Rate My Startup: Snip | Hacker News Reader

Rate My Startup: Snip

sniphq.com

36 pointsjasonswett44 comments

I love your idea and this niche. Here are a few thoughts...

1. There are a lot more stylists than salons, and a lot of them are independent contractors (they rent chairs in salons). I would focus on selling to them, not salons. I would make my most expensive plan (multi-user) for salons...but Plan A & Plan B for individual stylists.

2. Be sure to have a "37 signals" type sign up page. Explain the differences between the plans. The first thing I looked for was the pricing...and didn't see it until I clicked to sign up for the free 30-day trial.

3. Offer a 60 or 90 day free trial. Get them hooked. (I have done 1 year free trials which turned into $100k+ in recurring revenue). It's tough to get paying customers, don't be afraid to prove your value.

4. Continue to add value (text reminders, etc..)

5. Don't be afraid to get on the phone and call stylists/salons. Send postcards. Sell, sell, sell.

Good luck!

My first reaction on seeing that was that it was the Bootstrap home page. There's nothing wrong with using Bootstrap, but if you do I suggest you go to Bootswatch (http://bootswatch.com/) and use a theme other than the default one.

Thanks. I had not heard of Bootswatch. Will check it out.

a few more suggestions - wrapbootstrap.com, themeforest.net

Had the same reaction. Especially since there are no screenshots, to me it seems very "fake" - just copy and pasted twitter.github.com/bootstrap.

Bootswatch is not going to help this guy, I imagine it'll only make the product worse - most of the stuff on Bootswatch is pretty hideous anyway.

Clearly, he has no understanding of design, and is trying to enter an extremely visual market. He needs to just hire somebody. No need to do everything yourself if those aren't your skills.

Get a nice logo maybe including a scissor illustration.

Create a favicon from the logo

Hire a designer or buy a website templates/theme as a starting point for your design. Themeforest.net has lots of options for a starting point. They have some good admin themes that might improve the app interface.

Setup a pricing table/page. Something like http://www.bidsketch.com/pricing/

Consider using Stripe.com for payments so you can easily get their credit card info up front and offer a 14 day trial.

Playing around in the client interface it needs some work to make it easier to use . . .

Refine the user interface and make it easier for them to add services, etc.

Get feedback from your current users on ways to improve the app and get their feedback on pain points in their business for further improvements. And for marketing get their feedback on the features that save them the most time and what made them sign up for snipHQ. Then make those items the focus of your marketing.

For marketing start posting articles of ways to improve salons and dovetail in how your software can help.

Include more graphics/screenshots on the website to get potential clients interested.

Once you have it up and running like a top consider approaching beauty brands to use your system. Their current system is dated and needs a refresh.

Listen to StartUpsForTheRestofUs.com.

Congrats! You have a SaaS app and paying customers now build on it.

Good luck in 2013.

If you're not aware of them yet StyleSeat is a VC backed company working in this space: https://www.styleseat.com/howitworks/pros

Also Resurva - they're not marketing as a stylist-only product (more as a general booking system), but I know a whole bunch of barbershops that use them.

Yeah, StyleSeat's the first thing I thought of when getting to the landing page.

StyleSeat has a great design and a relentless CEO (from what I've heard). Not sure how "sniphq.com" with a worse name, more enterprise-style design, and no visuals is going to compete. Unless there is some huge differentiator, which to be honest, most people aren't going to spend the time to figure out even if it existed.

I cannot comment how good your service is since I have no experience in your field. Just two little things I noticed:

1) Bootstrap is not really beautiful, your submenu sometimes overlaps the content (visited the site on an iPad) and some screenshots would help.

2) I would only add one testimonial per customer / salon. For me it looks like you tried to make the section look "big" no matter how.

I wish you luck and success with your service :)

Thanks. I didn't know about the iPad problem, so I'll have to look at that. Thanks for the kind words as well.

I've been working on my startup, Snip, for about two years and I have a few customers. I've been learning more about internet marketing and I just rebuilt Snip's website. Any thoughts/criticism/advice is very much appreciated!

Ditto comments about design, wall of text, layout, logo, etc.

Also add one or more photo to illustrate what your service does; maybe include a beauty salon, appointment book, salon employees at work, etc.

Make your best call to action easy to find on the home page "Sign up for 30-day free trial.."

Improve the call to action on your contact page from something like "Snip was built, and is run, by Jason Swett, who can be reached in the following ways..." to "If you'd like to schedule a personal conversation to talk about what Snip can do for your beauty salon, just call..."

The phrase "hair salon software product" sounds like a vague and dull description of your service. Your description of what Snip is and does should be more clear and appealing.

I think there is a lot of great feedback in this thread. Lately I have been helping a family member with setting up their online tools for a spa. Here is my feedback based on that experience:

- It was hard for me to find the Signup button. The only signup link on homepage is hidden in the top nav. Other pages have it below the fold.

- As others have mentioned, I have no idea what Basic, Pro, etc. are

- Screenshots, screenshots, screenshots!

- From what I understand the biggest value proposition Snip offers is the CRM (I am assuming it is easy to use). Setting appointments on cloud based is pretty easy using Google Calendar, but what GCal does not provide is the history of a client interactions. This is not obvious on the homepage.

- Show me the money - It will be great to see something like this on the site (if not homepage.) On average using Snip's history tracking salons were able to increase appointments for existing clients by X% and product sales by Y%. If you don't have these stats yet, might want to put industry standard stats.

- FYI the business I helped tried GenBook and BookFresh for online appointment scheduling (by customers) and that didn't work because people liked calling most of the time. Since this is a new spa most of the customers were first time customers. They currently use getbase.com as their CRM. It is more of a hack and not really the most ideal solution. I'll recommend Snip to them. IMO, a fremium plan (similar to Getbase) would help attract people getting vested into using your tool.

- I didn't see on the site if you let export the data if a customer wants to leave. You might want to think about this, if you don't already have the export built in.

Feel free to contact me {hn.handle}@gmail if I can help answer any question. All the best with Snip!

First, you need to do a better job articulating the differences between your plans.

Second, you are too reliant on Bootstrap, occasionally to the detriment of the UX. Bootstrap is fine for a page layout, but you can't exclusively use stock elements. It just looks perfunctory.

Third, you never actually show the product. This is understandable if you haven't completed it yet, but you need images of the product at some point.

Fourth, going after a small, specific market could be lucrative, but could also backfire. Are you even sure that salon owners would be willing to use a service like this?

You're absolutely right on with your first three points. Thanks for highlighting those things for me.

To address your fourth point, I do share that concern, although I do feel pretty good about the market. I've physically visited several dozen salons and I do have a few salons using the product. There are also a lot of competitors in this space, which is a good sign. As to whether I can make a viable business out of this particular product remains to be seen. :)

"Try the demo to see what it looks like." However I can not find a link to a demo anywhere nearby and even after a search around the page, this seems to be the only place where a demo is mentioned.

Good point. I used to have a demo but I killed it when I redesigned the site. Need to clean up that artefact.

"Snip is a hair salon software product.." - hair salon software product is very awkward, and doesn't really make a lot of sense. You also then basically repeat it more clearly straight away.

I would shorten to:

Snip is a software product that helps you spend less time on the tedious parts of being a stylist or salon owner. Click below to learn how Snip can make your life easier.

I considered even dropping 'is a software product that' as well, undecided on that.

THIS IS PROBLEM ONE IN MY OPINION: On your 'sign up for a free 30 day trial' page, I am asked to choose between 'basic', 'plus' and 'super'. But I have no idea what any of these are, surely it doesn't matter? I don't know your product well enough, but don't make people make this choice for their free trial, just get them into the system :)

I don't know if you would be better off starting people's trials at the bottom or top level. You could, after people have signed up for a free 30 day trial, then give them a simple one sentence explanation of what these choices are, to help them choose. But, job 1 is to get them signed up with minimal thought!

> Snip is a software product that helps you spend less time on the tedious parts of being a stylist or salon owner. Click below to learn how Snip can make your life easier.

Or something like "Do you run a hair salon? Do you find appointment scheduling and anther administrative tasks tedious? Snip is for you."

Yes, that's even better. Get the right people hoped within the first few words.

Do most stylists find appointment scheduling tedious?

I've no idea, I'm not one!

Good points, and I like your copy better than what I wrote. Thanks!

Step 1: Add screenshots please! Show me the sexy interface I will use to run my salon.

Step 2: Get some "real" case stories and promote them. Not just your own blog ramblings :) Show how it has helped real world salons.

Step 3: Hire a designer to create a consistent visual identity.

Those are all three good ideas. Thanks.

The formatting of the navigation widget is messed up on Chrome/Mac. It overlaps the page text. I'll also second the earlier comment that the default bootstrap theme is pretty plain. I know you're probably focused on functionality right now, but spending a few dollars on a Wrap Bootstrap theme would make your beta more appealing to your audience.

Bootstrap is so easy to customize. An hour spent changing the variables in the variables.less file with be well worth your time.

Thanks for the tip. I'll check that file out.

I think that using bootstrap core without any kind of customization isn't the best way to get users. Add a nice logo, maybe some screenshots of the product features, and the most important, if you want to keep boostrap, customize it!

Excellent start. One thing that would improve is the have a picture of a person on the front page. The SaaS is targeted at salon folks, and I think that having a friendly face on the front page would help.

Good luck for 2013!!

Thanks. That's a good idea to put a person on the front page and I hadn't really considered that.

- Add an intro video or some sort of graphic intro, showing off the product. People don't usually sign in blindly, they want to have a sneak peak.

- Also, have a customized bootstrap theme, it's easy and simple

- Less text

A small, simple change that might help the initial wow factor when visiting your home page is to take that gray area behind "Simplify your salon." and make it one large blurred photograph relevant to hair salons.

+1 on the wall of text. Get some images in there. A nice logo may go a long way towards sprucing it up. I'd also try to customize the look a bit more. Create an identity by making it look less "stock" bootstrap.

There's three plans available, but no way to see what the difference between them is.

You should also look into Twilio for phone/SMS reminders and confirmations. It's really straightforward to integrate.

Yeah, I really need to fix the plan thing. Didn't catch that until people pointed it out on here.

Good suggestion on Twilio, too. That's actually on my list.

Quick look feeling: too much text, too few images (tl;dr). Maybe adding a few more graphics could help (also lowering your bounce rate).

Clicked on it from my Lumia and got an unsupported browser message. Not a good first impression.

It's a "wall of text". Sprinkle at least some icons and it will liven the appearance up.

Awkward that you're using Lavaar Burton's name in your tagline.

Add some screenshots .

c'mon - please drop the default bootstrap theme, and go over to themeforest and spend a few dollars on a decent looking website.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com