Ask HN: Please review my startup

1 points by combiclickwise ↗ HN
Its my attempt to simplify the process of sending and getting paid for invoices

http://www.howtosendaninvoice.com

8 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 30.8 ms ] thread
I'm going to be harsh, but this needs a LOT of work.

1)Maybe its my screen resolution (1280*1024), but the "Pay now" box overlaps the content of invoice sheet.

2)Where the hell is login? Not where I would expect it, somewhere at the top. its at the left side... In the middle?

3)Why is there a "tip" box that is titled "How?" What does that even mean?

4)What does the open button do in the bottom left corner? Er... Ok.. It saves my invoice...

5)Everything is just kind of floating around, no defining lines or colors. Makes it very hard to decide what is part of the web app and what is not.

This needs a major amount of UI changes to even make sense.

Thanks... I love feedback and coming from HN, the harsher the better.

1) I will test it in your screen resolution. It should not overlap.

2) The menu items are all over the place. I will bring them together in the next iteration.

3) The Tip box now says "Help"

4) The open button was a bug. Thanks for spotting that. I have now corrected it.

5) It was simpler when I started developing it but then the number of action links and text grew and it does look cluttered. I am not a designer. I am planning on getting some design help.

:-) Thanks again

I am on a roll working through this. I could only get to a 1280*768 on my machine but I see what you mean. The Pay Now box is now in its right place.

If you are around could you please test this again and let me know? I will be grateful

Pay Now is now correctly placed. Good job making fast changes!

Some updated thoughts:

1) I'd keep the [X]'s inside the App to be honest. They look kind of jarring outside, but maybe there is a third option I am missing

2) Still need to move login/signup to somewhere more obvious. Maybe move both those up to the very top right, along with moving "Hello Guest" with them up there as well. Then move the logo to the top left (instead of a little bit down from the top left), and make the Logo, sign in/signup/hello guest into a "top bar" by adding a line below these items. Would probably help a lot.

3)Pay Now is not overlapping, but now I'm not sure what it means. Does this mean I need to register (change this to Sign Up to keep wordage the same) to get the "pay feature", or is this part of the invoice?

1) The [X]'s are ugly I know... I will try and get an icon to come up on hover.

2) A top menu will probably clean up the mess with the menu items. I will work on that.

3) Good suggestion. I have changed the wordage now. Yes, it means you get the pay feature (your client will be able to pay you directly using PayPal or a CC)

Thanks again :-)

I have worked on your 5th point. I have just added a border around the web app area. Will work it a bit more
Also messed up on my screen.

Would be nice if users could load a background image.

You could extend the idea to other kinds of common form templates.

could you tell me your screen resolution?

This sounds interesting.. "You could extend the idea to other kinds of common form templates" - call me naive, but could you explain that with some examples that came to your mind please?

loading a background image is a neat idea... will add that to my list