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Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

rentpost.com

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Re: Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

#71

Post by solutionyogi »

Website looks great but the copy needs some serious work.

The main phrase:

Start Simplifying Rent™ in the RentPost Cloud

If you make the lady at my leasing office read this, she will be like 'What????'

Connect with tenants effortlessly

I don't think the landlord wants to connect with the tenant. He is interested in collecting rent.

"We're just getting warmed up; get on the bandwagon."

Why should I care that you are warming up?

You don't want to invest in yesterday's technology.

I don't care about technology, I care about how you can solve my problems.

We want to work with you to continue to build RentPost to best fit your needs; we listen!

So you are suggesting that RentPost may not fit my needs.

I think you are in the same market as this software:

http://www.landlordmax.com/

Look at their website. It's not pretty like yours, but the website copy is all about the customer's needs/problems.

E.g.

Find out who's late paying your rents in seconds.

Over 100 reports at your fingertips for you to analyze how your properties are doing within seconds.

Good luck.

Re: Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

#72

Post by jacquesm »

DanBlake wrote: post #50

I own with my father a 30 unit building. With that, let me just address the tagline: "Connect with tenants effortlessly, automate rent with online rent collection, organize work orders, and much more!" - Connect with tenants effortlessly - Not a good thing, Usually leads to excess work orders, more "asks" and petty squabbles about this and that. - Automate rent with online rent collection - Not sure how this is going…

That's as good an advertisement for 'iterate' early and often as we'll see around here. Two years of development and that's the first response you give, I guess either you're not the target market or maybe they should have connected with actual users a bit earlier.

So this makes me wonder, was this product developed on the 'they will come' methodology or was there actual end-user involvement and piloting with early adopters during the development phase?

If the latter then you're simply not the target market.

Where I live if you have a property that is 'to let' you contract out the handling of all the details to an agency that manages a large number of properties and you just pocket the cash every month.

Re: Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

#73

Post by mgw »

oojacoboo wrote: post #39
javan wrote: post #20

I would change the "Few Goodies" wording on the Take the Tour page; it feels like there's very few goodies. "Highlights" or even "A Few Goodies" works better.

wow yea, I thought for sure that said "A Few Goodies" :/ I dont' like that section all together though... needs redoing.

There's also a typo on the tour page in the 'Few Goodies' section. You wrote 'Fuly' instead of 'Fully'.

Other feedback: I am overwhelmed how great your design is.

Re: Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

#74

Post by adamzochowski »

darwinGod wrote: post #47
marknutter wrote: post #8

The design is sick. Wonderfully balance color scheme, beautiful call-to action buttons (I clicked "see pricing" a few times just because I was compelled to), and I love that it's iPad and iPhone compatible out of the gate. These are my initial impressions, I didn't dive too much into the content. But looks great on the surface!

"The design is sick" - think there may be a typo there, reading your comment- "slick"? :P

I think sick is the new wicked/cool/insane.

Re: Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

#76

Post by lrm242 »

oojacoboo wrote: post #59
DanBlake wrote: post #50

I own with my father a 30 unit building. With that, let me just address the tagline: "Connect with tenants effortlessly, automate rent with online rent collection, organize work orders, and much more!" - Connect with tenants effortlessly - Not a good thing, Usually leads to excess work orders, more "asks" and petty squabbles about this and that. - Automate rent with online rent collection - Not sure how this is going…

If you want to take your business seriously and stay organized and stay on top of things, aside from rolling out your own system, there is no other way. You can't keep up with it all. I'd address each of these things but I am tied down at the moment. Basically, it sounds like it isn't for you, and it won't be for everyone.

What about the way he's currently doing it? Status-quo is a viable, and often the toughest, competitor.

Re: Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

#77

Post by tbgvi »

Love the site, unfortunately I'm definitely not in your target market :) One quick & easily implemented suggestion for you: put your phone number in a more prominent place.

My company targets business owners as well, and at first I buried our phone number on the contact or about page. After talking with some customers I decided to not only make it more prominent, but to put it at the top of every page. Best change I ever made, the conversion rate of people who call us is astronomical.

Business owners, especially ones in 'offline' industries, often want to hear your voice before they decide to work with you. Anyways thats just my 2 cents, congrats on the launch!

Re: Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

#78

Post by oojacoboo »

karanr wrote: post #42
oojacoboo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we won't get entire market saturation over night, no. So, yes, you are right, there are technical hurdles, but we believe that the market is large enough right now, at it's current state to support this company. Our competitors agree, and our traction thus far hasn't proved any different. This is something we will address as we grow, but for now, we are pleased with our traction.

Take it from someone who has pounded the pavement doing sales for my previous start-up, selling online lunch ordering service to restaurant owners, there is a lot of merit to what the parent's and grand parent's comments. You would be surprised how much many people despise technology. I think its because many of them were early adopters for various tech services sold to them by slick salesmen in the early days of sof…

thanks for that. We do realize for deeper market penetration we will likely need an active sales team. We are happy with healthy online, technical user, adoption at the moment though as we establish our base.

Re: Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

#79

Post by theoreticalee »

DanBlake wrote: post #50

I own with my father a 30 unit building. With that, let me just address the tagline: "Connect with tenants effortlessly, automate rent with online rent collection, organize work orders, and much more!" - Connect with tenants effortlessly - Not a good thing, Usually leads to excess work orders, more "asks" and petty squabbles about this and that. - Automate rent with online rent collection - Not sure how this is going…

Good feedback.

Setting up tenants for an online account is optional. Heh, I wouldn't want to create more work either. However, if tenants are setup w/ an online account w/ rental collection online, the amount of paperwork would be slashed to a fraction. Every thing would automatically be digitized and collected, and your staff that normally collects the 800+ checks a month (400 units * 2 tenants) will have more time to sit at the local starbucks and browse hacker news :). Oh, and that is for non 'turn' months. 1000+ unit managers spend weeks during turn. We can turn those weeks into days :)

Re: Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

#80

Post by pkananen »

DanBlake wrote: post #68
pkananen wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to say it, but most of the descriptions you provide about yourself as a landlord typify why people often dislike them.

Uh, ok. This is a product marketed to land lords, not to tenants. I am giving the opinion for the target. Im sure the same thing could be said about attorneys. Its the way the world works. Tenants like asking for misc bullshit and landlords hate doing them.

Or, tenants like a nice place to live, and landlords don't like providing that?
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