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Ask HN: please review my site - Marrily.com
51–60 of 73 posts
Re: Ask HN: please review my site - Marrily.com
#52Related to pricing, your pricing page has a 'Free' option, but you said you are not going the freemium route. I'm assuming that you have just not updated the page yet. In the comments you mentioned $12 a month. Seems strange to offer this as a monthly service. I'd rather just pay a single price as a user. What happens after the wedding? Do they have to cancel? Since there is a definitive end date to the usefulness of…
Totally agree; monthly fees make little sense. A big one-time fee might be reasonable in theory given that weddings are expensive anyway, but tricky if users cant see the value without using the service (a lot cheaper than a dress or a cake; but they're necessities and you know what you're ordering).
I'd have thought advertising or big affiliate commissions from wedding service/gift providers would be an easier way to monetise this
Re: Ask HN: please review my site - Marrily.com
#53Why not jump on the url 2.0 bandwagon and get http://marri.ly ? It's not registered ;)
I think Marrily.com has a much better brand quality than marri.ly does. It's easier to pronounce too, marrily-dot-com (and you can also type marryly.com and get redirected to the main site) than to pronounce "marr[i|y]-dot-ly". People will probably get hung up at the i in the word "marri", since there can be 2 different spellings: marri or marry. Too bad I couldn't register "merrily" (and its variation: merryly). Mer…
I'd snap it up anyway and use it for links posted to Twitter.
Re: Ask HN: please review my site - Marrily.com
#54I imagine what most potential customers would ask is, what does Marrily.com do better than TheKnot.com?
I have to admit, TheKnot has an enormous amount of resources, tips, and articles. They are probably the biggest name in the industry, while Marrily is a one-man product. Marrily probably won't have that much wedding resources as TheKnot does, but I'll add more and more resources to the site until it truly become a good stop for people to plan their weddings.
During the development process, I got an advice from Roy Rodenstein (one of the guys from AngelHackers) to do further market researchs. This advice was probably one of the best ones that I've got. I put up a survey (http://marrily.com/survey) and ran a couple campaigns on Facebook (total cost: $200). I got about 20+ responses, and most of them either used or heard of TheKnot.com. The responses were about 50% hated it, 30% said "it was decent", and 20% said "Loved it". I probably need to come back to the survey for more accurate numbers, but basically the survey confirmed my thought that TheKnot is a bit over-crowded, and sold-out. Marrily is built to be user-centric and keep things as simple as possible.
In terms of features, the biggest difference between Marrily and TheKnot is probably the contact/guests management, and the seating arrangement (the rest is probably pretty standard which you can find similar features at a lot of other productivity applications). Personally I'm truly proud of the Seating Arrangement feature that I built for Marrily.
Basically I will respect my users, and I'll do what's best for them, instead of selling out and bombarding them with ads and resources that users won't need. Users will probably use Marrily as their main planning tool, and TheKnots and other sites to be other sources of inspirations. Wedding industry is a big pie, and I think Marrily will co-exist nicely with other sites out there.
Re: Ask HN: please review my site - Marrily.com
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Marrily.com has a much better brand quality than marri.ly does. It's easier to pronounce too, marrily-dot-com (and you can also type marryly.com and get redirected to the main site) than to pronounce "marr[i|y]-dot-ly". People will probably get hung up at the i in the word "marri", since there can be 2 different spellings: marri or marry. Too bad I couldn't register "merrily" (and its variation: merryly). Mer…
I'd snap it up anyway and use it for links posted to Twitter.
Good call! I just bought it at https://libyanspider.com for $75/year.
Re: Ask HN: please review my site - Marrily.com
#56I imagine what most potential customers would ask is, what does Marrily.com do better than TheKnot.com?
As a user I'll tell you what:
The knot is more like a bride magazine, like a catalog, I get lost in too much advertisement.
Marrily is about getting things done, everything I need to do (information related) in one place. I hope he keeps it that way.
In short, to get things done I'll use Marrily, to shop I'll use the knot.
Re: Ask HN: please review my site - Marrily.com
#57Related to pricing, your pricing page has a 'Free' option, but you said you are not going the freemium route. I'm assuming that you have just not updated the page yet. In the comments you mentioned $12 a month. Seems strange to offer this as a monthly service. I'd rather just pay a single price as a user. What happens after the wedding? Do they have to cancel? Since there is a definitive end date to the usefulness of…
Totally agree; monthly fees make little sense. A big one-time fee might be reasonable in theory given that weddings are expensive anyway, but tricky if users cant see the value without using the service (a lot cheaper than a dress or a cake; but they're necessities and you know what you're ordering). I'd have thought advertising or big affiliate commissions from wedding service/gift providers would be an easier way t…
My thinking is that a wedding on average is planned 6 months in advanced. So at $12.79/month (this is the pricing point I have in mind), the total will be $76.74 per user. Of course it doesn't make sense for users to pay after their wedding is over. My plan is to "freeze" the account if once user decided to stop paying, however, I'd still let users to login and visit their account page, they just can't make any changes (37Signals actually force you to pay to get back in once you stop the billing, which isn't very nice). And there will be a 14-day trial (instead of 30 as it said on the site at the moment), but I'll run A/B test on the trial time to see which one is better. 30 days maybe too long and I wouldn't get paid fast enough to survive.
But I can totally see that user will want to go with a prepaid package, say 3-month pass at $30 ($8.37 saved) and they don't have to worry about getting charged accidentally after this 3-month period is over. Or a 6-month package for $50, which is even more savings.
I still pretty open about the pricing at the moment, but I know I want to go with a price of $12.79/month (and this number is inline with the response from my survey). A/B split tests will probably tell me which direction to go in terms of the different pricing packages.
TheKnot.com monetize with advertising and affiliation, and in my opinion, despised being a really rich site, their user experience isn't as great. People who took my survey confirmed this, and a few people replied as "hated it" for having too much ads. Since I want to focus on delivering a solid app, I think having a price tag on the site will help me focus more on building quality software, rather than squeezing ads money out of the traffic.
And thanks for the feedback! I really appreciate it.
Re: Ask HN: please review my site - Marrily.com
#58Too much text. I know you want to get your app out and screenshots are in the works, but it still must be said: show don't tell. Features are all text, need visuals. When I sign up and enter the admin I am lost. Takes me a while to figure out what to do. A guided quickstart guide would be helpful. Navigation menus that are directed either by arrows or numbers also help. I suppose if I already paid then I will take th…
I agree, screenshots or visual guide will be a very good addition. Get some popcorn and enjoy, i found this lecture pretty good! -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW4MwvgW_ww&feature=chann...
Re: Ask HN: please review my site - Marrily.com
#59I imagine what most potential customers would ask is, what does Marrily.com do better than TheKnot.com?
As a user I'll tell you what: The knot is more like a bride magazine, like a catalog, I get lost in too much advertisement. Marrily is about getting things done, everything I need to do (information related) in one place. I hope he keeps it that way. In short, to get things done I'll use Marrily, to shop I'll use the knot.
This is the way I think about the difference between Marrily and TheKnot too. And it's my goal to build Marrily to be really simple and useful, but I'll gradually add more and more resources to help users get inspirations as well.
I will implement more mobile features as well so that will be another differentiating factor. So far I haven't seen any iPhone app for wedding planning that combines a solid web app and a mobile app together. Marrily will fill in this gap nicely.
Re: Ask HN: please review my site - Marrily.com
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm, signing up I noticed a lot of flash objects (ad-blocked) representing some text. Can you make it a jpg or does it serve a different purpose? Remember, hackers don't like flash. Edit: oh gawd, they're everywhere! no no no, please change them to jpgs as soon as you can! With ad/flash/block your site looks weird.
I'll rip out the sIFR headings to make the site more anti-flash-friendly. I don't use AdBlock or Flashblock so I didn't test the site out without Flash. Thanks for the good catch!
I'm a cufon fan. I'm not sure what areas are blocked but as long as it's not tons of paragraphs, cufon should be instant and is a lot crisper than Google's font directory.