

Show HN: Final Touch - ThomPete
http://www.finaltouchapp.com/

======
ThomPete
Hello HN peeps.

I would like to invite you to a little experiment.

I have created probably the smallest niche app on the mac app store and I
would like you to help me sell and optimize the marketing around it.

Now you might think, "who does this guy think he is? – doesn't he know I have
my own business to run?" and you are right it would be unfair to just ask you
to help me market my product.

So instead I would like to offer you something in return:

Each month I am going to post all the numbers and the learnings. But more
importantly each month you can post suggestions to improvements and strategies
and each month those with the highest number of votes will get implemented
(within reason of course)

It is my hope that this will be a case study for people to learn from before
they venture out into spending money and time on something similar themselves
or for people who find this stuff interesting.

The product is done in the spirit of the small butique network
weekendhacker.net I started in May So far have +6100 members and have had 150
projects through and is still going strong. And the things I learned from
members of the HN community have been invaluable.

Now this is of course just an experiment. Maybe I will break even, maybe I
won't. Maybe I will have to cancel it within a couple of months. But none the
less I am certain it will both be informative and fun.

Oh and yes you can move the slider on the webpage :)

So what do you think the first round of improvements should be?

~~~
nhebb
Do you really have a registered trademark already? If not, you should remove
the registered trademark symbol.

~~~
nroach
There is no live registered trademark in the US for "Final Touch" or
"FinalTouch" in a relevant class. There was one in the computer software field
from 1992 that has since been abandoned.

The proper way to indicate a claim to mark by usage is to use the "TM"
(trademark) or "SM" (service mark) designation which indicates a common-law or
state law mark. This is also the proper designation if you have filed an
application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) but the
mark has not yet been granted registration.

You can only legally use the federal registration symbol "®" after the USPTO
actually registers a mark, and not while an application is pending or based on
common law rights.

~~~
jmatthew3
Nathan, good eye. It seemed unlikely that such a new and niche app had taken
the step of federal registration, much less done so long enough ago to be
registered.

------
0x12
As for all these people bitching about the price of this app: If you think it
is worth _less_ than the value that it represents to you then you should go
and re-create this app and sell it at a lower price point rather than telling
the original developer to lower his price. Be sure to publish your figures.

If you find that $16 is less than the value you'd extract from the app then
you should probably buy it.

Of course he can lower the price later, just not all at once, but I'd be more
interested in the same story at a different pricepoint with another useful
app.

A couple of those and the data would become very valuable.

The fact that people are buying the app just by browsing the app store means
that he's at least in the ballpark, the 'ideal' price is something that you
can only determine experimentally, not by responding to whining about the
price.

~~~
rhygar
That's some kind of logical fallacy... sort of like saying... "if you think
that aircraft carrier is overpriced, you should build one and sell it
yourself."

One can determine objectively whether something is overpriced based on
comparisons with competing products.

~~~
0x12
If an aircraft carrier is overpriced then there is a market for cheaper ones
and you can make a bundle by putting your money where your mouth is (assuming
you are right, of course).

If making aircraft carriers is not your thing then you shouldn't be telling
other people how much to charge for theirs.

The only reason multiple competing products would come in to existence is
because of people going the first route.

------
paraschopra
If you need to A/B test any of the ideas proposed here (or in future), we'd
love to offer you a free subscription to Visual Website Optimizer
<http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com> Just contact me paras {at} wingify {dot}
com

As for ideas, here are mine:

* If you want to generate traffic, there are some long tail terms that can get you traffic. Try writing some articles on keywords "best mouse for photoshop", "best photoshop mouse", "magic mouse photoshop" or "mouse for photoshop" (Have these terms in title, headline and link them from homepage with this anchor text). Promote your app on these specific articles.

* Contact Smashing Magazine and other design magazines and offer them 3 free licenses to award to their readers.

* Tweet prominent designers to try out your app

* Landing page tip: show a small video demonstrating how to use your app and what results can be gotten.

Good luck with your initiative. Very excited to see this experiment.

~~~
ThomPete
Fab! This is the kind of feedback I am looking for. Will get in contact with
you regarding a/b testing. Too bad I can't AB test pricing on the app store :)

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danielh
A great idea, both the app and this post!

Unless the unobstrusiveness is the main selling point, I would drop "A small
unobtrusive app that allows you to" from the description and just go with
"Achieve unrivaled precision with your mouse". You could list the fact that it
is unobstrusive further below.

~~~
ssharp
Maybe something more succinct, like "Unrivaled Mouse Precision".

~~~
iaskwhy
I understand your idea of making the title as less wordy as possible but in
terms of SEO it's not always the best strategy (never actually?). Assuming you
want to use SEO as a marketing tool, your title shouldn't come from an idea
you had but from actual data. You need to go through keywords on
<https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal> and see what people
are looking for. For the best result, try to use the words with better results
on the title and every now and then on the text of the page (the copy if you
prefer).

~~~
ssharp
What SEO value do "small unobtrusive app" and "achieve" and "with your" really
add to this page? I suppose you'd have to view what kind of conversions you
get from those types of keywords, but I wouldn't imagine those keywords coming
in with any sort of frequency, or delivering conversions.

I understand your argument, but it would make more sense if the heading had
better keywords. I don't see this heading adding much SEO value.

You can always A/B titles and see if a shorter title adds value, and if so,
weigh it against SEO value. SEO value isn't the only determining factor; it's
optimizing the entire page, which may mean giving up SEO value in favor of
optimizing something that delivers higher profits.

~~~
iaskwhy
I wasn't defending the original title, just saying simplifying a title is not
always the way to go. Sorry if I misunderstood your suggestion, I agree with
all your points.

------
jarofgreen
I don't have a mac, but nice idea :-)

Feedback: Key mode 1 or 2? Whatever happened to nice labels that don't require
looking up in a manual, like "hold" and "toggle"?

~~~
mrgoldenbrown
this was the first thing I noticed as well. I think the extra space required
for words is worth the lack of confusion.

~~~
jarofgreen
Agreed. If space is really an issue at least use "T" and "H".

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pxlpshr
15.99 is too expensive, IMO, but I guess you can make that decision based on
sales data. I would experiment with 4.99.

Something else a lot of people don't realize is that mouse acceleration is
turned on in OSX and it's 'impossible' to disable without an app like USB
Overdrive. Mouse accel is terrible for gaming -- especially FPS. I would add
this feature to your product and call it out.

~~~
roel_v
As a software developer, I find it depressing that people would find 16$
(about 15 minutes of billable work?) too much for an application that,
presumably, would be used _all the time_ by people who need high precision
pointing.

~~~
pxlpshr
Perhaps, if you were expecting to sell one copy @ $16. But your argument is
invalid at internet scale. $.99 games sell millions of volume.

I'm not going to spend $14.99 on it because there are alternative products for
cheaper or free. Demand will dictate the price, I simply suggested that 4.99
might be a better price point but that he should look at the data first.

~~~
wizzard
It's not a game, though. It's a professional utility for gainfully employed
designers, who can either expense it to their MegaCorp, or if they're
independent, consider it an investment in their career.

Think about how much the Adobe Suite costs. $16 is not too much for this
audience.

------
n9com
Great app, but you need to drop the price to below $8 - I think this will help
you maximise revenue. (based on my experience of having several top 50 apps on
the mac app store over the past few months).

~~~
ThomPete
Thnx for the feedback. You think I should do it instantly or wait until
tomorrow?

~~~
ThomPete
I will keep it where it is I guess. No need to rock the boat :)

~~~
n9com
Change it today, in time for the weekend.

------
systemtrigger
Breathtaking design. Minor suggestions...

Tighten the headline: "Instantly change your mouse precision."

On the Support page: 1) respell "Suppport" 2) add a space to
"FinalTouchsupport" 3) shorten "Adobe CS1 [...]" to "Adobe CS3+" and 4) drop
the ".php"

~~~
ThomPete
graci!

------
anateus
Good luck. A small comment: "precision speed" is a slightly misleading term,
especially when combined with a percentage measurement."Mouse speed" or
"Movement speed" or just "Precision" are best? If the latter, then you can
just invert the bar (i.e. 100% precision is super slow movement). As it is
now, without reading the description on the website there is no intuitive
selection for the user (much as with your "key mode" drop down).

~~~
dolinsky
Agreed, especially since your slider uses a percentage value (what's 100% of
speed?). If instead you used a label of 'Precision' like anateus suggested, or
a similar word like Accuracy and your end values were 'High' and 'Low' that
should make more sense.

2 CSS booboos:

\- .main-description has 2 font-sizes, the second should be font-weight.

\- in styles.css the images/line.png image returns a 404 on line 26.

------
biturd
There was a time a few years back where I put in a tremendous amount of time
to locate a developer that could make a Mac OS X mouse drive.

Apparently, from talking to a few people, it is a hard thing to do.

I tried to buy USBoverdrive, as it is rather poorly supported, there are long
standing repeatable bugs that support often times will not even reply to. It
used to be bundled with MacAlly Mice.

I find the driver software for high end mouses to be terrible for your system,
and often don't work well. For me, it is not about all the features, the
buttons that you can define and macros.

I needed two features, one not as important, the other a must have.

Chording - it would be nice, not many think it can be done well. I tend to
think it could be done well and someone should give it a try.

Where all mouse driver software stands still, and I wonder how you are working
this out, is in the acceleration/ballistic curve.

I always wanted a way in USBoverdrive to hit a hot key and have a second
definition of settings kick in so I could accomplish exactly what your app is
doing.

However, without trying your app, I can't be sure it won't do anything more
than just slow it down. Slowing it down is not all that there is to making
this truly awesome.

Personally, I like to be able to move the mouse about an inch, maybe two, and
have it travel the spam of ~24" display. But only if I do so rather fast. If I
slow my movement down, I want to span a much lesser distance, with more
precision. Current software on the market can't do this. You may get one
aspect right, but end up with a mouse that is jittery and the smallest
movement it can make is around 10px.

Or, you get it so that it will make a smooth 1px movement, but you have to
pick up, place, drag, repeat... the actual mouse to ever get across the
screen.

Is there any way to define this in your software? What curve are you using to
change this? How in the heck were you able to access and over-ride Apple's
built in mouse curve?

------
csomar
My two year old, $19, Microsoft mouse has already this with the software it
come with. I don't mean to discourage you, but I think you spent more time on
the design and execution than developing the software itself.

$19 is a lot of money for a simple thing like that. It's the price of a mouse
+ a software that customize many things for it (buttons, speed...). However,
the niche is interesting. I'll be glad to pay $30 for a software that improves
my mouse precision.

~~~
danieldk
Mice come in classes as well. E.g., I use a 69 Euro Apple Magic Trackpad (and
disliked plain-old mice ever since). Compared to the cost of a good trackpad
it is not that expensive.

I personally don't need the added precision, but if I did, 20 dollars is not a
lot for added productivity.

------
latitude
Have you at all checked if graphic designers need this sort of functionality?
I tinker with pixel perfect designs quite extensively and zooming in is _the_
way to get more precision out of mouse. Few designers on Dribbble posted
videos showing how they work and this use pattern - zoom-in, tweak, zoom-out -
is so engraved into their work style that I am having hard time imagining why
they would switch. Also, consider the fact that even if the mouse is moving
slower, the pixels are not getting bigger. In other words, increasing mouse
precision does not remove the need for zooming in. Especially on larger
screens.

So there you have it :) Great app, very well done website, but I think
ultimately the niche is not just small, it is also very oddly shaped.

(edit) Perhaps repackaging the app and re-aiming it at gamers (as others
suggested) would be a thing to try. Though on the other hand many gaming mice
come with a hardware button toggling the deceleration.

------
ra
Nice. How did you arrive at that price point?

~~~
ThomPete
I just though what I would be willing to pay my self as a designer. If I am
wrong I will have to change it of course.

~~~
ra
I'd be inclined to go $19 or even $29 - remember the target market isn't us,
and doesn't typically use open source.

Professional CAD software costs thousands per seat, as does an Adobe live
license.

------
elisee
Sounds like a neat app!

The tooltip on "Support" says "Got problems. We got solutions". You might want
to turn that dot into a question mark. Also, the support page has 3 P in
Support at the top

~~~
pyrtsa
Also, the Updates link on the bottom of the home page is broken, points to
/update.php, not /updates.php like it should. ;)

------
snsr
Handy, especially as I've moved to using touchpads most of the time. Seems
like this should be a part of the OS itself. Site design is very clean.

Nitpicks:

\- Web demo slider doesn't work in Safari 5.0.4, neither do any of the
toggles, though cursor:pointer indicates that they should. Twitter dialog has
a lower z-index than the precision slider handle.

\- Why keep the strikethrough higher price? Seems to cheapen percieved value.

------
AndyJPartridge
I would buy this if the price was lower.

Perhaps around $7.99, to make it £5 in the UK, more or less.

Fantastic idea, fantastic site. Well done.

~~~
mootothemax
I'm curious on the poster's behalf; what about $9.99? Would you still buy it
right now? Would an extra pound put you off that much?

~~~
AndyJPartridge
Probably not actually. It is a really good idea.

------
ww520
Nice website design and nice experiment. I hate to rain on the parade but most
OS have implemented Precision Booster to exponentially slow down the mouse to
allow precise control of the mouse pointer, and also they have implemented
Mouse Keys to allow moving the pointer one pixel at a time by pressing keys.

Hopefully your app can create differentiation. Good luck.

------
xutopia
How did you decide upon your price point?

------
conradr
+1 for the design and what everyone else have said. I would lower the price to
something like £3 - £4 and don't create the illusion that the app has been
discounted. It tells me you've tried to sell it and it didn't work. Now you're
lowering the price creating an "Is the app any good?" mentality.

------
mootothemax
Is one possible angle to sell this to people not using their regular equipment
and going mad using a crappy mouse or so on?

I know that I'm not the target audience, but when forced to use someone else's
computer for a few days, things like this have briefly driven me mad :)

------
colinhowe
Cool looking app. Passed it on to some designer friends.

I think the price point is probably right - a lot of Apple products are
expensive and I believe the Apple owner mindset makes these folks more willing
to part with their cash for good things.

------
denysonique
To make it more appealing I would turn the widget on the website into a real
demo in the browser which would slow the mouse pointer down using JavaScript.
The user could experience the awesomeness of your app before purchasing.

------
Hyena
The price seems incredibly high, sales would probably be better at a lower
price point. I would think that you would benefit more from an "impulse
purchase" price vis-a-vis a professional utility price.

~~~
azulum
sales would almost certainly be higher, but revenue may not. it's a less
convoluted version of the <a
href="[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve>laffer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve>laffer)
curve</a>—the argument for lowering taxes to raise revenue. i think holding
off on price changes for at least a week would be, as GHWB might say,
'prudent'. without that data, how can you know where you are on the curve? and
how can you know if changes in price are the reason for more sales? i am not
sure that 'impulse purchase' is where this app needs to go.

~~~
Hyena
By lowering the price, you increase the number of people who find it within
their expected value calculation.

By increasing the number of customers, you increase the number of data points.

Increasing number of data points, if the product is good, will increase both
confidence _and_ expected value. (The latter because more people are likely to
contact the data.)

The spread of information will be geometric.

The customer base will, at best, build quickly from a low base.

However, the longer the low base period lasts, the greater the risk that some
other application steals priority, ending the process.

Lower prices. Market bomb. Raise prices once saturation assures that you build
quickly from a medium base. Do this transparently so people don't bad mouth
you, biasing future information.

------
Jem
Tweeted about it for ya - have a small amount of designy followers who might
be interested.

Design is well done - polished and shiny, kinda how I sum up a mac (I say this
as a non-mac user). Kudos.

------
rubergly
I really like the menubar popover UI. What did you use to create that?

------
cosjef
Perhaps create a short video or animation that shows the problem, and how
FinalTouch solves it. Put a short one on your landing page, and a longer one
(with audio) on youtube.

------
blparker
Nice idea. I seen it initially on Forrst. I'm interested by the fact that you
plan on being transparent about the numbers. Where do you plan on posting
these figures?

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mittermayr
A video or a menu item where I can click and actually see how this improves
what I have right now would be all I need to try it out - didn't see that?

------
bruceboughton
Why is your mode switch a slider between 1 and 2?

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mapleoin
Can't you just buy a mouse which has a dedicated dpi switcher button for
basically the same amount of cash?

~~~
wisty
Does that work with a touchpad? Does that mean switching to a new, unfamiliar
mouse?

Look, it's a niche app. It won't make a billion dollars. It solves a small
problem that some people have.

If you do some geeky "I can solve that problem for less", fine. But not
everyone has brilliant problem solving skills, and the time to look at _every_
alternative. They find something that works OK, and use it.

Some people use dropbox, not rsync. _Programmers_ pay for Github, not a
commodity host with git. Slightly suboptimal (from my perspective) products
still sell, every day.

------
massarog
When rolling over precision speed and the tooltip comes up, 'become' needs to
be changed to 'becomes'.

------
maneesh
you should create an affiliate link (if you can) and let us try to sell it for
you, get a cut.

~~~
ThomPete
sure what cut do you think is reasonable?

~~~
maneesh
At least when I've done affiliate sales for information products, the cut is
generally 51% or higher (since each sale costs you nothing, and the affiliate
is driving you traffic you wouldn't have otherwise). For recurring income,
it's usually 35% or so.

------
ig1
Wouldn't most of your target group be using a graphics tablet for precision ?

~~~
ThomPete
Some do yes. I am experimenting with making it for for that too.

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random42
May be a nit-pick, but please consider having a favicon on the website.

------
unkoman
Give Macheist a call. It's a pretty sweet way to get attention.

------
superfamicom
SteerMouse does this as well, and much, much more, from the mouse itself, it's
$20 <http://plentycom.jp/en/steermouse/index.html>

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mahcuz
Is the ® necessary?

------
shoham
Very nice!

