Please roast my startup before the official launch.
Hi IH folks,
I am hoping to get some feedback on my startup from the IH community.
I have been building on my startup for almost 2 years now, it's been beta/soft-launched already and evolved into a slightly different product than the initial idea was (but what startup doesn't). It also went from B2C to B2B, which made me realize that the B2B game/marketing is much more difficult than B2C (at least for me because I have more experience with B2C). Therefore I also had less users testing the product than I would have hoped (hence less valuable feedback and direction).
There is definitely some traction already and I really do believe in the product (simplified project management for remote teams) but I am having a hard time trying to find the best possible market fit. I would like to get this right before I start spending more on marketing (and before launch).
However since I still want to add certain (in my opinion) crucial features, I did not officially launch it yet (a founder's curse probably). Now before the official launch campaign I would like to ask the IH community for some feedback/input. I would like to get it right and the IH community is one of the most engaged and helpful communities I know ❤️. Would be great if some of you can have a look and point out the negatives (and positives). The website might also be one of the things I have to improve (for a better sign-up conversion). Not sure where I can improve most, feel I might be missing something.
Here's the product: https://www.helloivy.co
Thanks a lot!
Hi Bob
I have just had a look at your landing page. Looks good but I have a few thoughts (20 years in web design here).
Logo – Everything about project management is about having things tidy and neatly stored away with minimal mess. Your logo being coloured in outside the lines doesn’t fit with that way of thinking. Small thing perhaps but every element reinforces your message.
Heading – Could maybe be snappier? “Teamwork. Solved”. Or “Collaboration. Solved”.
Subheading – “Get your everyone”…is that a typo?
Call to action – Let people know what’s beyond this button. “no credit card required” (I see further down the page it does this). Is it full unlimited use forever? What am I getting in return for my email address?
Bring social proof up. User count is good, particularly “last week” figures. But I always like to add snippets of testimonials, not full ones; “…fantastic…” “…so simple….” “…my team’s favourite….”
As someone who has tested probably 20 PM tools over the years, and not ended up using any of them, the main thing for me is my time investment in learning a new tool. They all have different structures and vocabulary…..what’s a Workspace? A Room? A Circle? And how does it all fit together in that particular tool.
I find Click-up is the worst for that. It is practically unusable.
If your product is simpler to use then hammer that home. Perhaps a comparison table of the main competitors. Perhaps your tool only requires 2 clicks to perform something whereas Click-up takes 8. Showcase the simplicity of your tool.
Maybe you can pay a brand new user to sign up and get started, and film them doing it. Then boast “from sign up to managing tasks with your team within 4 minutes”.
To help simplify the landing page, perhaps you could use tabs to showcase the different sections, almost as if they were in the tool itself. So the user would click across Task management, Docs, Weel planner and that content appears below, thus freeing up lots of scrolling and also hiding stuff they may not be bothered about.
Overall, perhaps stronger branding, more use of colour. All PM sites are essentially white with nothing to differentiate. Be the one that’s different.
Just a few quick thoughts, let me know if any questions.
Many thanks
Steve
Hi herosaurus,
Thanks for the elaborate and great feedback, I appreciate you taking the time. Very helpful.
There is indeed a typo on the homepage 😱. The page was part of an A/B test, guess I wrote this text a bit too fast. Changed!
I am testing several headings, I will definitely try something snappier. I will also give the "snippets of testimonials" a try, seems like that could work.
Focusing on the ease of use is something I am trying to do. Still trying to figure out how to showcase this best.
How would you advice me to create stronger branding? (besides the logo changes)
Thanks!
-Bob
No problem. It's a holiday weekend here in UK and I am being encouraged to not use the computer, so will come back next week with some further info.
Cheers
Steve
Hi Bob
Just one other thought. You mention the number of companies that signed up in the last week (which is great, and good transparency). Is this an increase on the week before? And the week before that? If you have an upward trend that perhaps a small graph. People love to be part of something growing, and not something that is on the decline. If you are growing I would consider mentioning it.
Achieving stronger branding and design aesthetic is a much larger subject. Good use of colour, consistency of layout and voice, content hierarchy, tone of voice.
Who would you say your audience is? Any particular business size, or niche?
Steve
Best for project tracking
Thanks @Emilyrydel!
Nice site and product!
One note: the unlimited plan card has some lorem ipsum text in the description (on mobile)
Thanks BrianJordan!
I can't find the lorem ipsum text myself. On the pricing page?
Ah it's a bit buried, may even be a page unintentionally in the navigation. On the Overview page, at the bottom, the All Products pricing card
https://www.helloivy.co/home-00
I found it! Wow thanks. It's a page I am testing, definitely overlooked this! Thanks!
Love the look and feel. Loaded nice and fast for me - perhaps a regional thing?
We currently use TeamWork and is along the lines of ClickUp and its over the top for what we want. Hello Ivy is much simpler which I do like, but It may be too simple for our use.
I really like the week planner but it only shows tasks for the current project so Monday may be empty when in reality Monday is full of tasks for another project. There's also a bug where if you're looking at the week planner and you change the project, the week planner doesn't update - you have to move to a different area and then back to the week planner to see it updated. Might be a good to have an option to show all/current project on the week planner?
We have loads of projects although we have some which we pin as they are used repeatedly.
A like to have the ability to have sub tasks - that way I can split up bug tasks into smaller chunks.
Apart from that I would leave TeamWork for yours today!
Please add me to your mailing list so I am kept up to date with progress: jamie@syon.com
Hi Jamie,
Thanks for your feedback and great compliments! Good to know that you're an "almost" user, we're getting there!
Regarding the week planner issue, this was actually something we had solved in earlier versions of the product. We had a multi-select dropdown for projects (in the week planner) which allowed you to view all the projects' events in the same week planner. We took this out because it was slightly confusing to be in a specific project but you're looking at events/deadlines of other projects. However we indeed never solved this problem, but we actually have a solution for this (in our roadmap) which will be implemented within the coming 2 weeks. We're creating a "main" calendar which can show what ever project you want (also multiple) + your private events. 🙌
Regarding the bug, good catch! I'll make sure that gets fixed next week!
Sub-tasks are also on the (to-do) list, however this might take a little longer because we have some other priorities for the coming 5-6 weeks.
I'll add you to mailing list!
Thanks Jamie.
Awesome! Can I ask what you've built your platform on? IE language, frameworks, etc?
Yo Bob, I'm Paulo 🙂 first of all congrats on the job done so far, whether you made it alone or with a small team, it's really good for a beta. IMHO, I think this is more than ready for a decent launch.
Not everything is perfect (design and feature-wise), but it's already good enough for you to try it out and start getting customers/users feedback. Which will lead the direction of new features you should focus on.
After trying it out, I'm even considering using it for my studio. We use ClickUp, that as you said is extremely cluttered. As we work with branding, design and web projects, a cleaner and more fluid tool, would be awesome for our day-to-day PM.
That said, would also love to connect with you on LinkedIn. You can add me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulogabrielsa/
All the luck and let's keep in touch 🙌
Cheers,
Paulo
Hi Paulo,
Thanks for your message and the kind words!
I'm probably a bit too much of perfectionist to already launch it haha. I know I can get some extra conversion percentages if I still include some things from my to-do list, so I am waiting for those to finish. But I have set a hard deadline for myself now :). I am already testing with small groups of users and they give me valuable info but mostly about the website, not so much about the product yet (But I guess if the website is not right your product will never get their either, it's like the "entrance door").
ClickUp is very powerful but it's too much of a Swiss army knife for most companies. Most businesses don't need all these features but they are still showing up everywhere. I really believe a focused, cleaner workspace can increase productivity and leads from chaos to zen.
Cheers.
-Bob
ps. I don't have a LinkedIn account.
LOVE the landing page, though it did take a bit to load
Thanks!
Yes I need to fix this. Seems to be Vimeo that is causing some of this.
The landing page looks very nice to me.
I'm not in the market for such a product, so to be honest, the product didn't really make me go "wow, I need to use this". Take what you will from that, but I feel like it could communicate better why I would want to use this over any other of the hundreds of collaboration all-in-one tools there are out there. What makes this different?
A couple nitpicks:
Hi Allenu,
Thanks for your message.
Out of curiosity, is there a product (SaaS Project Management) that gives you the "WOW, I need this?". If so, I am going to have a look there for some inspiration. If you would be in the market for such a product, would you think you'll be interested?
Yes, the hand-logo thing I heard before. I was not aware of this, but it helps that the products are in different industries.
Hi Bob
Love the idea of a simple tool to tackle this. It definitely feels BaseCamp inspired, but that's not a bad thing.
I would say the main thing that needs work is the performance of the website - especially on mobile.
I would recommend you run it through PageSpeed Insights which will give you a bunch of recommendations in terms of how you can improve the perf. This is the report generated for Hello Ivy home page:
https://pagespeed.web.dev/report?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.helloivy.co%2F
Hope that's helpful!
Cheers,
Dave
Helpful! Thanks.
Hi Bob, FYI your large video triggers an horizontal scroll on my screen, so the page is no longer responsive.
I am excited for you to (re) launch!
My target is SMBs (what we in France would call B2E), so maybe you'll find that market easier to target. In my experience it's much simpler than both B2C (less customer service, less need for low prices at high scale) or B2B (no red tape, the person browsing the site is the decision-maker is the user).
Sébastien
Thanks for telling me about this! I will have a look at this.
Great work Bob! Love the design of your product, looks sleek!
A couple of feedbacks:
On my 2017 Macbook Pro with Brave browser, each of your page takes at least 3 seconds to load. The screen is completely blank while I wait (I first thought it was broken). Maybe you could put a spinner for a quick fix or take the time to dig into why this is happening. Here is a quick recording of my screen https://drive.google.com/file/d/1l8Ua70KAsy6j3KMb4wQ8yn_At1RXhWLE/view?usp=sharing
On the why-hello-ivy page: In the 4th step, the block of text is hard to read visually. Would be better IMO to justify the text and maybe outline the most important part (like "no more switching between dozens of apps".
Also, just as a FYI: The logo from the popular email service "Hey" from basecamp looks similar to yours. I first thought this was one of their product. Definitely not a block, just wanted to let you know as it can be confusing.
Great work!
Thanks for the compliments! Also, very helpful feedback! I had no idea mu website loaded this slow, somehow on my laptop and google pagespeed it seems better.
The HEY logo looks indeed similar, even some similar coloring 😕. I had no idea.
how do you differntiate from existing players like https://clickup.com/ ?
Hi pdyc,
Thanks for your comment!
There are indeed many project management tools out there. I would say ClickUp is the opposite of what I am trying to achieve. I think ClickUp is extremely cluttered and quite chaotic which can be overwhelming and distracting. It does have more functionality for sure, it goes a bit deeper than hello ivy.
However, the idea of hello ivy is to cater for smaller (remote) teams that are looking for simplified (but powerful), user-friendly and beautiful project management.
Hope this answers your question!
-Bob
i see thanks for clarifying it.
Quick update!
Thanks for the roast! Super helpful feedback.
I officially launched the product today🥳: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/hello-ivy
It's not mobile/tablet friendly. Requires scrolling
Do you mean that a mobile website should not require scrolling?
I mean, it doesn't appear to be responsive for mobile or tablet. If a user opens in one of those, they're more likely to navigate away.
Ah like that, makes sense. Somehow on my own iPhone (11 PRO) it's fully responsive and everything fits. May I ask what device you used?