Show HN: Stop asking your clients "What browser are you on?"

http://www.browser-details.com

by jonasvp • 13 years ago

93 82 13 years ago

browser-details.com

jonasvp7• 13 years ago

We semi-launched with a comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4499937

Just finished the Pro version and launched for real, would love some feedback from HN!

deanclatworthy• 13 years ago

I have found this to be useful: http://supportdetails.com/

What benefit does your service have over this one? Furthermore, if I send mycompany.browser-details.com links to two people, how does your system identify who clicked on the link?

jonasvp7• 13 years ago

Definitely, support-details.com was the inspiration. However, we didn't want to send our clients to some other site - we needed a branded version.

As for identifying users: you can add multiple recipients in case there are several people in your organisation using it.

We figure that you'll mostly have your client on the phone or are sending an email and expect an answer within minutes - so you know who it was. In the future, we might add a "Subject" line.

dubcanada6• 13 years ago

That's assuming it's a single client on the phone at a single time. Which is wrong. There could be multiple clients on the phone or multiple phone calls with multiple clients.

Rocky_Outcrop2• 13 years ago

Needed a branded version? This is when you're talking to clients that can't tell the difference between one browser and another? These clients can't tell the difference between a big blue e, a fox or a colourful circle? Yet you needed a branded version?

I'm just pulling your leg, I understand that you needed a branded version and that wasn't influenced by your clients inability to distinguish between core brands in the online space.

mikerastiello• 13 years ago

My company used this as a model when we built our own solution. I think between our designer and developer we had it designed and built out in 2 or 3 days. Ours also supports file uploads.

Once the email is submitted it goes right into our support queue.

ra• 13 years ago

I think it's a GREAT idea.

Now, this might just be me, and I don't want to sound negative, or take anything away from the effort you've obviously put into making this really good, but ...

For $120 / year I think, hmm I could probably build something that does this (just for me) in an hour, and it'd be fun!

However at $10 per YEAR, I would think it's a steal and jump at it. Not suggesting you should drop your pants on price, but that's my view on it.

I think charging for a CNAME is a good strategy.

dubcanada6• 13 years ago

I have to agree, at $120 a year I could build it. I don't think you'll be able to charge more then $10 a year.

venus2• 13 years ago

You've got to be kidding me. $10 a year may as well be nothing. I wouldn't do anything for anybody for $10/year. I probably couldn't even be bothered invoicing you.

You're right that it's a very simple product, though. $5 a month with a 20% discount for $50/yr sounds fair to me.

I like it though. Your textbook well executed MVP. The price might need some tweaks but hey, it's a product. Well done Jonas.

jschuur• 13 years ago

The point isn't if it's worth it to the developer to charge you that much. It's an automated billing process. The point is that the price point is low enough that people won't think twice about paying it. In this case, more than 5 times as many as would go for $50/year.

jonasvp7• 13 years ago

Thanks for the kind words! The pricing is obviously geared towards agencies, not freelancers. We'll see how it pans out, your feedback is greatly appreciated!

martinced2• 13 years ago

"You've got to be kidding me. $10 a year may as well be nothing. I wouldn't do anything for anybody for $10/year."

That makes no sense in the context of selling 0's and 1's where the marginal cost is close to zero.

What you should ask yourself is this: would you rather sell one hundred subscription at $120 per year or ten thousands subscription at $10 per year? I'm not saying these are the numbers that GP would have but you must take this into account.

Another way to put it: quite some people are very happy sitting on hundreds of thousands --if not millions-- of dollars selling games on the iPhone at less than $5 a pop.

Another comparison point: there are desktop apps way more complex than the webapp we're talking about here that can bought (not a subscription, but bought) when there are bundle sales at way less than $10. Once again, the problem is trivial: would you rather make zero sales to that target demographic (people buying apps bundles) or would you rather sell a few thousands license for you app at, say, $5?

Basically the two concepts that you don't understand are: a) economy of scale and b) it's all 0's and 1's.

"I probably couldn't even be bothered invoicing you."

That just shows how lame and inefficient your invoice and tax filling process is. (btw I can help: no latter than yesterday when the tools of the trade were posted here there were apps taking care of automated invoicing and tax fillings)

highace• 13 years ago

Why make this a pay monthly thing? You should offer a block of uses on a pay-as-you-go scheme, like 20 uses for $10.

analog2• 13 years ago

Build, deploy, host and maintain for an hour per year? I think that might be a bit optimistic.

Certainly for an agency to do this will cost them more than an hour of developer time. $120 per year is a steal, OP should add different pricing brackets to capture more value from bigger agencies.

mgkimsal2• 13 years ago

what sort of "agency" are you talking about? a web development agency?

I 100% agree this would take more than an hour to develop with a nice UI, and there's some ongoing maintenance, but it's still pretty low numbers. And there's still arguments for a DIY approach - for instance, Aa DIY approach means you can improve/iterate/integrate at your own pace.

SoftwareMaven2• 13 years ago

Selling it for $10 a year would be the same as saying, "This is a worthless toy. It isn't really worth your time to look at, much less to think about integrating."

My advice for would-be owners, never price your item based on how quickly a developer could build it. Price it based on how much pain you can solve your customer.

In this case, I would push the "so easy to integrate before you need to spend five times the cost on the first problem and still have to build or integrate it". Of course, I wouldn't make it sound that awkward. ;)

rartichoke2• 13 years ago

If I'm on the phone with a client and ask them to look at something I can generally figure out what browser they have (minus the version) by asking 1 or 2 questions and that's often good enough.

Now... if you used this data in a way to automate some typical developer->client BS then I could see paying for it maybe.

For example, let's say you load up a few VMs with every major browser / browser+version combo.

Then you can tell a client to goto some url, maybe it could be something like:

http://browser.somedomain.com?for=somepage.com/preview

If the client goes to that address it captures his browser details just like your site does but then:

1. Replicates his settings with one of the VM browsers.

2. Takes a screenshot of what somepage.com/preview looks like.

3. Sends the screenshot and data to my e-mail or have an API letting me get that data back in on my end.

That has pretty high value because when a client says "the border looks weird!" that means nothing to me. I have to see the problem to be able to fix it and people who aren't technical are horrible at explaining technical problems.

jonasvp7• 13 years ago

I've noticed that screenshots (a la https://browsershots.org/) don't really help either as there's no way to debug - you'd change something and need another screenshot to see what happened. I guess we'll have to integrate http://browserstack.com (which is an incredible service).

thejosh• 13 years ago

If you are doing that much to just see one simple page, might as well try something like browsershots.

rartichoke2• 13 years ago

I could but I would still have to send the client to some url to get his browser data so I know what to look up.

If I'm sending a client a url, why not take it 1 step further and eliminate any work on my end by just providing me the correct screenshot and info? Then I can shoot a client an e-mail, ask him to click a link and seconds later I'm looking at what he's looking at with his browser settings without having to do anything.

dubcanada6• 13 years ago

Google Chrome on a Mac reports the following...

PDF: No - wrong Chrome has a built in PDF reader JAVA: No - wrong I do have java OGG-VIDEO: Probably supported - lol? probably H.264-VIDEO: Probably supported - ^ WEBM-VIDEO: Probably supported - ^

And not to be a party pooper but why do I need to signup? Why can't I just click "Get Browser Details" get a unique hyperlink that I could then send to someone.

What if I have mulitple clients? I have no way of saying, okay Joe is using IE8, and Sandra is using IE9.

What if my client is using IE6. Bootstrap doesn't support IE6.

I think thats it for now.

lucaspiller• 13 years ago

Actually Java is right. You can no longer run Java applets in Chrome on Mac as Java 7 isn't compatible with it.

http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...

dubcanada6• 13 years ago

Hrm java applets load for me... Maybe I need to investigate more lol.

madmaze• 13 years ago

Show HN: Stop asking your clients "What browser are you on?"

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