

Ask HN: Do we have a MVP here? Help us out - hariis

Since our first release 4 weeks ago, we have iterated and incorporated the feedback we got.
We are now beginning to shift our focus on letting people know about our product.<p>We have gotten so far ~500 visitors but not many are using our product.<p>http://caniafforditnow.com<p>Context: Our app/tool performs a financial health check and evaluates your affordability
 of a purchase. The user asks the question, provides the financial numbers,
 and the tool provides the Answer in the form of a verdict and a Report.<p>When I say User not using our product, I mean not asking the question and not completing providing the details.<p>We would like to figure out why the asking rate and completion rate are dismal<p>a) Are we not targeting the right audience?
 (so far mostly from HN, reddit, Facebook Ads, and very few from financial forums)
b) Is our product's value not clearly conveyed on the site?
c) Our product does not provide value?
d) None of the above. Just keep pushing and it will happen<p>What do you think and what do you recommend?<p>Thanks
======
mgkimsal
Site design is problematic - it doesn't look solid - it looks almost spammy,
as if if I gave you any info (personal finance info!) it'd be compromised.

Level-headed check, I know that's not the case, but the appearance is not very
hot. I'm not a huge fan, but look at Quizzle.com. It's slightly _busier_ in
some ways, but there's a lot more polish, and the value prop is right there in
the tagline "don't guess - know". Actually, that's a bit nebulous, but it
feels stronger.

You've got 3 thrusts: Get a Second Opinion before Purchase Get a Free
Financial Health Check Anonymously and Instantly Boost your Financial Savvy by
responding to Questions

Focus on just one as the main push on the home page, lose the others.

This is 'site redesign' stuff, and not quite what you asked for, but I think
you might have the makings of something. A solid base of people sharing info
here could lead to other products for upselling. Also, targetted ads - if
someone's looking to buy X, not only would have people suggesting whether they
should or shouldn't buy it, you'd have ads right there giving them options. Or
perhaps that's crossing a line in your mind?

Again, conceptually, I think there's the seed of something there. It just
feels a bit hokey at the moment.

~~~
hariis
yeah, you can tell, I am not a designer, my goal is to just keep the design
neutral (not get any awards for it :) and focus on selling the functionality.
Damn, keeping it neutral is turning out to be so hard :)

Any ideas welcome in this regard as well.

~~~
notahacker
I think the basic concept is a good one. Specific (and mostly functional)
design observations:

\- Your logo/header looks like a banner ad. You'd actually be better off with
a simple text logo in a neutral sans-serif font. Same goes (to a much lesser
extent) for the general design - if you don't want to pay a designer than go
for something even more minimal - spammers aren't big fans of white space or
grey text.

\- The "Please be assured..." text at the top of the forms should be a neutral
colour and not warning red

\- Having a section called "Payment Details" is very bad for a free service. I
realise there's a logical reason for it being called that, but it leaves the
user wondering whether its a bait and switch which will end up sending
recurring monthly bills. Especially when that underhand tactic is very widely
used for "free credit checks" all over the internet anyway...

-Your "I want to" field is too small and outside the main flow of the page - at a glance it could be a search box or newsletter submission form. Instead, merge it into the home page. Break down the main homepage flow into two steps:

(1) What do you want to buy?

Your form field goes below, probably including a second field for the cost as
I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to include that. Experiment with dropping
the form from the home page altogether

(2) Can I afford it? "Fill in our free, anonymous financial health checklist
and we'll calculate an instant answer"

with a big "Check Now" button to the next page just below. I've also reworded
to something less threatening than "Provide us with your financial numbers".
Subtle differences in wording mater for something like this - I once had a job
where I did have to ask for people's bank details whilst still studiously
avoiding words like "details" or "numbers"

"We evaluate your financial health against..." and the associated links goes
below this. You might want to test whether the "recently asked" section on the
home page is a good or bad thing for user signups

~~~
hariis
Thanks for a great feedback on your thought process while filling out the
fields and suggestions. Appreciate it very much and will certainly look into
that.

------
toast76
I think it's not overly clear what the site actually does. There's a lot to
read and none of it really jumps out at me to explain why this site is of
benefit to me.

The biggest problem, as has already been mentioned, is that it looks like a
spammer's site. I know you say you're not a designer, that's ok, I'm not
either. But when dealing with financial stuff you MUST look professional.

I'm pushing my own barrow here a bit, but try a service like
<http://fivesecondtest.com> or (for fairness) something like
<http://conceptfeedback.com>

If you want, shoot me an email at support@usabilityhub.com and I'll get you
set up with a free 5st premium account so you can get some test results
quickly.

~~~
hariis
Thanks for the feedback and offer. Sending you an email now.

------
hasenj
It's not clear at all what the site does.

The text field under "I want to" is too small, what am I supposed to do with
it?

I mean what kind of stuff can I type in there? It seems like I should tell you
a lot more than just three words. I mean, it says "provide us your financial
numbers", how am I supposed to provide you them in that tiny box?

Out of curiosity I tried to type "buy a house", and then it took me to a new
page. Now in that new page, the "I want to" box is larger, and it says under
it "Example: Buy a TV, Visit Europe, Go on a Cruise". Too late to give an
example at this point.

Also it's not clear who will be advising me, will a real human look at my
situation and give me advice, or will it be left up to a machine?

It seems to me that the calculation is simple enough that I can do it on my
own, the hard part of such a decision is not the number crunching, it's about
what else do I want. Sure I can buy a house with a mortgage of say 1000/mo,
but how would that affect my life? What if I actually want to travel around
the world? Should I still buy a house? How will the machine know?

~~~
hariis
Thanks for a great feedback on your thought process while filling out the
fields. Will certainly look into that.

When you have 2 things in mind, you can break it down into 2 questions,

for ex: first check your affordability for the house. If you get approved, the
report tells you your status at that point. Based on that, ask another
question about your Travel. If you sign up, the app will remember your
financial details from the first question. No need to type them again.

Let me know what you think.

Once again, thanks for your excellent feedback.

------
zachallaun
It seems that a general consensus from feedback thus far is:

1) It is difficult to tell what the site _does_ , and 2) Once that's figured
out, few people stay because the site doesn't seem to solve a problem _they
actually have_.

You mentioned iteration; What do you mean by it, specifically? Have you made
substantive changes in functionality? Or have you simply added "most requested
features"? The difference here is important, as it may be the difference
between finding a problem that needs solving and adding resources to a
solution searching for a problem.

My recommendation (for what that's worth) is to engage in a bit of customer
development, the initial goal of which is to find _who_ has the problem that
you feel like you're solving. Hasenj noted that the calculations seem very
simple (given, many contributors here are programmers and/or math nerds). That
said, you do not know how many of your actual customers may be thinking the
same thing.

However, if you can find (and by find, I mean specifically target, talk to and
learn from) a group of people who consistently benefit from your service, you
are in a much better position to move ahead. Effectively, this group will act
as your cheering squad, providing feedback upon which you can grow and word-
of-mouth upon which you can ultimately scale.

I consider this to be much more important than the design (although that is
important as well). While better design may attract people to stay longer
and/or use your service for the first time, it will not help with retention
unless you're solving a problem that people legitimately have. Design doesn't
provide an accurate indicator of scale-potential; Function does.

You may have known all of what I just told you. Hell, you may have already
done it all. If, however, it was new to you, I would suggest checking out
Steve Blank's book _The Four Steps to the Epiphany_ , found here:
[http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-
Blank/dp/09...](http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-
Blank/dp/0976470705/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1290478480&sr=8-1)

Best of luck!

~~~
hariis
Thanks for summarizing. I kinda knew about the customer development part,
however, we are not able to get users to see past the design and into asking
the question and seeing the Report at which point the value of the tool can be
determined. We have only iterated the design, believe it or not. This tool
closely mimics the popular TV show 'Can I afford it?' by Suze Orman, and so we
know there are quite a few people who can benefit from these evaluations that
we do. The value is in remembering to do all the checks at once.

The challenge is to find these folks who can benefit. Any ideas to reach such
customers welcome.

Today's feedback has been quite beneficial, hopefully we can get past the
design hump. Thanks to everyone.

------
jeroen
I tried it out and got stuck at Gross Monthly Income. It is limited to
"Minimum: $2,500 Maximum: $8,000". So what do I do when I don't fit in there?

Other seemingly arbitrary limitations:

\- Net income : Net Income should be less than Gross Income.

\- Liquid assets : Currently we support between $1000 and $1,000,000 only.

------
ssing
Clickable link: <http://caniafforditnow.com>

