we should create one-click disposable account
where the user can later insert a username to create a real account? This can
be a nice idea indeed. On the other side the registration is very simple so
possibly even a fixed demo/demo account with one-click auto login can be
enough.

Thanks!

~~~
davidw
I would make the front page contain the form to get started. Later, if you
want, you can register.

------
antirez
If you want to see how it works "inside" I just created this demo account:

username demo pass demo1234

------
ckinnan
It seems like you should whitelabel this and try to sell it as a service to an
existing womens or health care site.

Also, for the US, this site may need to comply with HIPPA privacy and security
standards.

[http://localtechwire.com/business/local_tech_wire/opinion/st...](http://localtechwire.com/business/local_tech_wire/opinion/story/2159946/)

~~~
antirez
Indeed if we'll find it's too hard to bootstrap it in a market that is a bit
hard for us to enter, to whitelabel/sell it can be a good exit strategy.

Also many thanks for the pointer to the HIPPA thing, it's a good idea to
conform even the Italian side to it.

------
greut
I know that logo from somewhere: <http://www.ampelmann.de/> Ah ja, Berlin!

------
richesh
I would suggest doing a design contest on 99designs.com, or geniusrocket.com
(expensive but they do creative videos etc. too) - and see what newer designs
you get.

1\. The pink needs to go, its not a good association (someone else said this)

2\. Need a 30 second video tutorial

3\. Show a sample calendar (that no one can change)

Check out this UI dos/don't list that might help:
[http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/06/23/10-ui-design-
patt...](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/06/23/10-ui-design-patterns-you-
should-be-paying-attention-to/)

------
seshagiric
1\. cool idea - especially for people planning kids this can point out the
best days for...

2\. the site is not so appealing visually. Take a look at www.23andme.com

3\. mobile access will prove superb for this site - access anywhere and also
privacy.

~~~
huhtenberg
_> 1\. cool idea - especially for people planning kids this can point out the
best days for..._

As someone who was actually involved in "planning kids" I can assure you that
this site solves a problem that does not exist.

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zaph0d
antirez: You need to add more timezones. For example, you forgot India (GMT
+0530).

------
antirez
Thank you very much to everybody commented here, it was a very informative
thread and we'll be able to improve the service thanks to your advices.

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yaubi
you might add the ability to export the calendar in ical format for inclusion
in google calendar or any other calendar application.

~~~
antirez
Great idea, thanks!

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HeyLaughingBoy
Your error message about unsupported browser (I assume that's what it is)
displays in Italian but the rest of the site is English!

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vinutheraj
_You just have to insert your first and last manstrual days._

That's a spelling mistake right on your frontpage.

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chanux
cycle : desktop alternative (GNU/Linux).

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access_denied
The copy on the home page is good, thumbs up for that!

I am not so sure about the color-sheme. Do you think redish is the way to go
with that topic? I am not sure myself but somehow I have never seen a
packaging for baby-pills or so using that color. I think it provokes un-good
associations. (Yeah, while beeing the perfect fit, but there are moments in
where not stating the obvious is the prefered way).

~~~
mshafrir
Agreed. Red or pink might be the wrong color considering the obvious
association.

