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Show HN: Mocksup, my mockup prototyping & review webapp

mocksup.com

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Re: Show HN: Mocksup, my mockup prototyping & review webapp

#21

Post by sghael »

paraschopra wrote: post #8
adamhowell wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we released a huge update yesterday and are just now getting to the point where we have enough features to make the unlimited plan compelling. We undercut our competition by a good amount, so we've certainly been talking about it.

Please don't undercut your competition on price. I remember a quote by Tony Wright (of RescueTime) where he said that "Getting traffic on and off is okay but for a business to survive, it needs a predictable source of potential customers and leads". If you are selling your service for $19/month, you will be forced to keep your cost of acquiring new customers less than that. Which of course means less budget for marke…

It's nearly impossible to have a meaningful pricing discussion, because initial pricing is guessing. But it does feel like you may be leaving money on the table.

You (should) know your market better than anyone else, but be careful on competing with price. Competing with price is sometimes a crutch for actual marketing and a wishful shortcut in demonstration of value. Because, as mostly hackers, generally speaking we aren't great at marketing. And so, subconciously IMO what happens is we think "i'll let someone else market the idea with their higher price product, and then i'll swoop in with the cheaper offering".

Unfortunately, it doesn't work out that storybook. Markets aren't that transparent, and there is always an asymmetry in information. You're going to have to demonstrate real value and claw your way into relevance. So initially you will have to do a lot of "hand-to-hand combat" style marketing. And find key differentiators you can lead with that isn't price.

How about pricing it at $49 and then running a promo for initial new users? First 100 customers get it at $19?

As an aside, I spent $79 on Balsamiq last year. I think that is the most I've spent on software in the last two years (I stick with mostly open source / freeware). But it was a no-brainer for me... their marketing materials convinced me that the ROI was there. The value for me was probably much higher, but past $99 you enter some psychological pricing barriers.

Re: Show HN: Mocksup, my mockup prototyping & review webapp

#22

Post by mmelin »

adamhowell wrote: post #3
michael_dorfman wrote: post #2

This looks very slick. I think you might be leaving some money on the table in terms of the pricing, though-- I imagine that heavy users would be willing to pay more than $19/month for the "Unlimited" plan.

Yeah, we released a huge update yesterday and are just now getting to the point where we have enough features to make the unlimited plan compelling. We undercut our competition by a good amount, so we've certainly been talking about it.

I think this is one of those products where a combination of one-off and subscription pricing makes a lot of sense. This lets you raise subscription prices significantly while still keeping a way to get some money out of customers who're scared of monthly subscriptions. It also makes for a fantastic upsell position when you can tell a returning one-off customer how much they'd save by getting a subscription.

Re: Show HN: Mocksup, my mockup prototyping & review webapp

#23

Post by michael_dorfman »

bombs wrote: post #14
michael_dorfman wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely. I was thinking $49/month would be the sweet spot, but that's without any real analysis.

It's a lot easier to reduce the price than to raise it!

Not always. Reducing the price on a subscription-based product like this can make the early adopters feel like suckers-- whereas it's easy to grandfather them in on a raise in prices.

Re: Show HN: Mocksup, my mockup prototyping & review webapp

#25

Post by tnorthcutt »

paraschopra wrote: post #8
adamhowell wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we released a huge update yesterday and are just now getting to the point where we have enough features to make the unlimited plan compelling. We undercut our competition by a good amount, so we've certainly been talking about it.

Please don't undercut your competition on price. I remember a quote by Tony Wright (of RescueTime) where he said that "Getting traffic on and off is okay but for a business to survive, it needs a predictable source of potential customers and leads". If you are selling your service for $19/month, you will be forced to keep your cost of acquiring new customers less than that. Which of course means less budget for marke…

To be fair, $19/month only means that the cost of acquiring a new customer must on average be less than the current value of $19/month multiplied by the average time a customer remains a customer (at that price point). Obviously that can't be known on the front end, of course. Any thoughts on what a reasonable customer acquisition cost is for a service like this?

Re: Show HN: Mocksup, my mockup prototyping & review webapp

#28

Post by Mc_Big_G »

michael_dorfman wrote: post #23
bombs wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot easier to reduce the price than to raise it!

Not always. Reducing the price on a subscription-based product like this can make the early adopters feel like suckers-- whereas it's easy to grandfather them in on a raise in prices.

How do you feel about retroactively applying the new, lower cost to early adopters? I'm on the verge of doing some extensive A/B price testing and plan to do this with any users who buy at a higher price.

Re: Show HN: Mocksup, my mockup prototyping & review webapp

#29

Post by adamhowell »

duck wrote: post #27

In IE7 I get a 406 error when trying to view the examples: This error (HTTP 406 Not Acceptable) means that Internet Explorer was able to receive information from the website you visited, but the information was not in a format that Internet Explorer can display.

Yes, sorry about that, we saw that last night and will hopefully fix it tonight. Had never seen that error before and I think it only happens on IE7.

Re: Show HN: Mocksup, my mockup prototyping & review webapp

#30

Post by richlittlehale »

Great website - very simple + nice interface which is huge for a website like this. I especially like the contributor's functionality where you can send out the mockups for feedback. In the past, where I've been on teams that had to send out jpgs of the designs plus maybe a surveymonkey survey, your website puts it all together for the necessary feedback people need.

Even better is the create a "clickable" website part. I didn't really see that until I made an account (though I just looked back and saw it on the homepage). I think it's really important to have this functionality. I used to copy jpgs into powerpoint to try to simulate this somewhat.

I agree with the comments about pricing above perhaps being a bit low. When I saw this "Compare" page: http://mocksup.com/compare, it's obvious that Mocksup has a lot more features, but is lot cheaper than the other services (none of which I had heard of). I guess on the one hand low pricing is good, but it's almost too low because it made me think, why would these others be able to price so much higher? That almost made me want to go to the other sites and compare, when I probably would have just signed up with yours right away (I didn't though as I was really impressed with Mocksup). Great stuff over all. I'm a new user.

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