Ask HN: Comment on my pivot, postalshout.com
www.postalshout.com
Our previous startup is a developer-targeted, API-accessible web-to-post service called PostalMethods. We noticed that it was attracting quite a bit of "unqualified" traffic, in the sense that it wasn't just developers signing up, but also end-users needing to send business correspondence from their desktops. End-users aren't really well-served by that site because it quickly deteriorates into geek-speak, so we decided to try and give them a better home.
We researched end-users' use of the site and found a lot of them were sending plain MS Word or PDF files via email. Hoping to ride on that trend, we've come out with PostalShout which targets business users who need to post mid-size quantities (hundreds to low thousands of letters per month) of postal mail. The service lets them post transactional letters - invoices, reminders, simple marketing material, collections letters, etc. - directly from their word processor.
Does our targeting come across? Is it clear what we're selling? Are the benefits clear and compelling? Does it appear easy enough to register? Would any element in the site keep a person from registering? Are we missing anything?
Gloves off; let's hear it!
P.S. If you'd like to test the service for real, drop me an email at the address in my profile and I'll send you a $10 coupon.
11 comments
[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 32.1 ms ] threadhttp://www.postalshout.com
Edit: One suggestion: the blue(ihs) portions of the logo are not very readable against the black background of the header so the word 'Postal' (in logo) does not register immediately, nor does the tag line 'You mail it, we post it'.
IMO, this might affect the engagement level of (at least a small percentage of) visitors.
HTH
My recommendations:
- No autoplay on the video with audio. Either let me click play or remove the audio in favor of subtitles
- The logo seems small compared to the rest of the site
- May need to reword some of the taglines in the body... I should understand exactly what the site does without having to watch the video. If it piques my interest, then I can watch the video for more information.
We tried several approaches with video, and unfortunately no one ever clicked 'play'. Since the entire motivation for the service is given in that video we really wanted it to be seen. I was worried about getting your kind of feedback, so I guess we'll have to rethink this.
> I should understand exactly what the site does without having to watch the video
This feeds into what's discussed above.
Thanks!
That info isn't "above the fold". Stuff like: "Start now with as little as $10!" "From only 75c per letter: save on postage, envelopes, stationary & time".
And I think even the most detached exec doesn't need to be told how a letter is sent. Sure they may not know what scale their post room is (franking machines/folding etc).
Basically: get to the bottom line first - hook me in, then explain it.
Thanks, excellent point!
1. Assuming you've purchased the equipment to do mass production (i.e. automated print fulfillment center with folding/cutting/licking/stamping/etc... features then make sure you're doing address cleansing for the extra postage discounts.
2. Make a utility print driver so I can "Print To Postal Shout" -- this is VERY easy to do, at least on windows. You can get freeware, or near freeware, to act as the actual postscript or pdf driver and it will alert your application when the file is done printing - you can then kick in and do something meaningful with it (i.e. submit to your service). I've written such print wizards in the past and would be happy to elaborate if you're interested.
3. In combination with number two above, this is where you can expand your reach considerably. Forget about that template that I have to download. Through the print wizard, you pick your addresses and contacts from a list of contacts, or start adding them. Since your program is controlling the wizard, you can get the addresses in the format you want. Upon completion, create an XML doc (or similar) and call a web service or ftp service to submit the document(s) to. You can either encode the actual document into the metadata of the xml file (slower) or give it a GUID and point to it from the XML metadata. I highly recommend an FTP based approach for file transfer as it is fast and you can give your customer progress feedback or even sync in the background.
4. When using the driver, ask the user HOW the document/message should be delivered. They will build an address book over time (maybe you can even tap into an existing CRM if they have it) and offer email/fax/postal/premium). Think of this from people who want to send an email to 100 people, but only 95 of them have email addresses (hard to imagine these days, but used to be very common). Hope this makes sense. Further, it's a way of offering MULTIPLE delivery methods in one easy wizard. You get to charge for the fax and postal and maybe offer the email free. For example, I want my lawyer to see the document I need reviewed right away, but I also want to send hard copy to him and cc myself.
5. If you could somehow incorporate electronic signature / notary / SOMETHING into the documents and build up a crowdsourced delivery mechanism that would be completely disruptive. Meaning, I'm in California and I want to overnight this signed document to New York. I could send it to your service and have its authenticity verified, then you can reach out to your New York based notary/courier and have it delivered within a few hours to the New York address. Way cheaper than FedEx and if you can somehow get this implemented it would cause your service to absolutely explode in usage. Plus, it would be more environmentally friendly! :-)
6. Offer stationary / letterhead for the customers to design and use. This could be a real problem for mass printing though. At minimum, you should offer different qualities of paper for it to be printed upon. This is a "nice to have" and nothing I would focus on right away (IMHO).
7. You could offer discounts on the actual costs if the user was willing to have ads printed at the bottom or top (or inline) in the document. This wouldn't be for official correspondence, but more for the casual messages you might not otherwise mail, but since it's free, or near free, why not. The beauty of this: It WILL get opened and read by the recipient. Here you have a personalized letter sent to someone with local adverts printed directly on it. The recipient is almost guaranteed to read it and see the advert.
These are off the top of my head. I could drum up that old business plan / feature spec and give you more details if you want.
Hope these ideas are us...
Let me start at the end - the idea isn't actually original. I remember Compuserve offering a similar service around the late 80's! I agree this all succeeds or fails based on execution.
> ... make sure you're doing address cleansing for the extra postage discounts.
Yes, this is actually addressed in our FAQ - we do address validation.
> Make a utility print driver so I can "Print To Postal Shout" -- this is VERY easy to do, at least on windows...
Could you please elaborate on this? I was always under the impression that building print drivers was a very expensive undertaking.
> ...Upon completion, create an XML doc (or similar) and call a web service ...
We actually do this now with our Word add-in which makes it easy to submit letters to distribution lists. Instead of running a mail merge in Word, the document and list are uploaded via Web Service.
> ...If you could somehow incorporate electronic signature / notary / SOMETHING into the documents...
This is very forward-looking at this stage of our project. I'll keep this in mind for later.
> Offer stationary / letterhead for the customers to design and use...
Great idea! With digital printing it's possible to print letterhead on the fly.
> You could offer discounts on the actual costs if the user was willing to have ads printed...
We haven't been successful in generating additional sales from similar initiatives in the past. I'll need to revisit this option.
> target Salesforce.com...
We do this with our postalmethods product, but haven't been diligent enough in execution. Will need to put more energy into this.
Thanks for all the suggestions! It would be great if you could clarify on the printer driver question above.
You can modify the registry entries to have the print driver called "Postal Shout Printer" -- upon user selection, it prints the document to your desired format and then launches your executable. From this, you get the filename and start all the processing. Step One: Who would you like to send this to, Step Two: starts the upload, etc... I built this wizard functionality over 10 years ago for a client and that's what triggered my idea that you've started to execute on. Back then, it was VB6 exe that was being launched and it was incredibly stable. I wrote some winapi hooks to get byte transfer speeds and calculate remaining upload time, etc... Also, hooked it into a CRM system so that the document could be linked to the CRM. Slightly different use case, but same net result.
I'm sure that driver isn't the only one capable of launching your own executable. I did a lot of research back then (including writing my own driver) and had many options - the pool of options must be much greater now.
I had the ability to create everything on my own back in the day, but I didn't have the capital to purchase the equipment necessary to make it all happen. That would have ran into the millions of dollars and I was never able to push it through (didn't really try that hard I guess). I should have just done the printing manually to build up a user base - but I didn't know much about business or even how to do it then. Heck, I still don't! :-)
My email is in my profile if you want more info. Or, feel free to ask here - your choice.
Thanks!