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Show HN: We want to become India's TurboTax. Feedback?

cleartax.in

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Re: Show HN: We want to become India's TurboTax. Feedback?

#11

Post by architgupta »

masnick wrote: post #4

Check out this demo video: http://cleartax.in/meta/demo I wish taxes in the US were this simple. I've been thinking for a long time that some good UI/UX designers should be in charge of redoing the US tax code and forms. If it's too complicated to be usable/understandable by a person without special training, then it shouldn't go in the tax code.

India is attempting to simplify the tax code a whole lot. The government was trying to remove some of the complex tax deductions scenarios. There was a lot of hue and cry from the people affected. The government backed off and kept the deductions.

So its a very tough balancing act I think with tax code reform.

Re: Show HN: We want to become India's TurboTax. Feedback?

#12

Post by mikaelgramont »

While it is good that you kept the UI very lean, you would probably benefit from having a UI/UX guy help you with making the app feel a bit more 'dressed up'. Currently this looks like a developer designed it (I should know, I suffer from the same problem).

Also, having worked on pretty much the exact same product for the French market, one thing I remember people liked was help sections. By that, I mean big long blobs of text that explain the law in detail. On each form page you could display the relevant explainations, and then compile that into a searchable index, and even use that on dedicated pages for SEO purposes.

Oh and maybe you wanna say 'the easy way [to do your taxes]', rather than 'an easy way'.

Re: Show HN: We want to become India's TurboTax. Feedback?

#13

Post by architgupta »

mikaelgramont wrote: post #12

While it is good that you kept the UI very lean, you would probably benefit from having a UI/UX guy help you with making the app feel a bit more 'dressed up'. Currently this looks like a developer designed it (I should know, I suffer from the same problem). Also, having worked on pretty much the exact same product for the French market, one thing I remember people liked was help sections. By that, I mean big long blo…

Mikael,

Can you elaborate a little bit on what you mean by "dressed up". I am looking for feedback here :-)

Yes its mostly a developer driven UI.

About Help Section: I am continuously building out the help section from what people ask on our support aliases.

About SEO: Excellent tip. We have seen traffic come to our few blog entries on certain long tail google queries. So we will be working on this next.

I don't see your email on your profile. Maybe I can pick your brains about what you did for the French Market.

Re: Show HN: We want to become India's TurboTax. Feedback?

#14

Post by architgupta »

copper wrote: post #5

Just curious: how much would I have to pay to get cleartax pro? Also, you might want to fix the Mr Bose example: "ClearTax (an Income Tax website) rode to his resuce". I'm not entirely sure that I consider the story to be a positive endorsement, by the way :) It seems too contrived to be true. Edit: I found out there's a demo video from HN. You might want to make that link a tiny bit more prominent. I love the video,…

We are still arriving at a good pricing model.

Right now we charge from $5.5 to $30 for professional CA support. (CA in India is similar to a CPA in the US)

Re: Show HN: We want to become India's TurboTax. Feedback?

#15

Post by mikerg87 »

Two technical things if you are really serious. Localization. Make sure you can support the 22 official languages. And you need a mobile strategy. Mos of your potential users are going to come from. When you consider that brazil had more notebook shipments than India though the population is 1/5th. By my estimation, in India the mobile phone us the Internet.

Re: Show HN: We want to become India's TurboTax. Feedback?

#16

Post by mikaelgramont »

architgupta wrote: post #13
mikaelgramont wrote: post #12

While it is good that you kept the UI very lean, you would probably benefit from having a UI/UX guy help you with making the app feel a bit more 'dressed up'. Currently this looks like a developer designed it (I should know, I suffer from the same problem). Also, having worked on pretty much the exact same product for the French market, one thing I remember people liked was help sections. By that, I mean big long blo…

Mikael, Can you elaborate a little bit on what you mean by "dressed up". I am looking for feedback here :-) Yes its mostly a developer driven UI. About Help Section: I am continuously building out the help section from what people ask on our support aliases. About SEO: Excellent tip. We have seen traffic come to our few blog entries on certain long tail google queries. So we will be working on this next. I don't see…

By 'dressed up', I mean choose a set of colors (say 3) and use them for recurring elements in your pages (titles, questions, etc). Try to use colors and white space to visually separate questions, rather than borders (ex: the legend tag uses borders). Use colored backgrounds to give a sense of vertical space. Also, most sites have a footer, that helps give a sense of space too.

I personnaly would stay away from using yellow/blue/pink/green on the same page (at 1:00 in the video).

I can send you my email, but I don't see yours in your profile either :p

Re: Show HN: We want to become India's TurboTax. Feedback?

#17

Post by architgupta »

mikaelgramont wrote: post #16
architgupta wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mikael, Can you elaborate a little bit on what you mean by "dressed up". I am looking for feedback here :-) Yes its mostly a developer driven UI. About Help Section: I am continuously building out the help section from what people ask on our support aliases. About SEO: Excellent tip. We have seen traffic come to our few blog entries on certain long tail google queries. So we will be working on this next. I don't see…

By 'dressed up', I mean choose a set of colors (say 3) and use them for recurring elements in your pages (titles, questions, etc). Try to use colors and white space to visually separate questions, rather than borders (ex: the legend tag uses borders). Use colored backgrounds to give a sense of vertical space. Also, most sites have a footer, that helps give a sense of space too. I personnaly would stay away from using…

Feedback noted.

I just added my email id to the profile. Thanks.

Re: Show HN: We want to become India's TurboTax. Feedback?

#18

Post by w1ntermute »

mikerg87 wrote: post #15

Two technical things if you are really serious. Localization. Make sure you can support the 22 official languages. And you need a mobile strategy. Mos of your potential users are going to come from. When you consider that brazil had more notebook shipments than India though the population is 1/5th. By my estimation, in India the mobile phone us the Internet.

I don't know what the rules are like in India, but in America you don't have to pay taxes if your income is below a certain amount. I'm guessing that most of the people who don't know English are going to be in that lowest tax bracket.
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