Review my startup

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2363358

by codingstaff • 15 years ago

9 19 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Please check www.quoteroller.com - new saas that helps to create and send proposals.

Just released and really need your feedback. UI, Usability, how useful is it. Much Aloha!

sagacity• 15 years ago

Clickable:

http://www.quoteroller.com

revorad• 15 years ago

Add something descriptive to the headline or at least your app's name, or why would people click on it? This is not the best time to post either, so maybe you should try in about 5-6 hours.

codingstaff9• 15 years ago

Thanks for advise, next post will be much more descriptive

codingstaff9• 15 years ago

Thank you for suggestions, I'll be more descriptive next time.

apowell• 15 years ago

I love this concept, and I can see my business using it. We have three team members, so I'm surprised you consider us an Enterprise. I'd be more comfortable if you called us a "Business" or an "Agency". And should a true enterprise be capped at five users and pay just $69 per month? If I were to sign up, I'd get an Advanced plan and deal with just having two users.

As a business owner, this product solves two needs: 1) saves lots of time and 2) ensures that salespeople can assemble good looking proposals.

Do you have example proposals on the website? I want to see what this generates without creating a free account and doing a bunch of work myself.

codingstaff9• 15 years ago

Apowell, Awesome thought, thank you soo much. We tried to minimize quantity of team members and other items in plans so that we have capacity to add them up after application release. Right now all plans are free and there is no limitation on features. I've already added a task to create one more banner that says "Beautiful proposals in minutes. Check what your clients will get" linking to a live example of web based proposal. Again, really appreciate your feedback.

codingstaff9• 15 years ago

maxbrown• 15 years ago

Typo on the Tour page - "Start with a pre-maid proposal template" should be made, not maid

codingstaff9• 15 years ago

Thanks a lot, Max. Scheduled for update.

mapster2• 15 years ago

Very good looking product. My question is more business related: What is the benefit to the user of having in online (versus desktop app) and paying monthly (versus one time purchase)?

codingstaff9• 15 years ago

Thanks a lot for checking out Quote Roller. Here are some benefits: 1) Team work on a proposal 2) Ability to track client's activity 3) Ability to interact with a client 4) (in new release) Clients can sign proposal online 5) (in new release) integrations with popular tools [freshbooks, SalesForce, HighRise] 6) (in new release) mobile version

... and just in general... software is going to loose to saas. It is just more convenient to use web based apps.

mapster2• 15 years ago

OK, that's great, thanks. If those points are pitched on the landing page all the better to convert customers I am sure.

michaeldhopkins2• 15 years ago

I tried it and I think this needs a lot more work. Overall, this does not feel like it "just works." I realize you are still adding new features, though. You also need to have an English native write your default text. A few nitpicks follow...

-Welcome page is confusing. What am I supposed to do? I just glazed over the explanatory image with the callouts -- it has all the information on the dashboard plus more in the callouts, and everything is the same size.

-The profile page needs to be reworked. Everything is in the wrong order.

-I don't like being forced to add e-mail addresses for the company I am quoting. Are you going to send them an e-mail? It's not clear.

-When I saved the new company and came back, the Project Name field had been cleared.

-The review section is actually a very important section to fill out and should be renamed. At the least, if you want it to be treated as a review, you need to preview the whole proposal on one page instead of showing one section at a time.

-Your default text in the overview should fill in the names of my company and the company I'm quoting.

-Generate PDF has some character issues. The emdashes in your default text come out as â€“.

-Generate PDF is confusing…if I check the box and then hit send, is it going to generate a PDF and also e-mail it?

-I see the e-mail body has some form fields. Give us a way to preview those. If I make a mistake the e-mail is going to say ::client name:, etc., but I won't know until it's too late. Also, what is the e-mail from: field going to look like? Update: just sent and received my test, and it comes from "Quote Roller Team." You have to change that.

codingstaff9• 15 years ago

Michael, I really appreciate your feedback. You pointed out issues that surely should be addressed. Actually we got half of your items in our bug tracking list. Again, thank you so much for your feedback. It is great and straight to the point. Would you mind to elaborate on profile page? Thanks

michaeldhopkins2• 15 years ago

The fields in the profile page (name, address, city etc) are all out of order. Check out profile pages in some popular apps to see how this should flow. Glad to help.

ActVen• 15 years ago

Congrats on the launch. I have used a service called Proposable before which seems to offer some similar capabilities. The analytics and tracking of the proposal reader is something that was very valuable to me as a B2B marketer.

codingstaff9• 15 years ago

danke! We plan to implement more comprehensive analytics by the end of July.

notahacker• 15 years ago

The key value is going to be hooking it up to CRM systems like Salesforce to automate filling in the address, rates etc. across both systems. My old employer had a horrendously kludgy Active X control that generated MS Word forms from Salesforce fields. Using their API and a web-based service, I would imagine you can do a lot better than that.

codingstaff9• 15 years ago

Thanks a lot for your feedback, we are working on it. SalesForce integration is coming in April-May. First CRM we decided to connect with is HighRise.

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