

Ask HN: Please review my startup: TheSunnyTrail - octavdruta

Hello guys &#38; girls, we are looking for a helping hand from the HN community (especially from people that run web apps that use the SaaS model)<p>We enable founders / CEOs to easily to track the financial performance of their web apps in order to make better business &#38; product decisions.<p>Here's how it works: Companies can use our API to send us transactions (signups, payments, upgrades, downgrades, cancellations) occurring in their webapp. Our web interface then allows them to keep track of metrics such as churn, customer lifetime value and others.<p>We'd love to explore whether this is something that might be helpful to you and hear your feedback.<p>You can check out the product over here: http://www.thesunnytrail.com
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coderdude
Nice site design. It's certainly unique and you stand apart from the crowd.

I just registered an account and I'm playing with it right now. I really,
really like the getting started flow after the registration page. Just pick
your programming language, then you're presented with the methods for
installing the API wrappers, then you get your API key and help on making
calls, handling errors, etc. I'm not left in the dark on how to proceed -- I'm
shown what to do next.

The API wrapper for Python looks simple and easy to use. I could easily see
myself using this for my next Web app.

For some reason on <https://www.thesunnytrail.com/start>, while logged-in, I
am unable to click on the Stream, Overview, or Plans links below the logo.
Also, there is no page title.

The settings page is dead-simple -- I like that.

Without being able to click on those other links that's all I could test so
far. However, so far so good! Good luck, I think this has a lot of potential.

Edit: Played with the demo account. The dashboard looks good. I really like
the stream feature. I think that's something I'd have open in a browser tab,
going back to it every 10 minutes or so to refresh the page and see if
anything has happened. It definitely appeals to the "stats update addict" in
me.

~~~
kolektiv
I rarely comment on these threads, but I had a quick look at yours and I like
it a lot. It's fresh, nicely designed (although some of it could be a little
"tighter" perhaps although I'd struggle to quantify that). I also think it
fulfills a useful niche. I think it's going to live or die by the price points
to some degree - companies who can afford X probably already have the
capabilities of visualising this data, where X is the problematic point, if
that makes sense.

But I think there's a niche there. It's certainly something I'd consider using
if a project had this requirement.

Only one design point I'm not so keen on - the cutting off of the descender on
the "y" of sunny trail on internal pages - it just feels a little jarring to
my eye. Fairly minor quibble though - nice project!

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yuvadam
Clickable: <http://www.thesunnytrail.com>

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karlclement
Hello there,

First of all, the overall design is beautiful, bright and esthetically
pleasing. I enjoy the use of the bright colors and vector graphics to make the
home page more appealing.

Although I do think that there should be more information on the home page.
Probably a tabbed format or a simple slideshow to display the main features of
the application. I understand you are aiming for simplicity but I personally
enjoy a more feature filled application.

When visitors access the "Features" page, you can add a more detailed
description explaining how the application works. Maybe a step by step process
to setting up the API.

The "Pricing" page is great, simple and answers the most common questions
users might have.

The "Developers" page is also very instructive. Although as a PHP developer, I
would like to be able to access a wrapper example or a step by step tutorial
explaining the process. Maybe a tutorial to match the Demo Dashboard setup.

For the link to the blog, I would have liked to see a dedicated blog for
thesunnytrail.com. Seems unprofessional. Could be a simple Wordpress
installation with a matching theme. You could even use a simpler platform such
as Posterous and create a matching theme.

I enjoyed the simple and straightforward "Dashboard", but the sidebar seems
empty. Maybe add additional submenu items horizontally under the main tab
bar.The interactive jQuery charts are a must.

Overall, I think this is a fantastic idea and a fantastic application. Great
job. I think it will be very popular for any web startup. Good luck!

~~~
octavdruta
Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback Karl!

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booduh
UI comments:

\- Separate the primary call-to-action from everything else. On your homepage,
the bright orange call-to-action is competing for attention. Perhaps things
can be rearranged such that the primary call-to-action is in the direct
reading path of the user. Also, I strongly recommend de-emphasizing/gray-
scaling other links/logos (for example, the green link, "Check out the
Sunnytrail dashboard", is the first action I saw).

\- Play up the video a bit more. Make the video placeholder smaller, then
place it where the "green hills" are now (the hills take up too much space,
for very little value added).

\- Tighten up your "tag line". What are the revenue metrics? Be specific and
concise when presenting the purpose/value of your product. A useful formula:
3-7 (basically, keep it short) words to grab the user, then one supporting
sentence below.

I think messaging will be your best advantage here. If you can communicate
clearly and concisely exactly what you are doing and how you make it EASY to
do, then you may find yourself better off.

PS: to be honest, I actually don't know what I can do with these metrics. I
need to be sold.

~~~
octavdruta
thanks for sharing your feedback!

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bradleyjoyce
I absolutely love the idea and the look/feel of this app. When I first heard
about it I thought... this is what I've been looking for.. an easy way to auto
capture and generate all these important metrics!

So I got started immediately with integrating it into TweetSaver.
Unfortunately, I ran into a show stopper pretty quick.

When passing a signup event, they require you to send a unique username. This
was a major bummer since for the free level of my app, users are not required
to give an email address and in general emails may not be unique to a user in
the system. This essentially renders sunnytrail unusable for me.

The best part though is that co-founder Octav is always in the live chat on
the site, so I explained my situation and he said they would take a look to
see if there is a better solution. I'm anxious to see if they can make some
changes that will allow me to use their service!

~~~
andreisavu
Hi Brad! I'm glad you like Sunnytrail. Your problem can be easily solved. I
suppose that you are generating for each users some sort of unique ID. My
advice is to use that to generate an username (if not already available) and a
dummy email address. You should be able to update those later when that
customer upgrades to a paid plan. TweetSaver looks great! Get back to us on
email if you've got more questions.

~~~
bradleyjoyce
that feels pretty hacky to be honest.

the real issue is that one person may have multiple accounts in the app, and
they may want to use the same email address for all accounts... I have no
reason to enforce a unique email address.

It's odd that Sunnytrail would when there is usually a common unique
identifier across all apps for users.. user id

~~~
andreisavu
Sunnytrail does not enforce an unique email address or an unique username. We
are tracking users based on the supplied internal user ID (or an email address
hash if an internal user ID is not provided).

~~~
bradleyjoyce
hmm, I'm pretty sure that's what Octav had told me in chat.. either way you
require an email address...

    
    
        RuntimeError: The request is invalid: {"message": "invalid JSON message", "errors": [["", "A valid email address is mandatory"]]}

~~~
andreisavu
required but not unique. just generate a dummy one based on the user id.

~~~
bradleyjoyce
so just really curious.. what's the reasoning behind requiring it?

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andreisavu
we are planning to add some features that depend on that email address (some
sort of advanced client profile)

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iantimothy
Looks like an implementation of some of the ideas in this article -
[http://thinkvitamin.com/business/how-to-track-six-key-
metric...](http://thinkvitamin.com/business/how-to-track-six-key-metrics-for-
your-web-app/) . Will definitely give your application a look when I create my
own SaaS application.

~~~
andreisavu
Exactly and that's just the beginning. We are working on adding more metrics
and better visualizations.

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rjrodger
Agreed, site design is very nice.

Any plans for node.js support? I would install today if you had that :)

One minor UX quibble: after signup, it's not so obvious that my registration
has succeeded if I have to step out of the linear flow - e.g. to read the API
docs. You need a "Hi Foo" message somewhere.

~~~
andreisavu
I believe you can write a wrapper in node.js in minutes. Check the raw API
docs at <https://www.thesunnytrail.com/developers> I would do it myself but
I'm not familiar with node.js. Let's get in touch. You can find me at
andrei@thesunnytrail.com

~~~
rjrodger
coding it up now :)

~~~
rjrodger
<https://github.com/rjrodger/sunnytrail>

~~~
geekfactor
And this is why HN is fucking awesome.

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andreyvit
Octav, I've spent a bit of time staring at your signup page because it wasn't
clear if you're asking for my full name or for a login (here —
<http://cl.ly/1E2e1S3B2y2J3R0N2r3U>).

Other than that, looks terrific.

~~~
octavdruta
We're asking for a username (for login) rather than your full name :-)

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rjrodger
You kinda also need a proper About Us page - photos, bios, investors? etc.
Where are you based?

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coderdude
Honest question: Does anyone really care about seeing photos and bios of
people in the company? I don't think I've ever looked that information up,
even if I pay that company money. I agree though that there should be some
kind of about page on the site. They also need to list their privacy policy
and possibly a terms of use page as well.

~~~
gyardley
Honest answer: yes, I care. Like the privacy policy and terms of use,
executive photos and bios are one of my 'this is a real company and therefore
it's safe to pay them money' filters. It's not as important as things like SSL
on the login page or not sending back my password in plaintext, but it still
matters.

~~~
andreisavu
Honest answer: I also care. It's not like we are trying to hide something.
Most of the time Octav it's available on the Live Chat and we write individual
emails to all the users that signup for the service. As side note security is
really important for us and we are taking all the measures needed to ensure
data privacy.

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octavdruta
Thanks, everyone for sharing your ideas / comments / questions! Keep'em coming
:-) If any of you wants to get in touch via email you can find my address over
here: <http://scr.im/sunnytrail>

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dlsay
Very nice. I spend so much of my time designing reporting like this or doing
it manually in excel. I especially like the cohort reporting. Im launching a
new product now and will seriously look at a this. Any details on the pricing?

~~~
octavdruta
Not at this moment. We are going to offer pricing tiers based on the size of
your userbase.

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subbu
Beautiful design. It definitely addresses a problem. Pricing seems to be on
the higher side. But then again I wouldn't mind paying that if my own product
had revenues and could afford it.

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unohoo
There is a market for this no doubt about it. Although several startups I know
prefer to do this internally - for privacy reasons.

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smoody
This is a great example of someone finding a nice, untapped niche that was
staring us all in the face. Well done!

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kyawsoelin1
nice good

