

Ask HN:  please review my site - Marrily.com - sr3d

Hello everyone,<p>Please help me review my site at http://marrily.com<p>Please use the code "hackernews" when you sign up (this is still a close alpha release so I put in a code to help me track the signup users)<p>If you are planning your wedding, or just got married recently, please sign up and test Marrily out.  I'd love to hear your opinions.<p>I'm the single founder for Marrily, and today is the result of an intense 3 months of me bootstrapping and developing the app in a cave then finally come out to see the sunlight, and shouting from the top of my lungs that Yes, Marrily is out!<p>Marrily is a word I came up with, it means to "Marry Happily." I wanted to help people getting married easier and less stressed, and the existing sites aren't all that great (I'll write more about this later in Marrily's blog.)  Even though the real development took 3 months, it actually has been 3 years since when I came up with the idea and actually built and release the app.  If I'm to learn something from releasing Marrily, it's probably perseverance and grit.<p>I decide that when I launch Marrily officially, it will be a premium app (e.g. pay-to-play, as apposed to freemium).  The reason why is I believe that if I build a solid app that is useful and easy to use, and can potentially save people a lot of time and efforts, then it's fair to charge a small fee.  With the freemium model, it's harder to code (limiting features in code can make things a lot more complicated) and can affect negatively the revenue (if the free one is so good that it doesn't make sense to upgrade).  But I welcome your ideas and suggestions.<p>However, there's no subscription mechanism in the alpha release (I stil have not implemented any of the subscription handling code yet!).  I estimate that it will take a few more weeks to finalize the app and have everything in place for the official launch.<p>Since you're one of the first people to see the app in its entirety, I'd love to have your feedback as you use it.  More specifically, I'd like to know if you run into any issue navigating the application, and if something does not make sense to you, I'd love to know.  I have tested as much as possible to make sure it is stable and ready for production use.  But being a single founder, it's sometimes a challenge to keep track of every changes in the application.<p>It's been an amazing journey, and a life-changing experience, so I'd like to share this moment with all of you, and many thanks to the HackerNews community for being so awesome.  I learned a lot about myself and entrepreneurship in the past few months, and I promise that I'll give back to the community to help more entrepreneurs fulfill their dreams.<p>Alex 
alexle@marrily.com
======
apsurd
Too much text. I know you want to get your app out and screenshots are in the
works, but it still must be said:

    
    
      show don't tell.
    

Features are all text, need visuals.

When I sign up and enter the admin I am lost. Takes me a while to figure out
what to do. A guided quickstart guide would be helpful. Navigation menus that
are directed either by arrows or numbers also help. I suppose if I already
paid then I will take the time to fill in all that stuff. But since I didn't
pay it's very hard for me to care about filling in information. Therefore you
have to make it as intuitive, easy, and guided as possible. Reward the user
visually.

Best advice is to seek out brides/grooms sit them down and watch them use your
app. Do this over and over. Chances are your app will be very different than
what it is now.

I like the feel and the domain name is good. Congrats on launching, good luck!

~~~
EasyCompany
I agree, screenshots or visual guide will be a very good addition. Get some
popcorn and enjoy, i found this lecture pretty good! --
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW4MwvgW_ww&feature=chann...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW4MwvgW_ww&feature=channel)

------
talbina
OP, you should have a "slideshow" to show the features on your front page,
visually.

Notice that your photographs on your front page right now do not convey any
meaning? Don't fall for this trap, people don't care about pretty pictures.

Check out <http://waveaccounting.com/> to see what I mean by a slideshow
showing the features.

You have photographs in your About section also which do not convey any
meaning <http://marrily.com/about>.

Real estate is incredibly important for a website - use it wisely.

~~~
rbritton
I think there needs to be some sort of middle ground. Brides are a very unique
set of users and quite a bit different from the average user set of any given
site. They will picture themselves in your pictures if possible, and pretty
pictures absolutely do sell to them, so keep that in mind with the photos you
choose. However, as parent has noted, your front page should show something of
what the product does.

My opinion here stems from substantial interaction with brides, especially
pre-wedding. I do a lot of wedding photography.

------
mqmouse
I think your app suffers from the same problem my startup app has, which is
the empty canvas problem. So basically your app seems to allude to a lot of
power and functionality, which is paradoxically a little intimidating for a
new user. Basically, where do I start? You have a lot of choices in the "what
do to next" section.

What happens a lot of the time is the user says:

Wow! what a cool application! Seems powerful! I'll deal with this when I can
properly think about it!

...and then promptly never visits your site again.

Somebody from Skype told me that they had the same problem and their solution
was to funnel all users into a 5 step program. I would suggest that you
"onboard" your users by forcing them into a N-Step workflow where at the end
of it, it doesn't look like an empty canvas but a starting point to contribute
more.

Edit: Like step 1 should be "Invite your SO". Encourage them to collaborate
and plan together :)

~~~
sr3d
hi MqMouse, thanks for the feedback. Do you mind sharing your startup? I'd
love to take a look and see how you solves this empty canvas problem.

I was thinking about building a wizard to force people into populating their
settings, but on the other hand, I want to let users use Marrily at their own
pace, instead of stopping them at a lengthy sign up/setup process. I ended up
with just one screen to let users create a new default event at the beginning.
I guess it's about balancing the flow so that users can feel that they are
engaging and not being forced to do certain things to get started.

I wonder if there's title for a "web application director", or a "web site
editor" like in film to direct how the app would feel like, not just the UI is
working, but the whole site can work cohesively and have the right the flow to
it. A UX person maybe?

~~~
mqmouse
Well I planned on posting a rate my startup question this weekend since we're
just starting a hackathon tomorrow to squash some bugs, but the way we _think_
we're going is a online interactive walkthrough of the site when a user first
logs on to give them an idea of what to do next. We tried to use amberjack but
it seemed a little limiting so instead we wrote our own utility using jquery
and expose. I would post a link to the library but I'm on my stupid iPad right
now so just search for jquery and expose and you'll find the library we use.

------
minalecs
Im even reluctant to sign up with out seeing screenshots or images of the
product... when I click on features.. I can read the features but would rather
see them.

------
zephjc
the url in your description above is missing the :

quick link - <http://marrily.com>

Will definitely check it out - starting to plan our wedding just recently

~~~
sr3d
Thanks :)

------
DirtyAndy
Nice site. Still a bit to do but looks nice, easy enough to use etc. You asked
for thoughts on pricing. Unless you can get write-ups in wedding magazines (in
my experience they should give you a wedding magazine when you buy the
engagement ring because that is the first thing the girl buys after the
proposal!) then you are going to struggle to get people to part with money
without some level of trial, but 7 days might be enough.

Then a charging structure based on a wedding might be best, $50 for a wedding
(especially if you can demonstrate the ability to save time or money) would
seem very reasonable. Personally too much more would seem a bit steep but I
might just be tight. Monthly would obviously seem better as a revenue
generator, but doesn't feel right to me - this is supposed to be a once off
event - even if it is the third time!

Some thoughts on site: 1\. On Signup "Who are you" default who you are should
be Bride. You may also want to include Mother of Bride in the list. 2\.
Timezone - why? 3\. When - using US Date. Huge market for this outside of US.
Either work out dates from browswer or dd-MMM-yyyy. UK market you'd have to
make some changes as they divide wedding into 3 parts (church/ceremony, food,
dancing) but it would still be useful as is. 4\. Expenses - no total 5\.
Expenses - possibly you want a flag for provisional and actual - catering
supposed to be 50 a guest x 100. 90 guests confirm so actually only 4500 and
probably confirmed a few weeks before date 6\. Guests - nice flow,liked that
you didn't have to enter too many details, because I wouldn't enter much.
Maybe make it more obvious they only have to enter a name

Looks good, wish I could have set my wife up in this when we got married. Good
luck.

~~~
sr3d
Regarding the pricing, I'm planning to have it around $12/month. Basically
once you stop paying, you can still access the app but cannot make any changes
to your event planning.

Regarding the timezone setting, since user can set up reminders in Marrily to
get notified (via email and through their phone), it's critical to know their
timezone so that the application can send out the notifications at the right
time. The timezone dropdown on the sign up actually tries to be smart and pick
out the timezone based on the user's current time.

You're right, Marrily at this stage is not yet ready for international usage
yet. All the time-related fields are parsed as %m/%d/%Y (m/dd/yyyy). Once the
main app is finalized, I'll add more international support and customization
(like time dislay format, and how to format the contact name: "First Last", or
"Last, First").

Regarding your comment about the Expenses, this is probably the weakest part
of the app. I built a prototype that lets user enter in their budget for each
categories and track their expenses accordingly, but I ripped that off since I
didn't think it was god enough to release yet. I'd need to do further research
and ask people for feedback before building this feature again. In the
meantime, I'll add the "provisional" flag to the expense to keep track of
provisional/actual. Also, do you think the ability to link the payment to the
vendor helpful?

Thanks for all your comments. I really appreciate it.

~~~
DirtyAndy
Personally I don't think the vendor management part is that useful. Tracking
expenses yes, but getting more detailed than that is probably unnecessary.
Another thing to track is deposits!

Re pricing make sure you make that clear to users, but things like seating
plans are normally done right at the end so it is a good tie in for you to get
the recurring income (and the month they forget to cancel whilst on honeymoon)
but personally I would still prefer a fixed price part.

------
exline
Related to pricing, your pricing page has a 'Free' option, but you said you
are not going the freemium route. I'm assuming that you have just not updated
the page yet. In the comments you mentioned $12 a month. Seems strange to
offer this as a monthly service. I'd rather just pay a single price as a user.
What happens after the wedding? Do they have to cancel? Since there is a
definitive end date to the usefulness of the app, I think you should at least
the option of paying for a 12 month price up front. But $144 might be a bit
high.

~~~
notahacker
Totally agree; monthly fees make little sense. A big one-time fee might be
reasonable in theory given that weddings are expensive anyway, but tricky if
users cant see the value without using the service (a lot cheaper than a dress
or a cake; but they're necessities and you know what you're ordering).

I'd have thought advertising or big affiliate commissions from wedding
service/gift providers would be an easier way to monetise this

~~~
sr3d
My thinking is that a wedding on average is planned 6 months in advanced. So
at $12.79/month (this is the pricing point I have in mind), the total will be
$76.74 per user. Of course it doesn't make sense for users to pay after their
wedding is over. My plan is to "freeze" the account if once user decided to
stop paying, however, I'd still let users to login and visit their account
page, they just can't make any changes (37Signals actually force you to pay to
get back in once you stop the billing, which isn't very nice). And there will
be a 14-day trial (instead of 30 as it said on the site at the moment), but
I'll run A/B test on the trial time to see which one is better. 30 days maybe
too long and I wouldn't get paid fast enough to survive.

But I can totally see that user will want to go with a prepaid package, say
3-month pass at $30 ($8.37 saved) and they don't have to worry about getting
charged accidentally after this 3-month period is over. Or a 6-month package
for $50, which is even more savings.

I still pretty open about the pricing at the moment, but I know I want to go
with a price of $12.79/month (and this number is inline with the response from
my survey). A/B split tests will probably tell me which direction to go in
terms of the different pricing packages.

TheKnot.com monetize with advertising and affiliation, and in my opinion,
despised being a really rich site, their user experience isn't as great.
People who took my survey confirmed this, and a few people replied as "hated
it" for having too much ads. Since I want to focus on delivering a solid app,
I think having a price tag on the site will help me focus more on building
quality software, rather than squeezing ads money out of the traffic.

And thanks for the feedback! I really appreciate it.

~~~
exline
Can you provide some of the reasoning that led you to the $12.79 amount. That
is a rather odd amount, but it seems like you have a reason for it and I'm
curious as to what it is.

I agree it sucks to get locked out when your trail runs out. I think your idea
of locked down afterwards is a better idea.

~~~
sr3d
Hi Exline,

I always wanted to have a number between $10 and $15 so that it's more like a
casual price that won't make people cringe to fork out their money. In my
survey (<http://marrily.com/survey>), $10 - $15 is also the range that people
are willing to pay as well.

A few response said they want to a price in the $5 - $10 rang, however, this
price is too low, and in my opinion, it would affect user's perception of the
application. They would think "you get what you pay for". Having a low $7.99
or $6.99 will probably hurt the app more than helping with cheaper
price/higher volume. Based on my own experience (I was a paid customer to
37Signals basecamp for the longest time), at the end of the day, the
difference between $7.99 and $12.79 isn't that much. I was willing to pay
37Signals $12 as much as I would if they priced it at $5.00. However, it's a
huge difference in terms of revenue (a 37.5% loss in potential revenue).

I read somewhere that prices that end in 9, .99, and .79 work best. The
Appstore probably an amazing demonstration of this: 99c apps do sell, and so
do $9.99 apps for the iPad. However, I want to go with a price that works and
not as as common. So I pick .79. And I'm superstitious as well, 13 is a bad
number, so I don't want $13.79 (furthermore, (1+3+7+9) mod 10 = 0, not sure if
it's good or bad here). $14.79 is a bit high (I probably have to do A/B split
tests once the site got more tractions to test this price point though), while
$11.79 is a bit on the low side. $12.79 is the perfect number.

However, all these come from a guy who has never sold anything in his life. So
don't count on my words. I'm still in the experimenting phase, but I'd love to
share my results afterward.

Cheers!

Edit: For 13.79, the sum of all the numbers mod 10 is 0, in baccarat, that's
the worst hand you can possibly have. So definitely not $13.79 for the price.

~~~
exline
Thanks for details. I know about ending with .99 but had not heard of .79 but
it falls under the same rules. Even though I know this, as a consumer I don't
like it so I charge an even $25.

I think the difference between basecamp and your app is B2B vs B2C. I happily
pay for things that help my business grow. I'm more hesitant to pay for things
as a consumer. RIO is easer to justify to business. But that said, I think
there is enough pain in the wedding planning processes that you can find the
right price point.

------
malyk
First thing I noticed was that it was hard to find the sign up button. I tried
clicking on the title "Sign Up" then clicked on the 30 day trial button, then
saw two more things that said sign up and finally got to the sign up form. I
was confused. It took me all of 10 seconds to figure out, but i'm not sure a
regular user would be so successful.

I like the visual design of the site. Looks nice. However I the titles of the
various sections seem to blend together. There's nothing to separate the "Your
Guests" "Your Vendors" and "What to do next" headings on my main page. They
run together a bit Some vertical barrier or more whitespace between them would
help (though there is little horizontal space to spare)

It's a little unclear how to get back to the dashboard page. I can click on
the marrily logo and get there, but i think a more explicit menu item would be
helpful

If I click on the vendors menu item then the guests menu item turns to
contacts and stays as contacts until i click on the marrily logo and go back
to my dashboard where it turns back to guests.

oh no, work calls. Looks like a great start to me.

~~~
mike-cardwell
I clicked the green tab which says "Sign Up" on the front page. I then checked
to see if no-script was preventing it from working. Then I realised that it
wasn't supposed to be a sign up button. Not intuitive. Well, not to me anyway.

------
proexploit
I like your description of where you got the name (Marry <-> Happily). I don't
know where would be good, but that would be cool to work in somewhere. (I know
it's worked in to the subtitle slightly).

------
mike-cardwell
How are you storing passwords? It is complaining that the password I'm trying
to use is too long (>20 chars). If you're storing a hash, there's no point in
having any max length limit... If you're storing it plain text, then you're
doing it wrong.

~~~
sr3d
I'm using Devise, an authentication plugin for Rails, to handle the user
registration. The default max length for the password is 20 characters, but
I've bumped this up to 40 to be on the safe side. I'll deploy this change
later in a bit. Thanks!

------
Kilimanjaro
You got a really nice domain. I like what I see. Clean execution. It doesn't
matter if it works right away, you can improve over time, customer feedback
will lead your way.

My verdict: two thumbs up!

~~~
Kilimanjaro
Hmm, signing up I noticed a lot of flash objects (ad-blocked) representing
some text. Can you make it a jpg or does it serve a different purpose?

Remember, hackers don't like flash.

Edit: oh gawd, they're everywhere! no no no, please change them to jpgs as
soon as you can! With ad/flash/block your site looks weird.

~~~
sr3d
I'll rip out the sIFR headings to make the site more anti-flash-friendly. I
don't use AdBlock or Flashblock so I didn't test the site out without Flash.
Thanks for the good catch!

~~~
proexploit
I'm a cufon fan. I'm not sure what areas are blocked but as long as it's not
tons of paragraphs, cufon should be instant and is a lot crisper than Google's
font directory.

------
desigooner
Upon registration, the page (create event i believe) is too wordy. At first, I
did not realize that I had to select the date of the wedding to move forward
to anything. I clicked on the links up top but all of them kept reloading the
page (the css seemed broken for an instance or 2). IMO, clearer and much
shorter, to-the-point instructions are necessary. A small walk-through or a
quickstart guide directing the users as they start using the site would work
well for you.

~~~
desigooner
Also, is there any contact-import planned? Either from services like Facebook
or Gmail or something like a .csv/.xls upload.

Any particular benefit on using Flash for the titles on the dashboard?

~~~
sr3d
Yes, you can import contact from a CSV (no XLS yet) file and Marrily will take
an educated guess at the file structure (this feature is inspired by
37Signals's Highrise) to help you import the contacts. I'm planning to
implement the import feature from external sources (Facebook, Gmail, and other
services) in phase 2 of the Marrily (after the app is officially launched)

The link to the CSV import is: <http://marrily.com/app/contacts/import_csv>

There's a button to import contact: <http://cl.ly/4bd949e2d09fdc9b4b22>. My
guess is that the button is not visible enough. I'll move it down to the same
level as the big "Add New Contact" button.

Regarding the Flash for the titles, I wanted to spice up the page with a
different font, so it was just strictly for cosmetic reason. Based on the
feedback so far, I decided to rip out the sIFR to make it more friendly.

Thanks for your feedback!

------
zackola
I definitely would have found this very helpful when I got married. Too bad
you didn't release it last year!

\- It would be awesome if you could print your own table place cards directly
from the table arrangement section. Or at least export your guest list to
Excel so you can mail merge it.

\- The vendors page needs some sort of spreadsheet/table like interface so you
can compare costs of vendors you are vetting but haven't necessarily selected
yet.

~~~
sr3d
Can I pick your brain about how the table place cards would look like? Is it
like a tent card with people's names on it so that the guests can find out who
else is sitting on the same table?

The contacts/guests export feature is planned for, since I figure users may
need to grab the existing data to give to their vendors, or to do mail merge
as you suggested.

Thanks for the comment on the Vendor page. I was thinking this page is like a
mini-CRM that user can track their vendors' contacts info. I haven't thought
much about the vendors feature comparison, but it's definitely be a cool
feature to have.

Sorry about the late launch of Marrily. It took me 3 years to get to this
point. But I hope that with your feedback, I can help other people with their
weddings. Thanks!

~~~
zackola
Yes - It's a tent card with guest name and table number on it. Guests will
(hopefully) pick them up as the reception starts and they head to sit down.

------
aquateen
To everyone wanting their site reviewed,

Please link to your site in the submission, we can read your comments by
clicking the comments link.

------
snewe
SpringPad has a pretty nice "App" for wedding planning:

<http://springpadit.com/>

It is probably not as robust as what you offer, but it suited me pretty well:
contacts, RSVP,reminders, gift tracking, seating and vendor listing.

~~~
sr3d
Thanks for the link, I'll check it out.

------
SkyMarshal
I imagine what most potential customers would ask is, what does Marrily.com do
better than TheKnot.com?

~~~
Kilimanjaro
As a user I'll tell you what:

The knot is more like a bride magazine, like a catalog, I get lost in too much
advertisement.

Marrily is about getting things done, everything I need to do (information
related) in one place. I hope he keeps it that way.

In short, to get things done I'll use Marrily, to shop I'll use the knot.

~~~
sr3d
This is the way I think about the difference between Marrily and TheKnot too.
And it's my goal to build Marrily to be really simple and useful, but I'll
gradually add more and more resources to help users get inspirations as well.

I will implement more mobile features as well so that will be another
differentiating factor. So far I haven't seen any iPhone app for wedding
planning that combines a solid web app and a mobile app together. Marrily will
fill in this gap nicely.

------
misterbwong
you should probably redirect <http://www.marrily.com> to <http://marrily.com>.
it's currently returning an nginx default page

~~~
sr3d
I thought I had this redirection setup already! It turned out that this was
due to the default server setting block was still in the nginx.conf file and
overriding the redirection (instead of serving the correct marrily.com site,
the default site was served instead)

Thanks for pointing this out. The redirection works now.

------
Dramatize
This is the kind of app I was looking for when we got married a few years ago.

------
timtadh
Have you seen the Google Spreadsheet for wedding planning. It has a lot of
functionality you mention on your pricing "checklist." I am not saying this to
discourage you, just to improve your checklist!

~~~
timtadh
Also:

"Choose and book ceremony musicians, a wedding band/ DJ,
photographer/videographer, caterer and florist (Photography)"

This is several unrelated items grouped into one item.

For instance, I have a caterer, photographer, and florist, but need to book a
DJ.

When I start using your service the first thing I interact with (and the main
content so far seems to be this checklist) it needs be really good, because
these kind of checklists are both really helpful when planning and the primary
point of interaction with any planning service. For instance me and my fiancée
mostly have been using books and such, the books center around check lists.

~~~
sr3d
Thanks for the comment about the checklist. The default checklist that you see
comes from a template of items, and some of them probably need some more
tweaking. Truthfully I got the list from other sites online (oops! don't tell
anyone) and I haven't really re-write it yet. Wrapping up the app for the
launch has really kept me busy.

Can I contact you via email to get more opinions on the checklist?

~~~
timtadh
sure, I went through most of it earlier.

------
bdickason
I'm getting married in a month so I'll try this out :) The planning process
has been a nightmare, to say the least. We relied on google docs for 99% of
it.

~~~
bdickason
Initial feedback - Once I register, I see a dashboard that doesn't guide me
anywhere. Even the 'what to do next' in the bottom left doesn't give me any
REASON to do any of these things.

Instead of "Update your Event Settings" How about - "Add your caterer?" or
"Enter your first menu item." something more actionable than 'update x/y.'

At least one of these should be up at the top when you first login. Like this:

Do this next: Enter the address of your venue.

~~~
sr3d
Thanks for the feedback on the dashboard. Based on your comment, the dashboard
is probably not very clear about what you should proceed next. I'm thinking
about converting the static suggestion list (yes, it's just a static list at
the moment... blushed :">) into a checklist to help guide user around the app,
and users can check things off (e.g. Setup Food Options, Enter Venue Address,
etc.) as they use with the application more.

Last question, can I contact you via email for more feedback on this? I'd
really appreciate it.

~~~
bdickason
Sure, as long as I can contact you via email for feedback on one of my
projects in the near future :)

~~~
sr3d
Absolutely. I'd love to talk to other HNers. I've had great success meeting
awesome people here. My skype/YM is alexnhatle. Hit me up anytime. Cheers!

------
LaPingvino
I signed up. There is a lot of surprise when I go through the process. And I
seem not to be able to change the description I first entered...

------
m0th87
Why not jump on the url 2.0 bandwagon and get <http://marri.ly>? It's not
registered ;)

~~~
sr3d
I think Marrily.com has a much better brand quality than marri.ly does. It's
easier to pronounce too, marrily-dot-com (and you can also type marryly.com
and get redirected to the main site) than to pronounce "marr[i|y]-dot-ly".
People will probably get hung up at the i in the word "marri", since there can
be 2 different spellings: marri or marry.

Too bad I couldn't register "merrily" (and its variation: merryly). Merrily
was the first name I picked but it was registered to a lady in Seatle. But
Marrily does it for me too, plus it has a nice twist to the name (to marrily
means to marry happily).

~~~
dchs
I'd snap it up anyway and use it for links posted to Twitter.

~~~
sr3d
Good call! I just bought it at <https://libyanspider.com> for $75/year.

~~~
dchs
Awesome - nice move!

------
albemuth
Welcome to nginx!

~~~
sr3d
fixed :) Thank you!

