Ask HN: Review my first project (gift certificate templates)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2271064

by toumhi • 15 years ago

3 7 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

http://www.giftcertificatefactory.com

Background: Christmas time. When asked what I wanted for Christmas, I replied:" an electronic book". Problem is, it doesn't look very good on a christmas tree. Hence came to me the idea of providing gift certificate templates. And pivoting a bit on the idea, I thought that some businesses might be interested in paying to print for pre-designed gift certificate templates! So when I decided to leave my job and create my own company, I decided to start small and create a website filling that need (others exist, see www.giftcarddesigner.com).

What it is: providing pre-designed gift certificate templates that a (small) business owner could personalize online, without using photoshop, paying a designer or microsoft word.

Also, I'm currently bootstrapping this from Jakarta, Indonesia, my business is registered in France, and my main target would be (I assume for now) small american businesses.

toumhi4• 15 years ago

clickable: http://www.giftcertificatefactory.com

nudge• 15 years ago

Good looking site and a sensible product idea. A few thoughts:

1. "GIFT CERTIFICATE TEMPLATES FOR YOUR BUSINESS" is not the best tagline, I think. "Template? What's a template?" Perhaps better is something like "Sell gift certificates for your business". The fact that you're actually selling 'templates' isn't really important to them. What they get is the ability to sell gift certificates.

2. Below the "sign up to the mailing list" on the front page the information is a bit messy, and there may just be too much of it. What's the difference between the "features" and "about product" tabs? (I don't want you to tell me the answer - I'm just saying it's unclear). Perhaps just grab the most important points and say them as clearly as possible, without requiring clicks onto tabs or anything. Things like "add the name of your company" are probably redundant - I would expect that I would be able to add the name of my company at the very least! I would probably just junk a lot of that stuff and fold it all into a "How it works" page. Then on the front page you just have "Start Printing Gift Certificates" [not 'templates'!] or "How it works"

Various other of your pages could do with cleaning up a bit like that, but overall I think the idea's probably a good one.

One final thought though: is there any fraud prevention involved? What's to stop somebody just making a really good colour photocopy of their gift certificate? You don't have any ID numbers or anything on the certificates, do you?

toumhi4• 15 years ago

thanks for the feedback, it helps a lot! You're right on point 1 and 2, point 2 it's because I used a template from themeforest. This is a MVP and in a second iteration I intend to redesign the site, with less clutter.

Very good point about the "templates" not being what they want, but on the other hand people are looking for "gift certificate templates" on google quite a lot (that's still a small niche of course). Also people might want to give gift certificates, not sell them.

Concerning the fraud prevention, I indeed didn't do anything specifically for it. For now I assume people can add a tracking number (manually) on the front or back. I don't know how much of a deal breaker that is. Maybe people would like a bar code, or serial numbers, or...

fwdbureau2• 15 years ago

Just curious: what's the interest of registering your business in France? Isn't this the best way to choke on taxes?

toumhi4• 15 years ago

Well, since I'm french, it was easier. There is a new status called 'autoentrepreneur' and it makes it quite easy for people to start a business (very little tax as long as you don't make more than 80000 euros a year, don't have employees etc).

fwdbureau2• 15 years ago

sounds good! I ran away from france to holland a few years ago because of this. I don't remember exactly but the threshold was much lower than 80000€ Wish you lots of luck!