Your site looks sketchy.
No one I know who's looking for a job will add monthly expenses to his already tight budget.
I think you should build a community first or people find no value on what you are proposing to them.
Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?
261–270 of 325 posts
Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?
#2621. Get a native speaker to proofread your website copy 2. The title of the page is "Sieve Pro - The best management tool for" (missing a "freelancers")? 3. Some people might like it, but I'm always turned off when websites are using SV characters as profile placeholders - makes the site itself seem like a joke 4. As others have said, develop your own signup form instead of using TypeForm - TypeForm always gives me an…
What grammatical or typographical errors prompt the advice to get someone to proofread the website? I'm asking because I see this advice quite often, and most of the times I can't find anything wrong. Could someone point out specific errors that I miss? Perhaps I need to get an editor myself.
First, I'd remove the implication that the customer is not professional. Assume your customer _is_ professional, but needs help with some bureaucratic functions. The phrase "automatic streamlined process for managerial tasks like client onboarding, signing NDA and requirement collection" is pretty terrible and confusedly jargony. Who is signing the NDA? Unclear. Who is actually benefits from the service? Unclear. IS NDA signing and requirement collection a part of the onboarding process, or some other thing? Unclear.
"We help professional freelancers provide a streamlined process for creating new client accounts. Collecting your client's requirements and NDA forms can be managed directly from your own website."
Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?
#263I did not read the comments first, instead I tried out your site. It's the typeform. PERIOD. It throws you off.
Whoa yeah that signup form killed the experience for me. A definite turn off. Could build a much, much simpler and elegant form.
Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?
#264Wow there is such valuable advice in this entire thread. After you churn through it hopefully you'll be able to get a better handle on where your product is.
For me it just doesn't solve any problem.
Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?
#265> It's not the product, I strongly believe we have a decent product. Check your dissonance. It’s the product. There are numerous things I could pick holes in here, most noteably that the product tries to do far too much and probably doesn’t do one thing brilliantly. Personally I’m not going to invest my valuable time in finding out if that’s true. The ask is too big. That said, nobody here is going to be able to give…
If I needed their product, I wouldn't be ready to freelance.
Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
1) It should not be used to collect credit card details. 2) If you claim to cater to professionals, you should not be using typeform for the signup process. 3) I am clearly not in the target audience, but I'll share my concerns : I would never use a service that hacks together a bunch of third party tools. It's great from the founders point of view (MVP, fail fast, early validation, hustle and whatever else), but it…
What's wrong with collecting credit card details with Typeform?
Not being PCI compliant, for one.
Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?
#267Let's try to visit your site, step by step. First screen - A gratuitous 3D animation shows sample pages from your site. Why didn't you spend that effort to make the pages look better? - There's a profile cover page featuring a portrait of a white hipster with a sad expression, "Nelson Bighetti" from "Silicon Valley". It looks like LinkedIn, but more importantly it is strangely prominent. Moreover, who is he? A mock p…
Back to the features after taking a break. In a few hours the sample pages in the 3D splash have disappeared, leaving more space for Nelson Bighetti (could it be a Silicon Valley publicity stunt rather than an earnest startup?) and a video has been added.
- Call scheduling: the calendar is another thing that perspective customers are likely to be already managing on their own in probably better ways. For example, without a critical dependency on a startup and with sophisticated software supporting some useful forms of integration and collaboration.
- Complete client process: this must be the part with a link to more details. Oh, wait, no link. No further explanation. A fairly ineffective strategy if you want to convince prospects that you sell something worth buying: basic professional services need to be dependable, not to titillate curiosity.
Further scrolling: pricing
$29 per month for what, exactly? A simple pricing plan usually facilitates customer acquisition, but how can the service be so one-size-fits-all?
How many people would think they are light users for which $29 is a high price?
On the other hand, a very busy personal assistant alone should approach and exceed the cost of a full time employee: is there a risk of being dismissed, as a money-losing customer, at the delicate time when my freelancing activity is blooming and many clients call?
I also tried the "sign up" button. I expected a form, instead there is a "start" button and a screenshot of what appears to be a LinkedIn-like public profile page of Miranda Betts. I am not Miranda Betts, why am I seeing that?
The "start" button opens an ugly form (maybe it looks better on a smartphone) demanding name, email and (surprise!) LinkedIn URL. No other details, like for example location, company type, businees needs. "We'll get back soon". This means they'll harvest information from LinkedIn and, at best, guess something wrong.
Evidently, the difference of attitude between communicating with customers and investigating them isn't clear to everybody.
Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?
#268Emperor Akbar, on a whim, once asked his minister Birbal to find him ten fools. You can get the gist here (Source: http://folklore.usc.edu/?p=24202 ). Birbal stumbled across the third fool while the latter was looking for something at night. The guy was looking under a streetlamp and couldn't seem to find whatever he was looking for. Birbal asked him what he was looking for so frantically. He explained that he lost h…
> Collect an email address just before anyone clicks get started. That's a sure way to collect a bunch of mailinator.com addresses.
I never want to giveaway my email address either, unless it's really important.
I'm hundreds of times more likely to sign up via Google Account, sometimes Facebook.
So much easier and no activation emails etc...
Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?
#269I've built 5 products, all are selling just fine.
The first rule is to make for the customer which are desperate enough to pay for your solution. The second rule is to have a product. You don't even need perfect sales pages and all that jazz. The third rule is to create a marketing angle and spend on ads.
Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are giving other people websites yet you cannot build your own form?
It was a part of our lean method :) We actually had tons of questions and branches there before, and using typeform helped us launch faster.
I dont think you are getting it, you have to drink your own kool aid. You are literally building websites for others and yet cannot build your own in time.
So why should anyone trust you?