Ask IH: Feedback on landing page for productivity app
Hi fellow hackers,
I'm loving the hustle and the community here! Me and a friend have been steadily working on a project for the past 9 months. In preparation for our initial release, we've now published our first landing page.
I'd love to hear your feedback on it: https://www.clearminute.com
I'm particularly interested on the following points:
- Is the value proposition clearly explained?
- How do you perceive the pricing?
- Are the app screenshots understandable / useful ?
- What do you think of the name of the service? Easy to remember?
- Anything else specific you've noticed that can be improved?
Thanks a lot, your feedback is greatly appreciated!
Martin
Really nice-looking landing page.
Sure, I get it.
Seems like for someone who is maniacally optimizing their time this could be worthwhile, but I'm not one of those folks so it seems expensive to me.
The screenshot was what made it clear for me. The copy at the top made sense but I didn't know how it accomplished "automated productivity and time tracking." The screenshot crystallized it.
Yeah it's a good name/domain for this space.
From the landing page it looks like it's just recording every app/website I've opened. That's really interesting, but I wonder what the value would be long term, i.e. it seems like the "wow" factor of reading what essentially boils down to an audit of my computer activity would wear off pretty quickly. The more interesting thing to me would be what you do with that data given a large enough sample. You probably have features that exploit said data, but that's not apparent to me yet.
Thanks a lot for your feedback!
You have a great point about the long-term benefit not being apparent from the landing page. We will have to think of ways to highlight it better.
Nice.
I like the product. At a couple points in my life it would have been very useful to me, though I have better focus now.
Some nitpicks:
The language is a bit stilted - it's clear enough but it's not engaging and it doesn't flow.
The look and feel is a little enterprisey for a B2C app.
It's a Mac OS app. Why does it have a web dashboard?
Is "MacOS Exclusively" a benefit? It's listed with the benefits.
I got the idea quickly, but when I read "All tracking of websites is paused..." I had to reset myself for a second. I had thought it was a bit like a timesheet app, where you'd start and stop the timer manually. You need to explain this more clearly - this is the killer feature.
Pricing - all the advice I've seen says don't discount. Especially don't discount on launch. If the value proposition stacks up you shouldn't need to.
"Get notified" isn't a clear enough call to action. I didn't even see it. I got all the way to the end of the page, saw the signup box and thought, hmmm, surely there's a CTA higher up.
I bet you're losing signups right now.
Have a look at Panic Software (panic.com) and Omni Group (omnigroup.com) for a couple of companies who've been making and selling Mac software for a long time, extremely successfully.
HTH
Rory
Rory, thanks for the constructive input!
It’s been quite challenging to explain some of the features by text and images. We’ll most likely do a short video in the future to showcase the fully automated tracking, web dashboard and some other non-obvious features.
My idea with the “MacOS Exclusively” text was to clearly communicate that we don’t support other operating systems and avoid false expectations. You’re correct, it doesn’t fit well in that section. I’ve replaced it with an actual feature: Automated Tracking.
The planned call to action text after launch is “Start free trial”. Currently my only ideas are “Get notified” or “Sign up”. I’ll try with the latter! I believe moving the call to action button to the left side would also help.
I fully agree with your points on the look & feel. We’ll have to work more on that to avoid defaulting into the enterprisey look. Idea for an article: “How to design and market software that doesn’t feel enterprisey” :)
Cheers,
Martin
Cool website. As an RT user it would be great to know how you guys differ from RT.
Thanks for the interest. I will attempt to explain our key points of differentiation.
Context based tracking.
Contexts will be very powerful and core feature of our product. It makes sense, for example, to perceive the same activity as productive or distracting depending on the context you're currently in. It's possible to create contexts for every project you're working on in order to track your productivity in each of them separately.
Trends.
We have a whole section dedicated to short and long-term trends. For example, you'll be able to see how your productivity on a specific project has developed over the months. This isn't quite ready yet, but we'll have strong focus on AI / Data Engineering to give the best possible insights and tips for improvement.
Community.
Our shareable productivity cards are part of this. More will come in the future. For example, we're planning to connect users and trends in a unique way.
These are good features. One of the problems I face is differentiating between videos watched on youtube. Technical videos time well spent. Time spent on the next viral thing a bit of a waste of time.
Best of luck.
Thanks!
We are differentiating videos on youtube on per channel basis. It's possible to set specific channels to count as productive.
Feedback from a competitor: it's too expensive even compared to RT and software sites don't like to write about Mac-only apps.
Thanks for the feedback, Ivan. I love what you're doing with Qbserve. Our intention is not to compete with RT on price. We're focusing on very different set of features in the long-term and trying to find our own niche.
Feel free to reach out, we would be happy to exchange tips & knowledge.
Thanks! I would prefer to stay public because it could benefit other IH readers. Yes, I understand that price could be higher but I can't get your unique selling point right now.
The time tracking market is crazy saturated and there are old players providing free plans and dozens of integrations. RT, Toggl, HubStaff, Harvest get routinely mentioned in productivity articles because they're on top of search results. Also they can pay a lot for AdWords.
Because of the number of time tracking software, even getting to a "The best N time trackers for X" list is a serious challenge. Then being Mac-only makes an app useful for 12% of the desktop users worldwide (20% in developed countries).
Maybe you have some awesome viral or B2B strategy in plans but I feel like it can be incredibly hard to become visible without differentiating from the big players and being premium at the same time (the pricing, targeting towards the owners of expensive devices).
Check my response to @amehra, there I've touched upon some of our unique selling propositions.
You're making valid points and we’re well aware of the market and the difficulties getting into it. However, we believe there’s still a lot of room for innovation here. Especially in B2C.
I don’t like to speak much publicly before having anything to show but we’ll be experimenting with some ideas over the next year and hopefully learn a lot in the process. It will be a journey but we are confident in our ability to find a unique niche in that market.
Cool, it probably should be more important on the site. I saw contexts below but on our own site most of the visitors don't read these "columns of features" at all.
Also maybe Gyrosco.pe can take you as an integration since the app is web-based. Quantified Self movement likes their dashboard a lot.
I'm not trying to discourage, just picking on potential blindspots (also not saying you certainly have them :D).
Best of luck!