Ask HN: Review my start-up: Customized Graphics

http://www.customizedgraphics.com/

by jbenz • 17 years ago

37 39 17 years ago

jbenz16• 17 years ago

Greetings. I was the interactive designer (among other jobs) for Customized Graphics. We're trying to be the Cafe Press or Zazzle for custom vinyl products, including Giant Wall Graphics, Bumper Stickers, and Banners.

I work for a small company called eRetailing in Columbus, Ohio. Customized Graphics is a tremendous opportunity for us. We're treating it like a start-up within a start-up.

eRetailing has had some success in the custom apparel space, and now we're moving on to other custom products like stickers and wall graphics. There have been a couple questions on HN in the past about where to find custom stickers for your business. Well, you can absolutely find them here.

We think we're special for a few reasons:

1) When we were building this site there was no one else operating as the Cafe Press of Wall Graphics. Just recently, LTLPrints launched with a similar model. I've seen them mentioned on here before and it looks like they have a great product. We're looking forward to the competition!

2) Our Design Center is delightfully robust. It’s very easy to add your own text and art and then change colors, fonts, sizes, and more. You can also upload images, including vector art. (We think we’re the only place where you can upload vector art to create custom products, which is important for large graphics because vector art scales.) (See: http://www.customizedgraphics.com/designcenter/Wall_Graphics)

3) We represent the next step in online customization. For example, at Café Press and Zazzle you can shop from thousands of family-themed designs. But none of those designs are actually customizable. But clicking on one of our designs sends you directly to our design center, where you can edit text, colors, and everything else. So if you find a family wall graphic you like, it’s incredibly simple to click "Edit" and add your own family name. (See: http://www.customizedgraphics.com/search/all/Family)

Thanks in advance for any feedback! Everything still needs a lot of testing and improvement.

ivyirwin• 17 years ago

I really liked the intuitive nature of your design work space. Rarely do you see a DIY graphic/layout space that is easy for the general end user to use. I was trained as a designed to use Illustrator and I feel like most online tools try to emulate the Adobe work methodology. But with your approach you have made it easy for everyone to understand the basic tool set of move, rotate, and scale. Well done.

jbenz16• 17 years ago

Wow, this is music to my ears. Thanks for the kind words. I've spent many hours sweating over the design center, trying to make it robust enough to offer a lot of options, but simple enough for the beginning user. This is a delicate balance, as you can imagine. Right now I'm worrying that it is not simple enough, so thanks so much for your compliment.

callmeed2• 17 years ago

First off, I think your concept is brilliant and there's a lot of potential. To me, this is one of those markets that should be targeted at women/moms (see the recent HN post on Ravelry). My wife and her friends were actually just talking about this very need yesterday ... they were looking for ways to put tree/bird designs on their wall.

That being said, here's where I think you can improve the execution:

1. Make the site a bit more feminine. Not really a fan of the blue background. Go something lighter, more neutral, maybe a little feminine. Maybe just white like an Etsy.

2. It's not immediately apparent that you can make and sell your own designs. If you're going for the Cafepress angle, I think you need some more obvious buttons/labels for that. At least make the "make" and "sell" buttons on top stand out better.

3. Add some more social/sharing features. Let women/moms create designs and share them with other users. Maybe you do it already, but let people save their favorite users, designs, etc. Again, look at Etsy for cues here.

4. Add a religious/spiritual category right away. As a Christian, trust me–if you have a category with bible verses and religious quotes, it would be a big seller. It's a huge market and I have tons of friends who would buy such graphics for their home.

5. The home page seems a little busy. I'm not sure what's most important to you, but I'd recommend some A/B testing to see what best improves your conversions.

Anyway, good luck with this. I think it has potential. I already showed my wife and she digs it.

jbenz16• 17 years ago

Thanks so much for the detailed feedback!

1. Good advice.

2. Thanks. Yes, we've had a lot of conversations about what the priority should be on the home page. We decided that selling products was 1, customization was 2, and the ability to set up storefronts was 3. We could do a better job of balancing this out.

3. People can certainly save their designs. You can save it as private or public. If you save it as public, you can decide whether or not you'd like to earn a royalty from the sales. You can also comment on each other's designs and send fellow users messages.

4. We have this: http://www.customizedgraphics.com/shop/Wall_Lettering/Quotes..., but of course it has only started filling out.

5. Absolutely, a lot of testing is needed. Thanks again.

kdw• 17 years ago

Why exactly wouldn't I want a royalty on the sales?

jbenz16• 17 years ago

By the way, BigFolio and NextProof look really cool. We'd love to recruit some photographers to set up storefronts. We're especially interested in photographers who do portraits of the local High School Football team. We think there is a market for custom Fathead-style wall graphics and youth sports. It looks like you've already tapped into the Photography market. Perhaps there is a way for us to help one another out.

callmeed2• 17 years ago

Sure, drop me an email. I'll put the word out in our newsletter.

sp4rki• 17 years ago

Hi, love the idea. Although I do like the design as a whole, I do agree that the colors should be more "neutral". Also the site is a little on the busy side and I think it would benefit from some more whitespace and less "this is ALL we do!!" in the homepage.

Oh and btw, I'm on Firefox 3.5 on Leopard and you ve got some nastiness going on on the footer. http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/7223/picture12h.png

jbenz16• 17 years ago

Thanks! Yeah, at Customized Graphics you can do a TON of stuff. So it's tough to balance exactly how much to say on the front page. I think the overall feedback seems to be: tone it down. We can probably think of a way to say what we want and be less busy.

And snap. This is what I love about HN. Thanks so much for going to the trouble of posting the screenshot online. You didn't have to go out of your way, but you did because you're awesome. Cheers.

mitko• 17 years ago

Please add support for foreign language characters. I tried to make a design using Cyrillic characters but they didn't came out properly.

There could be a market for your service among the many bilingual and emigrant people in USA.

jbenz16• 17 years ago

Yes, this would be a terrific feature. We'll add it to our list. Thanks!

sharpn• 17 years ago

On a related note, it would be useful to have more fonts. I went to try using the font my company's logo uses and it wasn't there. Good apart from that, though.

joez• 17 years ago

Great domain name.

A few ideas:

You should run a contest for the coolest design. Winner gets cash and free print(s). You'll get some really cool designs that way.

The rotate feature should show what degree it's at. I can just see scenarios where this is useful. Two quick ones is if you accidentally rotate something you have to eyeball it back to level or if you like to align multiple words at a slant.

Directional key (up down left right) moving. Select the object and move it with your keys.

I don't know if it's possible but implement an undo. I guess you should evaluate the necessity of this by looking at where you lose users. If you are losing users due to frustration on creating their design at the template page then an undo would help.

Let people export the art. Why not? Allow people to use it for their desktop background, avatar image... etc. It'll only generate interest.

jbenz16• 17 years ago

Contests. Yes, there will be contests, and of course we'll feature different designs and designers on the home page. It is absolutely crucial to our success that people be able to earn decent money from their storefronts. The more this happens, the more word spreads. We plan on featuring our users' designs in print ads in places like US Weekly, Martha Stewart Living, etc. Maybe we'll make it a design contest to see who is featured in these ads.

Thanks for the rotate feedback. It's always a balance between giving users too many features and not enough.

Moving objects with directional keys is a must. Good call.

Exporting art is an interesting idea. There's a lot more you can do with this art beyond stickers and banners. We could even offer to export your design as an Ecard. Lots to think about.

amohr• 17 years ago

I love it - I have been looking for exactly this service for a while now. I have a bunch of ideas for these types of items that have never really gotten off the ground due to the overhead.

I opened a store front (http://www.customizedgraphics.com/alexophile) and the main thing I would suggest is having more categories. Work tends to get buried and poorly organized when there's too few categories. The use of tags only obfuscates this slightly, especially if someone doesn't actually know what they're looking for.

jbenz16• 17 years ago

Awesome! Our shop categories are evolving as we speak. Thanks for building a storefront. I hope you continue to add cool designs!

DirtyAndy• 17 years ago

Firstly great site and great idea. But you are not (hopefully) posting here to get your butt kissed but for some constructive criticism and ideas, so here goes:

1. The site is a little busy and lacks a real call to action. "Start Designing" kind of disappears

2. I think you need two sites. One for the business market and one for the consumer market. These could both have the same backend etc, but probably need seperate names / front ends. Businesses (generally) don't buy from consumer related sites and vice versa. Your product definitely seems capable of satisfying both markets (and I would use the current domain for the business market)

3. Your focus both on the site and in your comments here seem to be slightly on the ability to design your own product. Personally I am useless at design so this would not appeal, but I also know a number of people who are amazing at design, but not that good with a blank canvas. I've only taken a quick look at your site but I would perhaps focus on the excellent designs you already have and offering customisations to them over actually having a blank canvas (which is where I ended up when I clicked Start Designing).

But overall looks really good, good luck with it.

jbenz16• 17 years ago

Great feedback.

1. We're always thinking about this issue. Good point.

2. That's a really interesting idea. You're right, we are trying to satisfy both business and consumer markets. The nice part of having one site is that you have one domain. All the links you get from users and other sources help your SEO a lot, and you sacrifice some of that if you're splitting your user base. But the point is still a good one.

3. Yes, it's important to us that "Design Your Own" means both "Design from scratch" and "Personalize one of our cool existing designs". We try to make personalization easy and immediate by taking you right to the design center when you click on an item. I think we need a lot more designs that say "Your Text Here" or "Your Logo Here".

The blank canvas is a problem. We are going to implement an overlay that says "Add Text, Add Art, or Upload Your Image."

Thanks again!

tarouter• 17 years ago

Great idea! Great execution! About 2 above. It may help to see how job websites make clear distinction between job seekers and employers. How elance.com makes clear distinction between clients and freelancers.

kajecounterhack2• 17 years ago

Hey I love it so far -- question: do you think you guys will have laptop stickers anytime soon?

jbenz16• 17 years ago

Skins! Yes, it was actually in the original gameplan to launch with device skins. We'd like to add them eventually, but probably not until 2010.

kajecounterhack2• 17 years ago

Aw that's upsetting! Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait until then. =]

timmaah3• 17 years ago

The total width and height of what you are buying is not clear at all.

jbenz16• 17 years ago

Yes, we are adding a (w) and (h) into the dimensions. Which brings up a question. We discussed this a lot. Should it be:

a) 5 in (w) x 10 in (h)

b) 5 W x 10 H inches or

c) W: 5 in x H: 10 in ?

timmaah3• 17 years ago

Well looking at it more, it does seem some of the designs have in the editor "Material Area".. is that only if you have a background?

I would stick with the format the editor uses..

5 x 10 in

timmaah3• 17 years ago

Also, it might be helpful to have an easier way to enlarge/resize an image.

For example.. the Pirate Surfer image is really cool, but by default opens to a 9.8x5.3in size for $10. What if I want this a good sized to put on my kids wall and I'm willing to pay ~$100. To get to my $100 limit I had to drag the resize and zoom alternately a few times to make it large enough. Perhaps some size defaults under the image that are clickable..

Small (9x5): $10 Medium (24x15): $25 Large (48x36): $80

And clicking those would auto resize the image in the editor?

frossie• 17 years ago

is clearest to me

phreanix• 17 years ago

The front page does seem a bit busy. The amount of copy is a tad overwhelming, but once i slow down and start reading each one, it makes sense.

I would maybe have an easy start page (your "start designing" button could link to it tho I find that button rather small), with leading questions like: 1. What would you like to print? (give hints or a drop down) 2. Choose a design.

And so on.

A Preview page would be nice, preferably one that allows you to upload a picture of your own room or wall.

jbenz16• 17 years ago

"Easy Start" is a cool idea. We've talked a lot about giving different versions of the design center to different users based on their level of "expertise". So one path would ask you specific simple questions, like you said, and let them make one choice at a time. Maybe they would be able to switch over to the "Advanced Design Center" where they can really move and scale objects, add more text, etc...

I really like the "Easy Start" idea. There is something to that.

rjurney• 17 years ago

Holy crap man, that is the most beautiful design, with the most clarity that I've just about ever seen on the web.

Reminds me of a friend's Atlanta startup, http://ezprints.com/ It scaled pretty well.

paul92902• 17 years ago

If I am not mistaken your site's concept mirror's http://ltlprints.com. Competition is always good and a form of flattery, as ltl has been around for more then year.

Also, a site completely in flash? I am surprised the flash haters here have not made any comments - yet. The design is awesome, but why flash - that can be psd to xhtml(ed).

Sorry if I am not positive here, just sharing what initially jumps out. Good luck - it looks to be a solid business/market!

paul92902• 17 years ago

oh looking at it again the whole site is not flash. I got that impression because on first load it took awhile to load up; felt like an old time flash site for me. I'm using a Mac Mini Intel and my connection is 12Mbps down.

jbenz16• 17 years ago

LTLprints is a nice site, and I mentioned them in my introduction comment above. We were not aware of LTLprints until just before we launched, but when we did find them, the ability to sell your own designs was not yet activated. That piece has only been in place for a couple months, I believe.So until very recently, we thought we were the only ones who were serving as the "Cafe Press" of Wall Graphics.

In addition, we separate ourselves with our robust design center and our variety of products. LTLPrints looks to be essentially wall graphics, and we offer all kinds of different stickers, including clear window stickers, bumper stickers and vinyl banners.

zeynel1• 17 years ago

Nice site. Is this cheaper than buying the same product from a local store?

jbenz16• 17 years ago

As of now, it definitely is. If you're buying one bumper sticker, it's about $4.40. And if you're buying 1,000 bumper stickers, it's about $0.08 a sticker. Most places offer price breaks, but nothing like that. At Zazzle, for example, you can buy over 250 stickers, but the price is still $2.76 per sticker.

Our prices on Wall and Window Graphics are really great right now too. We're still testing, so these prices might have to increase in the future.

Ask HN: Review my start-up: Customized Graphics

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