

Bootstrapped. 10 Months. Learned Rails. Finally Launched. Feedback Please? - marcamillion
http://www.compversions.com

======
mmcdan
Stuff I like:

-The semi-transparent chameleon is clever

-The pricing section is well-designed

-Product looks simple and easy-to-use

Stuff to consider:

-Try making the chameleon 50%-75% smaller. It distracts from the content.

-I would eliminate the "Sign up with Huey" hoverstate. My first question was literally, who is Huey? I now know it's the name of a plan. If you leave it, the default plan should be Iguana, the recommended plan, and not the most expensive one.

-Currently the product comes across as too generic. Add a few more screenshots and use-cases to show off the uniqueness of your product.

-The support and sign-in buttons are too transparent. To draw attention to them, they should probably less transparent and have a solid text color.

-The product may be too barebones for the prices you are selling at. Try adding more features like voting for the best version, adding annotations, etc...

~~~
marcamillion
Thanks for the feedback.

Huey is actually the name of the chameleon - but I guess that doesn't quite
articulate that. Will have to find another way to do that.

Huey is also the name of a plan, so I can see how that causes confusion.

In terms of the price, I am not really selling on features - yet - but more on
the benefit. I used to have this problem - i.e. managing multiple designers,
with stakeholders all over the world - and I would have paid those prices to
solve that problem.

That being said, I do intend to possibly add cheaper plans in the future - but
I need to get the core problem solve and get some real customer feedback from
paying customers.

Also, given that it is just me right now, I can't realistically support a ton
of users - so we will see how it goes.

Btw, re: the design of the marketing site. Was done by:
<http://fairheadcreative.com/> and the UI design was done by:
<http://www.andreeblixt.com/> Both awesome designers.

~~~
phlux
Huey was obvious to me, and I thought it was clever.

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stdbrouw
The pricing looks like it's based on the idea that, since designers and
agencies are earning boatloads of money anyway, taking just a tiny slice of
that money shouldn't faze them, even if that tiny slice amounts to $100/month.
I think you'll run into a lot of potential users who will question the
fairness of paying that amount of money for what is in essence an image
viewer, and refuse to buy even if they could easily afford it and clearly see
its usefulness.

~~~
marcamillion
That criticism is very valid, and if I do find that happening - then I will
definitely have to re-evaluate my value proposition.

The main issue was that I know in my mind, what my revenue targets are - and I
figure it might be easier/better to reach those with fewer users (mainly
because it is just me right now, and I can't support TOO many users) and be
better able to support those, than to try and get more users and everybody's
support suffers.

I also thought what would be fair for me to pay - in my previous jobs, for
this service and that is reflected in the price. Had I been doing what I used
to do, I would pay these rates.

However, if the feedback is overwhelming that the price is too high, then I
will definitely re-evaluate it.

Thanks.

~~~
bretthardin
I appreciate your candor about pricing. I am going through a similar problem
and came to the same conclusions that you did. It would be interesting to see
statistics regarding the prices that you charge and if you increase/decrease
them. Also, when you do get paying customers, what percentage of customers are
in each pricing plan.

------
jjm
Just an idea, why not also have a free 1 client, 100mb account?

I would think that this should get you some good user feed-back (past a 7 day
usage pattern), and also eventually force users to pay up as they get more
comfortable with your app.

~~~
marcamillion
I fought with this, to be honest. I know it can get more people into the
funnel. I guess the issue I was afraid of - and decided to try and mitigate -
is having to support a ton of free users, when I really need to get revenue
coming in through the door.

Once things settle down and I have a nice core set of paid users, then I might
consider doing that.

Who knows...this is just the first step, so expect lots of iterations from
here on out :)

~~~
TuaAmin13
My professor once said something to the effect of "You sell something for free
when you're combating the anxiety of loss. You don't go free to compete on
price." I guess one thing you have to ask yourself is if your customers aren't
coming because they're afraid of losing something, even with the 7 day free
trial. I don't necessarily think you need a free version. Also, it's easy to
decrease prices but difficult to go up.

I agree with some of the other posts that suggest you should add some more
illustrations of what the product does. Sitting in my armchair I don't see the
difference between this and a flickr album besides being able to post 4
pictures side by side. I'm not your target audience though so I don't know
what problems your customer segment has.

~~~
marcamillion
I agree with the sentiments of your professor :)

I think I will definitely be adding some more illustrations and such.

The difference between this and a flickr album is that this is made
specifically to get feedback from clients - whereas flickr is made to display
images.

Sure, they both display images - but both have different purposes.

------
adriano_f
Good idea, and look well-executed.

I would add more images and examples of the application in use.

Also, choose more relevant examples... the only one I see is a comparison
between the same image with color changes. Show something like a whole website
project from early stage (sketched mockups) to later stages (details in
coloring and font choices, or whatever).

Also, IMHO, the copy should focus more on the benefits for the designer (get
better feedback faster, more often) than on the benefits for the client ("Save
your clients the hassle of resizing browser windows, or printing...")

This is a great looking app and site, especially if you were learning as you
went.

Good luck! Adriano

~~~
marcamillion
Thanks very much. It's been a whirlwind trying to get this out the door. Now
that I have done that, I can take a step back and focus on the finer things,
like copy, etc.

I really appreciate the feedback and that makes total sense. I was trying to
get that with the headline: "Designers: Get feedback. Simply."

Is that what you got from it ?

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redrory
Sir Marc, Great to see compV is launched. Congrats on that feat. Love the
design. I'm also feeling Huey.

My 2 cents: A video demo would do wonders. You can show persons exactly what
Compversions does.

I agree with charging for it, up front. But if that's the case, show people
what they are paying for(video).

The index/imdex seemed a tad bit confusing, im sure there's a better way to
handle it.

Edit: Spelling

~~~
marcamillion
Thanks for the feedback Rory.

Fully agree about a video demo. This is an MVP, if you will...so lots of good
stuff in the months ahead.

Re the imdex issue, addressed it another comment - see here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2460771>

------
joakin
Really nice design.

Not that it matters but your index is an imdex.html :)

~~~
marcamillion
joakin....ahh you noticed :)

That was by design. A little hack to get the behavior I wanted out of Rails.
Rather than doing something else like 'marketing.html' or whatever, I tried to
stay as close to the default as possible :)

~~~
uxp
I'll bite with a few guesses. What are you getting around with this routing
hack?

Assuming you are using Devise with the conventional HomeController, and 'root
:to => "home#index"' you shouldn't have to bother with faking a resource in
the url. From your /login page, your logo links to /home/index anyways. All
the hashtags/anchor tags _should_ work. I've not had a problem with it myself.

The headers for /index.html return the same 404 resource as /adjhasdkj123123,
so I'm rather curious. Teach me something. :)

~~~
marcamillion
The main issue was that I didn't want the user to just see
compversions.com/home/index when they are logged in.

I wanted them to see compversions.com.

If I have index.html - as far as I found anyway - in my public directory, all
requests to compversions.com (logged in or not) will either redirect to
compversions/home/index or compversions.com/index.html.

So, as far as my research told me at the time (remember I am just learning
Rails still, so I could be wrong anyway) was that if I wanted logged in users
to see compversions.com when they are logged in and on the root_path, there
couldn't be a index.html, otherwise Rails routing would default to index.html.

~~~
seats
Take a look at high voltage -

<https://github.com/thoughtbot/high_voltage>

~~~
marcamillion
This looks interesting, but not sure it will do what I need - which is having
Rails re-route requests to index.html or root_path based on if they are logged
in or not...or am I missing something ?

~~~
seats
Doesn't solve your problem directly, but it's a nice way to have static pages
in your app in a manageable way.

You'd want to do something along the lines of what they show in the override
section and test for your authenticated session within the controller,
branching appropriately.

------
hajrice
Congrats Marc. Really glad to see to see compversions launched. Beautiful
design. Played with the app, really great; Especially the UX (it's terribly
simple and straightforward)

~~~
marcamillion
Thanks Emil.

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mamcnaughton
Great work Marc. The site looks GOOD. I love the color scheme, the design and
everything inbetween. Its even cooler that you bootstrapped it.

Best of luck, Matthew M

~~~
marcamillion
Thanks Matthew.

Appreciate you stopping by :)

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spicerunner
Wish I were using this rather than ELance for my current outsourced design
project. Price point might be just a tad high, but looks great.

~~~
marcamillion
Elance ? How would you use Elance vs. this ? I am really curious to see the
correlation to see if I have missed something.

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tronathan
I dont have a need for this day to day, but I was going to sign up to get
updates, check out the tool etc.

Since I dont hvae a use for it today, I figured i wouldnt really use the 14
day trial.. What I really wanted was a free version so I could come back and
use the tool when I had a need for it in my daily life.

~~~
marcamillion
Thanks for stopping by and commenting.

I fought with this, to be honest. Many people have requested a free account,
but the issue I was afraid of - and decided to try and mitigate - is having to
support a ton of free users, when I really need to get revenue coming in
through the door.

Once things settle down and I have a nice core set of paid users, then I might
consider doing that.

Who knows...this is just the first step, so expect lots of iterations from
here on out :)

------
cjus
Great name, look looking site and more importantly a valuable service
designers need. Should be a win.

~~~
marcamillion
I hope so cjus.

Btw, thanks :)

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throwaway112
I find the pricing structure a bit odd. The "Chameleon" pricing plan seems to
have no incentive to buy. For the same exact thing you cant get 3 "Gecko"
plans and save $50 ... or get more by buying two "Iguana" plans?

~~~
marcamillion
Good point. I am still playing with the pricing, and will likely adjust as
time passes and I get more feedback.

~~~
anko
One tip for pricing, make bigger plans cheaper per unit.. so let's say a unit
is a project, your base 1 unit price is $4.90 (with a minimum of 10 units) so
your 20 unit price should let you pay less per unit than $4.90, ie. it should
be less than $98. Whatever you set it to (say $80) means your new per unit
price is $80/20units = $4. so for your 30 unit price, it should be less than
30 * $4 = 120..

You need to provide an incentive to move to the next pricing level, and the
best way to do that is to make the higher levels have more relative value than
the lower ones. You work out the "value" by working out your per unit price.

~~~
marcamillion
Dude....this is brilliant on SOOOO many levels. Thank you for this.

I have been trying to wrap my head around this, but with everything else I had
to do never got a chance to really figure it out.

This comment is a major +1 from me.

Thanks again.

~~~
anko
I'm glad I could help :) Can't wait to see it when you've updated the pricing.

~~~
marcamillion
Just did. Take a look and lemme know what you think.

<http://compversions.com/imdex.html#pricing>

~~~
anko
iguana and gecko look good, but chameleon and huey are a bit off..

chameleon gives you 50% more storage and clients than iguana, but costs way
more.. $132 would give it about the same relative value, but it's $158..

I'm ignoring the number of clients cause I don't believe $26 is a good price
for 5 extra clients. maybe it is, but it's a lot less clear to the end user.

Also, another similar service that might be worth checking out (a lot more
complicated for designers but quite cool and cheaper):
<https://github.com/blog/817-behold-image-view-modes>

and here is a demo [https://github.com/cameronmcefee/Image-Diff-View-
Modes/commi...](https://github.com/cameronmcefee/Image-Diff-View-
Modes/commit/8e95f70c9c47168305970e91021072673d7cdad8)

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maxdemarzi
I like how you did the color changes with the Chameleon... looks great.

~~~
marcamillion
Thanks Max :)

~~~
maxdemarzi
I am not a designer so I have zero use for your application, so take what I
say as coming from a non-customer.

1\. Congrats on charging up front. 2\. Your price barrier feels high, you
attempted to make it easy with a 7 day trial, you can try a 1 project 1
client, 20 file free account that you can try to up-sell if you have trouble
demonstrating your value (I'm a non-customer, so hard for me to judge). 7 days
feels short specially with design projects. 3\. Move the blood sweat and tears
comment in the footer to an "about us" type of page. 4\. Move support from an
e-mail to you to a FAQ page with a "didn't answer your question, contact us
form" to avoid getting too many repeat e-mails.

~~~
marcamillion
Thanks for the feedback max.

I didn't want to make the price too low, because I am not sure how many users
I can realistically support right now (given that it is me alone). That's also
why I didn't do a free account.

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italiano40
great site, 10months to get that, was totally worth it and to know it is a
bootstrapped even cooler, good luck the site is great

~~~
marcamillion
Thanks :)

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Jabbles
Make your "free trial" text 5 times bigger.

~~~
adriano_f
Absolutely agree. I didn't even see it till it was mentioned here.

~~~
marcamillion
Agreed. Sec...will change now :)

Edit: Done. Refresh.

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aen
<http://verifyapp.com/plans>

~~~
marcamillion
Apples to Oranges.

A more appropriate comparison is their 'Notable App' -
<http://www.notableapp.com/plans>

They seem to be pretty awesome by the way. Zurb that is. They look like an
agency that 'gets it'.

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petermin
I like it a lot!

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phlux
Can you give details on how you boot-strapped and learned rails. What did you
use to learn rails, what did you find best/worst, what was your development
background prior. What confused the hell out of you / helped you most, etc....

~~~
marcamillion
Will do a series of blog posts that detail the process. It's been a hell of a
ride, and still is.

~~~
marcamillion
Btw, here is the first part of that series I promised:

[http://blog.compversions.com/building-a-webapp-tailored-
to-d...](http://blog.compversions.com/building-a-webapp-tailored-to-designers-
part)

