
Show HN: Designing Web Applications - nathanbarry
http://nathanbarry.com/webapps/
======
Irregardless
My questions as someone learning web development and always searching for new
(quality) resources: Who are you? And why should I pay you $200?

> Previously I led the software design team at a local startup, but in the
> last year I have been working independently designing and developing my own
> apps.

After seeing the $200 price tag, I expected to read something along the lines
of "My web apps have been used by over X million users", along with a few
examples. Or maybe "I built the websites for these well known companies".
Since that isn't the case, the next thing I looked for to establish your
credibility was reviews. Hmm, also missing.

For the price of the book alone ($29), I could watch 100+ hours of tutorials
on a site like Lynda or Tuts+ from a variety of developers with similar
experience. I'm having a hard time verifying that the value of the resources
matches the price tag.

Sorry if this seems overly critical, figured you might want the honest opinion
of a hesitant customer who could potentially be converted. I may still buy one
of the packages after I read through your blog some more.

~~~
nathanbarry
The worst thing is to have people not buy, but have no idea what kept them
from making the purchase. So thank you for the feedback!

I'm not someone super famous, but I have designed a lot of software
applications used by companies ranging from Johnson & Johnson to Hobby Lobby.
But they were clients of the company I used to work for (have since left),
since I now work on my own I can't call them my clients.

~~~
taude
You don't have to say those clients were yours, but you could say that you
worked on "projects for" or some other creative verbiage around that.

------
Agustus
I edited your site to solve the issues and uploaded to imgur. (The matrix is
from CrazyEgg, but take the idea). <http://imgur.com/slYOb>

Here is my walkthrough of the site:

1\. Great, exactly what I am looking for: book on designing web applications.

2\. Oooh look, Facebook, Freshbooks, and MailChimp use this, wait, no they do
not. This is graphically implied by their logos and using an established user
experience location, not happy about being tricked.

3\. Jump to packages: $200! Good day, sir.

4\. Wait, it cannot be that expensive, scroll down some more and find the
book. Now I am worried about what I am purchasing as the person trying to sell
this does not understand basic concepts of web design, tricked me, and wants a
ton of money.

5\. Head back to Hacker News to determine if anyone knows who Nathan Barry is
and if he is a reputable person.

Place your layout of prices in a pricing, side by side. The scrolling down
through the site is not helpful in making me feel better about purchasing a
design book when one does not employ basic pricing structure layouts see this
site for examples (<http://bit.ly/lVPfr4>). You could skip to a pricing
matrix, then scroll down further to see more of it.

Recognizing that you are trying to present the highest price first to drive
higher revenue, you need to reverse the order in the case of a scroll driven
price change. Get the user to the first option, the book, then the user will
see that there is more content on the page (scroll bar, images / graphics
below book option). This teaches the user that there is more below each price
mark and you would drive futher sales when a user sees the added benefit for
each item.

Another item would be to have a try the book and buy more option later. This
could be done in a constant contact format.

~~~
newbie12
I had the same reaction to the Facebook, Freshbooks, and MailChimp logo
placement. Struck me as a little shady. The book sample is excellent though,
and I'm considering the $199 package, primarily for the web app .psd.

~~~
Agustus
Reading your comment, I asked myself "There was a sample?"

Another design issue of note, I had skimmed past that portion during the
scroll down because it was not highlighted. There should be some sort of color
change.

------
t4nkd
The "complete package" gave me sticker shock, so much that I almost closed the
page then and there. It was only out of curiosity as to _why_ the $200 price
tag was worthwhile that I even kept reading to find more purchase options. It
put a bad taste in my mouth, honestly, and I'm left feeling pretty confused by
why you won't let me cherry pick my own interview+book package. I'm just
having trouble seeing the dollar value in what you've assembled, though I'm
sure if I broke out each piece of what you're offering, it'd seem like quite a
deal, no one is offering "pieces" of what you're offering, so I just see the
whole thing as overpriced.

I was excited to follow the development of this through the newsletter, but
I'm not a customer now. Maybe if you offered to trickle out the interview
content as you developed it, for some kind of $9/mo fee? I would've been on
board with that, or a similar approach. Though I guess not being a total squid
I might not have been your target, I was really just interested in what those
accomplished professionals had to say, maybe also thumbing through the book --
which while I'm at it -- I'm also not convinced provides the kind of value a
$30 price should. I was kind've under the impression you'd include some real
"how-to" meat, at least periodically, but there doesn't appear to be any of
that. I think I'd get more value out of "Don't Make Me Think" or "Rocket
Surgery Made Easy", and I could score both in a native kindle format(for $30).

I think you probably did a lot of hard work, and I'm still tempted to spend
the $200 just for the interviews; but I don't feel good enough about what I
might be getting. I saw the early version of the Ryan Singer interview and it
didn't leave a $200 impression. I hope you've had a lot more success selling
to others who really need a comprehensive resource or don't understand many of
the fundamentals, it certainly seemed like it would be more valuable for them.

Also, just as an aside, the WordPress favicon feels cheap, and worse, lazy.

~~~
nathanbarry
Thanks for the feedback. I am always trying to improve my content, sites, and
marketing.

My target market is people who are serious about web applications. In an
industry where it isn't hard to charge $100-250 an hour for design or
development work, $200 for everything included doesn't seem like a lot.

But I understand that for some people (students) that can be a ton of money,
so I am also selling the book by itself. I have no intention of competing with
standard eBook prices ($5 or $10?). It's just not worth the time it takes to
put together a book.

I am really curious to see how people react to the pricing order (highest to
lowest). So thanks for your feedback on that in particular!

~~~
flyosity
Hey Nathan, I sell e-books on iOS design, and my 2 cents re: price is to show
all the prices in the same visual area so people can see immediately that they
have a choice other than the $200. I had to scroll down pretty far past the
$200 to see that just the individual book was available (and I'd guess that a
ton of people are going to just buy the book, since it's a lot of great
content at a really great price!) so rather than lose a lot of buyers at the
$200 price point, why not gain them at a lower price point by visually
positioning all the bundles together so people can choose?

~~~
nathanbarry
Mike, Thanks for the feedback (I've read nearly every article on your site).
I'll definitely try out some different layouts for the packages. I wanted to
see what affect flipping the package order would have.

------
kaolinite
I like how you put the Facebook, FreshBooks and Mailchimp logos on there in
the same style other websites use when saying who uses their product.

~~~
tomasien
I don't know if you actually liked this or not, but I did. It displayed a deep
knowledge of how to manipulate design elements to implant an idea in a user's
head.

There's nothing dishonest about it, it's just a design element.

~~~
MikeKusold
Actually, I found it dishonest. It's the equivalent of small print to me. I'll
do a walk through of my initial reaction when I saw those logos.

1) Oh! Those companies have purchased this before to make their sites better!
If they stand behind the product then maybe I should look into buying it.

2) Hmm...they didn't purchase it. Maybe the creator of this product was part
of the design team for those websites and he knows what he is talking about.

3) Oh.....Those are just examples of web apps.

~~~
tomasien
That's an extremely narrow view of "dishonest" if "dishonest" means "made me
make an assumption that it itself clears up in English plain text in plain
view".

------
Vivtek
Different _from_ , not different _than_. This is a grammar tic I got from
Robert Heinlein, and I'm not even sure why it bugs me so much.

That said, your selling page layout is brilliant. By putting the high-ticket
options on top, you not only make the prices below them seem trivial, you
evoke a sense of loss as the potential buyer travels down the page.

Oh, and the content looks good, too, ha. Seriously - I've needed a good
design-for-rank-beginners book, and this one appears to be the one I want. I
bought the $79 package.

~~~
Jacob4u2
I've been helping as a technical editor (programming perspective) to another
book you might be interested in as well, <http://www.design4software.com/>.
It's a good introduction to design for programmers of applications, whether
they be websites or native.

~~~
nathanbarry
Looks great!

------
justjimmy
Please remove the Facebook, Mailchimp etc logos. It really leaves a bad taste
- it's a practice to show those on a landing when either the companies whose
logo are featured, are using this product/service or have said something
positive about it.

But after reading the line below it, it's just a mis-direction, felt almost
cheated. I'd highly recommend removing it.

~~~
polyfractal
Yeah, this is very misleading. The icons seem to imply "Facebook used my
service/book/advice", when in reality you just mean "Facebook is a web
service".

Either make it abundantly clear with a big headline, or scrap the icons. They
look waaay too much like social proof logos.

Edit: Looking at it again, you _do_ have an abundantly clear headline that
describes what they are. Which I didn't even see because I assumed they are
social proof logos. I'd just scrap them entirely.

------
charlieirish
It's really hard to find good concise help in this area, if Nathan's previous
book: <http://nathanbarry.com/app-design-handbook/> is anything to go by, this
should be excellent. Purchasing now.

I'm also looking forward to seeing the response from this landing page -
Nathan's normally really kind about transparency when it comes to this sort of
thing. Great job.

------
jongold
Couple of things:

\- Get rid of the MailChimp, Facebook logos etc. On scanning it's shady.

\- The whole site comes across as a bit of a skeezy sales letter. You're a
designer, you're better than that. I realise this is the favoured approach
from Kalzumeus etc but I find it really cringey.

\- Make the bundles more easily comparable. I was about to buy but got bored
scrolling up & down & up & down comparing the packages.

\- I'm a designer; will this be something I can still get value from? Are you
pitching this as 'design for hackers' (ala <http://designforhackers.com/> ) or
is it just 'stuff I've picked up from designing apps that you might like'
(which I might get value from as a designer)?

~~~
bdunn
_The whole site comes across as a bit of a skeezy sales letter. You're a
designer, you're better than that._

And this is why many designers are horrible at making websites that sell. When
I sold my first book, I tried a short-form, nicely designed landing page. I
even thought about doing it with my second book. But I always come back to the
sales letter, because _it works._

~~~
jongold
This sales-letter style seems more prevalent in eBook/video downloads than
SaaS (though we've all seen 37signals' A/B tests). Reeks of a 'PAY $200 TO SEE
HOW TO LOSE 100LBS IN 2 WEEKS'.

edit: actually, with no offence intended - your book's website is one of the
ones I was thinking of. I was seriously considering buying it from the HN
title but was totally put off by the website. I'm sure it's a fantastic book
and I'm sure I'd benefit from it, but the website left a bad taste in my
mouth.

------
nathanbarry
Hey everyone, this is my latest book on designing web applications that are
easy to use. I've spent a ton of time not only on the book itself, but also on
the video tutorials and interviews.

Interviews are included with:

Ryan Singer from 37signals, Sacha Greif from Folyo, Trent Walton from Paravel,
Sahil Lavingia from Gumroad, Jarod Furgeson from WebWaitr, Brennan Dunn from
Planscope, Patrick Mackenzie from Kalzumeus, and Jason Fried from 37signals

These are the guys who have inspired me, so I am honored to be able to include
interviews with them.

I'd love to know what you think of the book.

~~~
rob41
Congratulations! I read your last book and it helped me a lot. Good luck with
this new one.

------
kmfrk
The whole "these people are experts in CSS/HTML" shtick never works for people
who aren't already decent at web design. Instead of listing their companies,
mention some of the projects they've worked on.

I know who many of these people are, but that's because I have a lot of web
design books on my self with their name on them.

~~~
nathanbarry
I try to quickly explain what each person has done. They are all awesome
people who have put out some really fantastic work. Honestly, I am expecting
that people will recognize the names (like you did).

------
narad
@nathanbarry Quick Question: Why there is no button or call-for-action after
the last line?

" So, are you ready to buy the book now?"

~~~
nathanbarry
Another good thought. Having three packages I wasn't sure how to place it. But
I do need to add something in.

~~~
Vivtek
Why not three buttons reiterating the prices, one next to the other?

~~~
nathanbarry
I think I'll do that along with a quick comparison between the packages so
people can see the difference at a glance. Thanks!

------
rdrey
Ummm... might be my mistake, but I can't spot any indication of how long your
book is.

I did quickly look through the sample and the book seems to be very useful,
but I'd like some indication of how much of it there is. ;)

~~~
nathanbarry
The book itself is 154 pages.

------
ngokevin
Bought within minutes! Even though I don't do iOS stuff, I bought the
Designing for iOS Apps book to learn some web app design. I've been all in on
a sequel book specifically for web app design.

------
omarchowdhury
I will be purchasing this. $200 is nothing for the amount of value that can be
created in just one person's life when UI + UX skills are applied. Not sure
why all the negativity in this thread.

------
cschmidt
Any chance you're going to have the book printed? I like reading on paper,
still.

~~~
nathanbarry
I haven't found a good printer to work with. Though I would also like to get
some copies printed.

~~~
aoporto
On-demand printing may be a good option for you: <http://www.lulu.com/>

~~~
nathanbarry
That would be very expensive. Looks like at least $30 per copy.

~~~
javajosh
_> That would be very expensive. Looks like at least $30 per copy._

How do you reconcile this with your previous comment[1] in this thread:

 _My target market is people who are serious about web applications. In an
industry where it isn't hard to charge $100-250 an hour for design or
development work, $200 for everything included doesn't seem like a lot._

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4910124>

~~~
nathanbarry
$31 in expenses is a lot for a book that I am selling for $29. I'm not into
losing money on every sale. Even if I bumped up the price to $50 for the
printed book that is still a crummy margin when you factor in carrying
inventory, shipping, and everything else.

~~~
uptown
Why not bump the price up to what you'd consider a non-crummy margin,
factoring in those additional prices?

------
daem0n
Hi Nathan,

I was following the release of this book and will probably buy it shortly. I
think the reason that a lot of people are being so critical is that it's UX. I
work in UX and everyone is (or thinks they are) a UX "designer". I looked at
your sample pages and web site and thought I could learn some things from you.
I also thought it looked great, so I don't think you have anything to worry
about.

No one is going to do things exactly the same and your book doesn't come-off
as being a forceful entity on rulesets, which is nice.

I would also like to see some other pricing options - mostly because I want
the book and PSDs only, but I don't see anything wrong with your pricing
model. It scared me at first but I didn't see/notice all of the extras that
you had for sale with the book.

Anyhow, good luck, I can tell you spent a lot of time putting the material
together. This is a tough crowd but in the end most criticism, even if harsh,
will hopefully be constructive.

Enjoy the sales and focus on the real UX designers/developers ;)

------
brentm
I think you should take another look at your package overview images. The
package for $79 and the package for $199 look about the same from a glance. I
see that the packages lists different contents below but I think it should be
more obvious from the large images. Nice work though, seems nicely done.

~~~
brentm
I think it partially has to do with the scrolling. You can't really compare
the 2 packages without trying to scroll back & forth and keeping the other one
in memory. You should probably add a grid at the bottom listing all contents
on the Y axis & your packages on the X axis. The price is too high to not
really think about the purchase for most people and that would make it much
easier.

------
mgkimsal
Very bottom "So, are you ready to buy the book now?"

But no link/button/call to action - I'd need to scroll back up and parse out
which action to take from the visual stuff above. Wondering if you'd see more
conversions by putting a purchase link there too (or perhaps you've already
tried it)

------
freddywang
To be fair, $200 is really not a lot of money. For all the contents, videos,
interviews, samples, one can imagine how much effort being allocated for this.
Being famous doesn't entitle someone to be able to charge expensively.
Likewise, nothing is stopping anyone out there ("nobody" or not) to charge the
price he or she wanted to. This is what we call internet, it's completely free
market. No government or regulatory body is going to say "Hey Nathan! You are
nobody, stop charging people a bloody $200 notes for a piece advice." Let's
put some angles of perspective in, if he successfully sells 1000 copies at
$200. He will make $200k revenue. Deduct that with the cost of his labor, his
lost opportunity to work on his apps, marketing fee and the support time cost.
He will probably pocket 30-40k pure profit. What if he has to follow what
people say to price it lower at $20. Selling 1000 copies will barely cover his
cost. And where are you going to find 1000 people who will believe this $20
crap going to give you top notch advice on delivering amazing web apps UX and
design. Charge premium is a good start. Keep improving the content is a sure
way to gain you the loyalty of customers.

Back to the odd marketing strategy. Why show it here? Why HN, really? Most
will simply want something quick and simple to show the idea behind their
hacks to the community. We are frequently being shown unfurnished prototype
(indeed twitter bootstrap half the time). Anyone really serious about building
well designed and engineered UX web applications will probably have a well
funded startup with specialist UX designer onboard. Or someone must have been
a long time practitioner of UX to be bothered about putting much focus on UX.
It's not as simple as reading a book, listen to an interview, you become great
in UX. It's only through years of experience, going through iteration after
iteration of UX design tweaks, you will have a basic idea where to lead the
good UX direction. A long the way, there are still huge chances to make UX
mistakes here and there. Too simplified, or too complicated. Too plain, lack
of creative input. Too much boring UX treating every users as dummy as they
can. I am sure it will be hard for the community here to start bothering UX
before getting their hacks done. And worst, the next hacks are waiting ....

------
cnicolaou
I got the newsletter via email and headed to buy the book where I reacted same
as the majority of commenters on HN. After checking the options/prices, I am
going to put that on hold for now. Good luck though, I am sure you've put a
lot of effort into this.

For HN users who are wondering about the author, I came across this:
[http://sachagreif.com/how-nathan-barry-and-i-
sold-39k-worth-...](http://sachagreif.com/how-nathan-barry-and-i-
sold-39k-worth-of-ebooks)

------
ddewit
Nicely done Nathan! Please keep us informed about the commercial side of this,
like you did with the earlier book. It's very interesting to follow.

~~~
nathanbarry
I will definitely do that. Expect more posts on my blog with exact numbers and
lessons learned.

------
rob41
Another thought: That's a really long sales page. Have you found people
respond well to that? It's well designed, but wow is it long...

~~~
chewxy
It's actually true that people respond better to longer sales pages. It's been
an internet marketing staple for years.

~~~
dlehman
Citation?

------
gerasini
All the page design is about setting the expectations up (200$) and then
showing the, only 29$, book as a no-brainer buy.

~~~
gerasini
Now the designer of the page validates my point with his post about pricing
strategy <http://thinktraffic.net/most-common-pricing-mistake>

------
sadlyNess
It's nice seeing how you actually used the feedback from previous HN
submission & made changes(and havent been rementioned here).

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4703380>

------
aoporto
I would place buy buttons with a blurb about your money back guarantee at the
top right of the page. Ideally I want to know most of the information that
will influence my purchase above the fold or get to it easily via links.

------
benaiah
Nice! One thing I'd suggest for the landing page is a floating bar at the top
that allows you to skip around the page and shows your current position - it's
pretty easy to get lost on that huge landing page.

~~~
nathanbarry
Ooh, that's a good idea.

------
shawnjanas
Suggestion, add some sort of image/logo beside the main header statement "Are
you scratching your head wondering why people sign up for your application,
but never come back?". Makes it more believable.

------
lewispollard
This looks really fantastic, great job. How long will the promotional pricing
be available? I want the 'complete package' but won't be able to stump up the
cash for a couple of weeks.

~~~
nathanbarry
Sorry, but the promo price is just for today.

------
sgdesign
It's really hard to find good web app design resources, and Nathan has really
come out with great material.

And great landing page by the way, there's a lot you can learn from that
alone!

------
marginalboy
I was casually browsing the site, but honestly it wasn't until I came back to
the HN comments that I realized there was more than one package with more than
one price.

------
ckluis
When I see pages I like, I frequently view source just to see how it was put
together.

Is there a reason you went with all the CSS in the head instead of in an
external file?

~~~
nathanbarry
Because I wanted it to stay separate from the rest of the WordPress theme on
my site. That also makes it more portable if I need to setup the landing page
on another domain (if traffic cripples my main site).

Since it is just a single page site, I didn't feel the need to do separate
files.

I should add that I didn't code it. Got too busy with the book launch so I
hired it out.

~~~
ckluis
Thanks.

For what its worth there is 1 theory for SEO that the code to text ratio on
webpages (not apps obviously) may play an extremely minor part in ranking. If
you served the css from a cdn the page would be faster (rank higher) & better
optimized (rank higher).

I can't say it will make a difference, but it might.

------
pc86
Is it considered fair use to go through WP/Freshbooks/Mailchimp pages in a
commercial product like this?

------
Tichy
The complete package page looks a bit messy to me (messy stacks of videos and
what not).

------
chewxy
bought the book. very well designed sales page that is convincing. Too bad the
pricing seems abit wonky (50 dollar jumps is a bit weird IMO).

Ah well, I prefer reading anyways :D

------
TommyDANGerous
Nice site, pricey tag. I will wait for testimonials.

