Let me just compliment the design of your website, with design being not just the visuals, but the structure, presentation and the content as well. It is clean, simple (but not simplistic) and comes across as a frontend of a company with a substance. Not to technical, not too fluffy, good balance. I would however expand the About section to add some specifics - where and whos.
Show HN: A web-based Excel/Database hybrid
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Re: Show HN: A web-based Excel/Database hybrid
#22Google Fusion Table is very similar to this, however, their API documentation is not very good in my opinion. I think a product like this is very useful if you want to give a client access to their database in the form of a spreadsheet.
Re: Show HN: A web-based Excel/Database hybrid
#23It took me a long time to figure out what it actually is. Similar to what other commenters have mentioned, the three things I'd recommend focusing on are: 1) Stupidly simple messaging. To do this, talk to the people that are already using it and ask them how they'd describe it to someone who's not that tech-savvy. Try and phrase what they say as close to word-for-word as you can. "Supercharge your database developmen…
OK, let's try this for a title.
"Build your database with online spreadsheet"
I've already updated this to the website.
Re: Show HN: A web-based Excel/Database hybrid
#24A couple of thoughts:
Is Javascript really the language to use when you're seemingly trying to talk to non-developers - either small business owners or business analysts at larger companies?
I can see lots of uses for Ragic, but I don't know any business analyst types who'll just knock out some Javascript code to do a function, when they're fairly happy to use Visual Basic for Applications.
Finally, your samples all seem relatively small, which is understandable, but you don't mention how large a data set you can cope with - a lot of Excel based apps now seem to have 100,000s of rows of data (which is why they end up so slow).
Re: Show HN: A web-based Excel/Database hybrid
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Got it. We've put the simple demo and tutorial as a automatically installed application in your account when you registered. Looks like we need more clear explanation even before the registration. We tried to focus on the benefits of Ragic to encourage registration, but it looks like it's not clear enough "why" our product can bring this benefit.
From a user's standpoint, I think you're focusing too much on trying to get me to register. I won't even get to the demo if it requires me to register. I get it from your perspective, you want to get their info so you can follow up, etc. It's just risky since a lot of people won't get to the "Aha" moment and will just end up leaving.
This is correct. I didn't register, so I didn't demo.
In 15 minutes this app will disappear from my mind.
Re: Show HN: A web-based Excel/Database hybrid
#26Also see http://ethercalc.com
Re: Show HN: A web-based Excel/Database hybrid
#27The app seems pretty slow, it cannot be perceptibly slower than Excel for this project to kick off. You can find lots of low hanging fruits by running the Chrome audits.
Re: Show HN: A web-based Excel/Database hybrid
#28you should hire a native english speaker to write your marketing copy
Re: Show HN: A web-based Excel/Database hybrid
#29I think you can also charge a lot more than you currently do
Re: Show HN: A web-based Excel/Database hybrid
#30It took me a long time to figure out what it actually is. Similar to what other commenters have mentioned, the three things I'd recommend focusing on are: 1) Stupidly simple messaging. To do this, talk to the people that are already using it and ask them how they'd describe it to someone who's not that tech-savvy. Try and phrase what they say as close to word-for-word as you can. "Supercharge your database developmen…
OK, let's try this for a title. "Build your database with online spreadsheet" I've already updated this to the website.
That doesn't quite read correctly. "Build your database with an online spreadsheet" or "Create your database as easily as a spreadsheet" or "Build with the power of a database and the ease of a spreadsheet"
Ps. Love the idea for the project, I have been looking out for something like this for a while.