Show HN: Review my startup - Posterhaste - Custom art prints and posters
posterhaste.com
posterhaste.com
I have been working on this idea for a few months. I had hoped to get it up a little earlier in order to get some more Christmas orders, but it took a little longer than expected to finish it. HN isn't exactly the target market for it but has been such a great help and inspiration for me that I thought I would ask for your feedback. So, what do you think?
I have started with just some simple designs but have the infrastructure built so that it is possible to add more designs very quickly. There are a lots more 'clever' designs in the works, such as those that utilise maps using D3.js (i.e. you could create a print that shows your world trip on a map with flight paths) and more intelligent layout of type creating word cloud images.
To give you an idea of the technology stack:
- Django running in Gunicorn (using Gevent for long requests while rendering) behind Nginx
- Celery (with Redis) for a task queue and for talking to the rendering backend
- PhantomJS is used as the renderer for all current designs but its easy to add different backends for new designs
- The awesome Pwinty API (http://www.pwinty.com/) service for printing and fulfilment. Tom has been a great help!
Take a look around and hopefully it won't crash...
Are US-bound prints from pwinty mailed from the UK?
Our plan is to eventually show pricing to US visitors in USD and ship from the US for quicker delivery.
- United Kingdom: 2-3 working days
- Western Europe: 4-5 working days
- Eastern Europe: 6-7 working days
- US and the rest of the Word: 7 working days
We hope to be able to improve upon the US delivery time early next year.
The lack of contact details, really doesn't encourage me to buy from you.
Also, when I tried to buy something, I was surprised how clunky it was. It's possible that I may want the same poster as the one you present, I'd love to see the option to add that in (or have it in by default).
The option to purchase the example designs is there, but I agree its a little clunky, I will look into improving it.
Was it the checkout that you found clunky or the process of placing an item in you basket?
Do you think the customer might in the future like control over the paper stock and (maybe) the print process? If I have a great photo - can I get it turned into a classy print? This might be a complete side-track so you should probably ignore me.
I may add more printing options later but for now I think keeping it simple is better. We do effectively have three printing processes, lab printing for smaller sizes, large format inkjet for the posters and inkjet on canvas for the canvases.
THanks for the feedback!
Plus I had to read the very long introduction text to know what this what about. My advice: let me play with the interesting stuff right away, or at least tell me clearly in one sentence what I can do on this site. It will most certainly improve your conversion rate.
Great stuff, but a little too hard to figure out !
I will experiment with how to better describe how to use the site on the homepage and make it a little more obvious how to customise a design once you have chosen a design.