

Rate my web application: Perq - matterco
http://www.perqworks.com

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patio11
With regards to pricing: I think you may want to simplify that. In particular,
from the perspective of an organization with 20 employees, there is no
difference between an HR expenditure of $20 per month and $100 per month. $80
is rounding error on a single employee's overtime pay. (Seriously. Compare the
cost of your system to, e.g., payroll systems.) However, you have _four_ plans
which attempt to make distinctions between non-distinct things.

Assuming you're in the right range on current pricing, I'd be thinking more
along the lines of:

Free for 3

$20 for 10

$100 for 100

CALL for more

Now you only have to administer three options, and if you convert anybody with
20 employees you win much bigger.

Note the CALL option. There is an awful lot to be said for the CALL option in
enterprise sales. Realistically speaking, price is not going to be what
prevents your solution from being adopted at large corporations. However, and
this might be a bit of a shocker for you, they might not deal with variable
pricing that well. (It is easier to get my boss to sign off on 2 * $X,000 per
year than to sign off on twelve payments which will average out to $X,000 per
year. Think of how much extra work that makes for him in working the company
bureaucracy. First he has to attach a projection. Then he has to document how
he made the projection. Then he'll remember "Oh, shucks, if this ever
materially changes I'm going to have to update the projection, but updating
projections doesn't bring in my projects or get me my next promotion.")

Incidentally: you list a bunch of features, not benefits, on the front page.
Nobody, not even HR drones, wakes up in the morning and says "You know what I
want to do today? Create office holiday schedules!" Let me hum a few bars:
decrease costs, increase compliance with company policies, reduce workplace
conflicts stemming from miscommunication about leave.

~~~
andrewljohnson
I don't understand how you can say $80 is a rounding error, and then suggest
pricing tiers that that have an $80 gap. My brain started clanging with
cognitive dissonance!

Also, I think advising him to have a "Call for more" option is bad advice.
Don't introduce that kind of friction at the 101st users - that's not right.
Maybe, just MAYBE, he wants to say call for 1000+, but even in this case, I
think it will be better to be transparent about pricing.

~~~
patio11
Sorry for the clanging. As I indicated, I think that the correct anchor for
this pricing is "HR expenditures" (like payroll) not "cheap web services
anybody in the organization can start using on their own initiative as long as
they have a credit card". (Why do I think that? Because I think you need HR
buy-in to sell any plan costing more than $20 / month, so you might as well
charge them through the nose to let them know you're serious.) However, I was
focusing on the need for simplification in that point, so I picked price
points that they demonstrated they'd be more or less comfortable with charging
for my example.

I would be interested in hearing your reasons why the CALL option is "not
right". Here are my reasons why it is:

As it stands currently, they will not sell any plans whatsoever to companies
with 100+ users. Not a single one. The reason is that when you get to 100+
users you have just won yourself a ticket aboard the USS Enterprise Sales.
There are now a few hundred obstacles standing in front of the sale where
there weren't when you were selling to a man who routinely invites all his
employees over for dinner. If you haven't done Enterprise Sales before, you
_don't know what these obstacles are yet_. So, let the prospective customers
who you're going to crash and burn trying to sell to tell you what their
objections are.

For example, hypothetically suppose one of my day job's customers was looking
for a solution to this, and you took my advice and had them call you. Here's
the first question they're going to ask: "What is your policy for compliance
with the Personal Information Protection Act?" And the answer presumably
sounds like "Umm... let me Google that." Now, let's be honest: you're going to
totally crash and burn with that sales call. But you've learned something
useful: a) there is a Personal Information Protection Act and b) somebody who
was interested enough in my software to pick up the phone/send an email/etc
asked about it first, which means that presumably my answer was important in
making a buying decision. So, presumably, if you got it into your head "I
really want to sell to Japanese universities" you'd a) research the law b)
implement the technical and legal measures you'd need to comply with it and c)
prominently say so on your website. Then, the next time someone called you and
(having totally failed to read your site in a manner typical of all customers
everywhere) asked about the Personal Information Protection Act, you'd have an
answer ready to go, so you could get totally humbled by their _second_
question this time.

Repeat a few dozen times and you might actually succeed in making Enterprise
Sales.

(Edit: I had misremembered the English name of the law I cited.)

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marcamillion
This is cool. Sounds like you hit on an annoyance that HR
managers/administrators have probably be struggling with for a long time.
Especially for the companies large enough to have a headache, but not large
enough to create a custom software solution.

Care to share some info on how this was created? Some of the technologies
behind it, how long it took you, any insight would be cool. Would also love to
hear how the launch went - e.g. a nice blog post with some interesting follow-
up statistics on all sorts of HN related metrics would be nice to see.

I like how easy it is for me to know immediately what it is and what problem
it solves.

Me, personally, I find the green on white copy - right below the main
centerpiece of the main page - a bit hard on the eyes. Maybe that green could
be a SHADE darker - so there is more contrast?

Just being nit-picky here, I feel like some of the copy is a bit wordy and
some of the word choices are a bit awkward. E.g. 'Personable Time Off'....what
on earth is that? After looking through the site, I get what you are going
for, but I am not sure if that is the best way to say it.

The interface definitely looks nice though, and for the most part the copy is
relatively easy to read.

I am also struggling to decide whether or not there is too much information on
the main page. At first, I was like 'Whoa!' this is a lot, but I realized that
you are just saying the same thing many different ways without me knowing you
are saying it many different ways until I understand everything - if that
makes sense. So I guess in a way it's good, because before even moving from
the first page I understood what the app is about, but I would have preferred
if the same could be explained without so many words.

Just my $0.02.

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songism
This is beautiful. And the main site is built on top of Wordpress? Impressive.

A couple tips:

* Make the writing on your blog (and your other pages) more colloquial. And enable comments on your blog. Feedback is incredibly valuable to a newly formed company.

Example on the main page: "For over seven years, Matter has developed 'better
experiences' in products and services. Perq comes from our own fruitless
search..."

should be: "Perq was inspired by our own need..."

* Not so much text on the main page. As another commenter said, I don't want to see a list of every feature that you provide. _If_ I'm interested in your product after the first page _then_ I'll want to see a detailed feature list.

* Take the pop-up that comes up when you click "View Details" on the Tour page, and embed it into the page. Put it front and center and let all of the other text fall below it. It's very close to a demo and it speaks much louder than pure text.

* On the homepage, everything below the masthead feels superfluous because it's so bright and small.

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aw3c2
Argh! Tiny white text on saturated green. Tiny light green text on white. Tiny
grey text on grey stripes. Also way too much text.

Also be careful with serif fonts. Sure, they are trendy but usually they are
harder to read on monitors.

Shouldn't "3 for Free!" rather be "Free for 3!"?

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rbranson
It looks very nice, but the only thing I'd say is that I'd hate to have to
distribute YET ANOTHER username/password to everyone on staff, even for a
small firm. It would be cool if there was something that could just use email
or if it could integrate with LDAP, etc.

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milestinsley
Put a huge button on your home page that lets users straight into the actual
application _without_ _any_ signup. There are so many sites that require sign
up (I know yours is only 3/4 fields), it becomes off-putting, no matter how
minimal.

Just make it so unbelievably easy for people to start playing with your app by
just letting them use the thing immediately. Then, you can do all sorts of
conversion stuff to turn visitors into users with an free/paid account etc.

Also, there are both 'Signup' and 'Join Account' buttons on the homepage. The
only way I could understand what 'Join Account' meant was to hover over it.
Why not just have one signup button, then as part of that process determine if
the user wants to join an existing account. This way the user only has one
choice and no ambiguity.

It's looking really great. Nice work.

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ajb
For large companies, you're competing with peoplesoft. Peoplesofts UI is shit,
in my opinion, but then I'm only the guy trying to book his holiday with it,
rather than the HR people who bought it. What it offers them is an integrated
solution. I assume it plugs into payroll etc. It also does expenses, yearly
appraisal, yadda yadda. I don't know how you're going to compete with that.

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trusko
I like it a lot. I am looking at a solutions that would help us to track time
off (not time tracking itself). Perq has very attractive pricing (10x cheaper
than other solutions, I am looking at tracking time off for 50+ employees).
Design is very nice and smooth. Good work!

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muxxa
About the light green type: darken the green text until the average color of
the block (type + white background) matches the current color of the text

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paraschopra
I found 'Signup' and 'Create Account' confusing. You may want to work on the
text to avoid confusion.

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devilangel
nice design and clear product selling point especially in usability area.

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ableal
Consider that middle-aged managers are probably not eagle-eyed - light green
text on white is not ideal, as already pointed out.

A very few may have a fond thought to give to a former holder of that name:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PERQ>

P.S.: the 'Works with' part is more important than the out-of-the-way corner
where it is tucked ...

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codemechanic
nice

