Ask HN: Review my startup, mobile marketing app

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2125592

by dstefanov • 16 years ago

4 4 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

We just launch our web app, I hope you'll like it. ma.rs is a marketing platform. It is a web tool for creating, managing, publishing and analyzing mobile campaigns.

It allows you to create (engaging) mobile experience without any programing skills, using simple intuitive drag and drop interface.

With QR codes, created mobile sites (campaigns) can be used as a landing page for mobile advertising or as a complementary ad space with printed or any other old advertising media (TV, billboards, newspapers).

Looking forward to your comments. Thanks

App's url http://ma.rs

coderdude• 16 years ago

This looks promising. A lot of people post "Review my startup" threads here and most look pretty half-assed. This does not. In fact, it looks like you've put a lot of effort into making your startup look very professional.

I don't have a lot to critique about the actual business, but hopefully I can give you some constructive criticism.

On the pricing/signup page I noticed that the background image you're using for the pricing table is gigantic -- 122kb (http://static.ma.rs/application_assets/site/images/prices_bg... 122kb). I'm on a fairly fast connection here (16mbits/down) and it took a noticeable amount of time to load. I'm assuming that it's a 24bit png, but since you're using a white background behind it you won't need the alpha layer and it seems like (based on the colors used in the image) that you could get away with an 8bit png and have it look just fine.

Also on the pricing page, "limited" and "full" don't tell me much about what I'll be getting. Maybe have the ability to mouse over that text and get a little description of what you mean?

I'll append any additional thoughts to this comment as I check it out, but so far you have a really great looking startup on your hands. Not to mention a kick ass domain name -- good score.

retroafroman• 16 years ago

Nice site, but there seems to be a few little rendering issues for me (Chrome on Linux-see here: http://min.us/mvbopEU )

cd34• 16 years ago

http://ma.rs/ clickable

lipsum text present in some pages... I've seen that negatively impact almost everything except design sites.

the bottom of each page seems a little low contrast to me - in some cases, unreadable. Your logo in the bottom bar appears to be transparent, but, expecting a white background which looks odd on my browser.

As far as the idea goes, I like it. I think you've hit on a very good product and should be able to get the online marketers working with you. You might want to have a 'why would I do this' video that would explain to your target audience why they would use a QR code and what it is. Getting this in front of the right people, and, having it understood by those people is going to be the key. While the actual deployment will be left to someone probably more savvy, you have to sell the businessman (or businesswoman) that may not be as technically literate, why he would do this.

dstefanov• 16 years ago

Guys, thanks a lot for a very good, constructive criticism and suggestions!

Ask HN: Review my startup, mobile marketing app

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