Ask HN: Please review my new app StatusDashboard | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Please review my new app StatusDashboard

statusdashboard.com

2 pointsatldev4 comments

"Make something someone specific needs, launch fast, let users show you what to change, change it, repeat last two." -PG

Summary: StatusDashboard is a hosted app that let's companies easily build a status dashboard for external services like SaaS applications and APIs or internal IT services like email, phone, wireless internet, etc. (similar to Google Apps Status Dashboard or Amazon EC2). The dashboard can be shared by link or embedded into an company's web-site.

There are plenty of alternatives (including rolling your own and open source offerings). But the target market for this product just wants it up and running now without any hassle.

Goals of project:

-Address a pain point I had (prevent help desk flooding when a service goes down)

-Learn RoR (Looked at Ruby for the first time 3 weeks ago...loving it so far)

-Learn day-to-day operations for the basic SaaS components, before I launch my "real product": * Hosting (Heroku) * Payment Gateways (Authorize.net) * Recurring Billing (Chargify) * Support (ZenDesk) * Mail Transport (SendGrid) * Mailing List Mgmt (MailChimp) * Lots of other things (Adwords, marketing, analytics, community feedback, etc.)

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

I would suggest a demo link be available instead-of/next-to the Try It Now link button on the home page. I was interested in trying it now but I don't want to pay $10 just to see what it is. The fact that there is "No Risk" is not important to me at this stage.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll update to make it clear that everyone gets a 30-day free demo. In fact, I collect no credit card info at signup.

Edit: Done. Does that look better on the signup page?

I don't see a difference or a free option. Anyway, you're asking to have a fairly "deep" relationship with me without my knowing anything about you with that TIN link. I don't know if I like your product well enough or whether it meets my needs to justify giving you my name/email. That's important info to me - I get enough emails already so why should I make an exception for you?

My point is that, while you might be comfortable giving out your email/contact info easily and on a whim, others will not be so quick to want to do so. Help them/me get over the hump and your signup rate will improve. You can't improve sales until you improve signups.

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