Happy New Year Indie Hackers!
After slogging early morning, nights and weekends around my family and full time dev job, I have finally reached the point where I feel like I am ready to receive some feedback on my side project!
I would be most grateful if you could give me some honest feedback and any suggestions for improvement.
Is it clear what the product does and does the copy convey the message clearly?
Many thanks
Looks good.
I was confused by the hero image, I initially thought it was supposed to be metrics on my how many documents a user had generated? But then I got to the section on reporting and had to rethink - I guess you're showing a html doc that is about to be converted?
I think the pricing section has too many features listed, especially when they're all the same. When I see that many, I assume that its to identify what is extra with each level. I think you'll find if you check out some "best practices" for pricing, they stipulate not overloading users with info here - leads to paralysis.
As a dev, my very first thought was it was for creating code documentation. Then I realized it was document/pdf generation, and got thrown off a bit when it said "mail" instead of "email". I would only use "email" so people don't think it includes mailing documents.
Some low hanging fruit! Thanks made a quick change as suggested!
Some UX nits:
To see header on mobile I have to scroll up to top, please show header based on user intention
The 2 color scheme is nice but there's still a big wall of white text. A little dialing in is needed imo.
The giant locked document icon is doing nothing for me as a developer.
Simple pricing with 7+ bullet points means it's not simple. Hide that in a see benefits expansion
Two different colors for free trial button? Be consistent.
I'm not too crazy about the positioning here. Show me as a developer how to do this. Make it straightforward. I'm a developer, show me the code step by step, not the PDF url, or don't advertise at me.
Imo charge more, $19 per 1k API requests is straightforward, with a call to action for "need more? Contact me"
Edit: all these comments come from mobile on a Pixel XL. I think the product is cool. Nice work.
Hey thanks so much for your suggestions. Much appreciated! I implemented a few. Still some work to do. Padlock gone, pricing revised and simplified. Tried to break up the text. Cheers!
I think it looks great.
I've built similar but bespoke services a couple times myself – 1) to send PDF reports from a mobile app to email (the backend service receives JSON, generates PDF, sends it) 2) to generate and send invoices. With that in mind, the things I looked for were:
what template syntax it uses? There was a sample in screenshot, but would be nice to explicitly mention the specific syntax that's being used
how is privacy handled? Was happy to see the "Privacy first" section. Something to consider for future would be GDPR compliance (if it's already in place, mention it!) and HIPAA compliance and being willing to sign BAAs. These are not trivial to implement properly, especially if it's an early morning / late night project. But both would open more use cases for potential customers, so I think they are worth considering.
Good luck with Docamatic!
Hey @cuu508 for the response! With regard to template syntax, if you are making use of one of the predefined templates you just fire JSON and you get your document back. If generating your own document from HTML, you post a URL or raw HTML markup. The screenshot was more for illustration. Potentially a bit confusing. I have been working my way through GDPR compliance, hopefully get that checked off the list soon. Thanks!
Ah OK, understand it now. Yes, the screenshot with template syntax confused me – I assumed I would be able to define my own templates with placeholders for JSON data, and the templates would be stored in my Docamatic account.
Thankfully I haven't yet needed to make a PDF in the code that I've written but I have heard that it's hard! Seems like a good problem to solve.
I'd recommend changing the photo above the fold to something showing off that you convert various inputs into PDF and email them.
Your prices are too low! Businesses pay lots of money for software and even more for software developers. Your service saves them heaps of time and money developing their own PDF pipeline. Think about how long it took to build Docamatic, that's only part of the value you are bringing to businesses! Charge at least $100/mo for the cheapest plan and $250/mo for the medium plan.
Consider adding a "Contact Us" plan with "platinum" support and SAML/OAuth SSO. You don't have to have that stuff coded up now, you can code it as you negotiate the deals.
Overall, I think there's a tiny bit too much technical detail on the landing page but you do say it's for developers. Really great looking page. Good luck!
Hi @robby, thanks for taking the time to respond! Yeah it’s a problem I have encountered many times in my day job. Building PDFs was always one of my dreaded tasks so this felt like the perfect problem for me to solve.
Am I making the classic under-pricing mistake that we all hear about in the podcasts!? I’m not sure I have the confidence to go so with the prices high right off the bat…fewer higher paying customers certainly sounds more attractive. Definitely something for me to mull over! Great idea with the contact us / platinum support. I will implement this idea. Thank you!