We believe Helium's target audience isn't the HN community, but it'd be good to get your thoughts about it anyways.
It's basically an easy way to add a shopping cart and check-out flow to a website. Think of the small business that's not tech-savvy but wants to sell a few products (or a service) on their site.
Design was by Michael Yuan, the same designer that designed Divvyshot.
Stripe so far has been really developer focused and so they've really targeted themselves towards that audience (home page, docs, marketing, etc.), unlike PayPal which is more consumer friendly. I think there's a lot of baggage that comes with being a consumer facing brand that Stripe doesn't have to deal with, at least not yet. That said, there isn't anything preventing them from doing so; it's definitely a risk for Stripe-based businesses like this, but Stripe could always just acquire or acqui-hire whoever does the best job.
Honestly, this feels like the sort of thing they were putting in contract work anyway, and just decided to change into a service since they had it anyway...
I would really strongly encourage y'all to put this demo on your main home page. Maybe auto populated with fake values and a cute little 'demo' warning.
Also the toggle buttons on the home page don't seem to work.
Interestingly enough, I'm just finishing up an email invoicing system that I'm planning on open sourcing. It integrates the Stripe button and can be hosted on Heroku.
I'll shoot you an email when it's up on github if you're interested.
You need to state your pricing structure clearly. Saying that you charge 2% over what Stripe charges makes it seem like you are hiding the total cost of transactions. Using Helium would cost people 4.5% plus 25 cents, am I right?
I also see that you are testing the response from HN. Well done. But the landing page for HN and regular visitors are the same. Why not run some quick tests with all the traffic?
You might have branding issues with the project Blimp (getblimp.com). The founders are really cool guys, but do chat with them about it.
The design is top-notch, though a button or link that scrolls down to the area with more information should be tested. Right now, the first impression you get is that this is an empty landing page.
Regarding pricing: We talked about the wording internally. It was decided that different people pay different stripe fees (eg volume discounts) and stripe may change their fees in the future w/o notice, so it's best to simply state what we charge. I've added a link to Stripe's pricing page to make things a little more clear.
I think this is a valid concern. IIRC such payment-related Javascript code should only be included in https:// context as other script code might interact with the payment form.
The page itself is loaded via HTTP, but all credit card information is transferred to Stripe & Helium via HTTPS. Again, with Helium, no payment information actually needs to hit your servers (Sam's blog, in this case).
You could always just put it in the first go, then if you get any traffic, replace it with a more efficient option. Most people never get enough traffic for percent cuts to matter anyway.
very cool.. the Odio family always up to big things :) love the simplicity + the design + the use-case. releasing this as a wordpress plugin would be killer - the entire shopping cart space is very muggle-unfriendly. that said, you're going to have to do alot of volume to make 2% worth your time - payments are coolest when tied to a marketplace, but your diff advantage is to not be a marketplace. you're going to have a tough time recouping the $$ you'll have to spend to gain the mass-market mindshare you'd want to drive that kind of volume. at the same time if the business turns out to be the bees knees, big guys will be quick to copy and out-spend you in marketing, while small guys (eg ribbon, gumroad) can quickly add "embedding" as a feature. i love the product (and the name!!), it's just a tough slog to "be the next PayPal" these days. quick feedback: your "effortless for everyone" is exceptionally well done, i would move it above the more standard 3 column descriptors.
i just saw freshplum- if you did helium as a way to <ahem> get freshplum into the air and with quick notoriety.. then i take back everything about being the next paypal - you did exactly the right thing. also i agree with others - bundle your pricing and state one clear %.
Here's a question about Helium. The premise is that for 2% any site could be made an eCommerce store, making total transaction fees around 5% for a dead-simple solution. This is great for anyone without the technical knowledge or desire to code their own solution in. What happens when the site gets successful? At what point is it worth it for the site owner to pay someone to build a more cost-effective solution? 2% for $1,000/month is only $20, but if the site gets much larger, you lose a customer.
I guess the strange fact is that the more successful your clients are, the more likely they are to leave. How will Helium deal with this?
Can I ask what you guys are using for the mouse-based signature feature? Is it something off the shelf or did you guys write it yourself?
FWIW, I think it is potentially a very viable product if you can find and effectively market to the proper niche (which obviously is not the HN crowd). Good luck!
So is your target customer is very small transaction web sellers? Because 4.9% + 30c per transaction is extremely high. That's 2.9% + 30c from stripe and 2% from you.
I would definitely consider capping the pricing structure. Something like 2% of the first $10k transasctions, and 0.5% thereafter. That or just have an introductory tier that's based on % of transactions, and higher level tiers that are monthly fees. The percentage fee is very attractive for small merchants who just want to try something out, but obviously loses its upside if your experiment works out.
* Why are the labels _inside_ the input field? It's surprising when you can edit _some_ text in a well but not all of it.
* Why is my email address under billing?
* Why is the CVC field on a different row?
* Email, name, and street address fields will contain long data. Neither my street address or email address will probably fit in there.
* Why is the year only two digits? Y2K led me to believe two-digit years means accidental ICBM lanches.
Also, I spent fifteen seconds wondering why I couldn't flip the switches underneath "Effortless for everyone" on https://gethelium.com/. I even tried dragging the switch nub left and right.
I hope this helps. This looks like a really useful service. I'd love to look at the integration documentation (if there is any).
Probably because Stripe uses it. Doesn't necessarily mean the UX should follow.
> * Why is the year only two digits? Y2K led me to believe two-digit years means accidental ICBM lanches.
Because it's like that on most cards and the idea is to match what people are looking at on their card as closely as possible.
It does seem to need a little polish, but I don't think the form layout is the _most_ important thing for them right now. It's certainly _an_ important thing.
Does it really matter much? It seems like a logical-enough section to place that field under. I can't think of use-cases where a user would be confused about this unless the company using this tool has primed them to think in certain way about Billing. For example, a company that says "we will never email you billing information" can have its users confused. But that is a made up use-case that is uncommon at best.
Why is the CVC field on a different row?
Again, your question makes it sound like there is a well-accepted standard that it should be on the same row. As an online shopper, I am used to finding the CVC field under the CC field and it has never bothered me.
Why is the year only two digits? Y2K led me to believe two-digit years means accidental ICBM lanches.
That could be because most credit cards list two digits instead of four. And if you have made a payment over phone, it is standard to say something like "0614"(instead of June 2014) when asked for expiration.
Just curious - When you mentioned payment over phone, do you mean via SMS? I'm not familiar with that 4-digit MMYY pattern, I've always been prompted for month & year as separate fields.
Great design and illustration, I broke <section id="any_website" class="three"> by resizing my browser window. Might want to consider an overflow: hidden; or have a more fluid layout. Love the blimp.
I don't understand why you need to charge with pricing-per-transaction. This seems like something you'd pay monthly for, no? I'd be curious to know why you decided not to do a subscription plan.
I really like the clouds in front of the airship! The movement is very subtle, which gives the design a refined feeling. Totally the kind of detail that could be overdone and become distracting, but I think you guys nailed it.
I like how your page tries to answer all questions of the potential customer right on the frontpage. First a clear value proposition, then some features, then the target customer ("where can I find myself?") and a short Q/A at the bottom.
May I ask how you created the responsive design for this page (fluid layout + mobile navbar)? I noticed some backbone.js in the script code, but I have no clue in how far you have used a CSS framework like e.g. Twitter Bootstrap.
We have been trying to find a great solution for web ordering. We sell doggie ice cream. We currently sell retail in Chicago. Have a couple of stores in New York that are interested in carrying our product.
We want a simple solution for our online ordering. First, we need to test and see if people are willing to order dog ice cream online.
This looks like a good solution for us to try. I will implement this later today. I will likely give some feedback.
A few comments are making an issue of the pricing (2% + Stripe's 2.9%) saying it's too high. It's not too high. If the product does it's job and makes it dead simple for the end user it might even be too low. As mentioned by someone else, the HN crowd likely isn't the target audience.
Fast Spring, which did 44.5 million in rev in 2011, charges 5.9% plus $.95 or 8.9% flat per order (user chooses which). Granted, Fast Spring may be more of a total ecommerce solution, but the point isn't +2%. It's who is the end user and how much easier does this product make their life/business.
The opinion of it being too high, is a perfectly respectable opinion given that there are free and one-time fee wordpress plugins that handle this integration.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 169 ms ] threadIt's basically an easy way to add a shopping cart and check-out flow to a website. Think of the small business that's not tech-savvy but wants to sell a few products (or a service) on their site.
Design was by Michael Yuan, the same designer that designed Divvyshot.
What would prevent them from doing so, which in theory could be a nice additional revenue stream for them (stealing [a part of] your 2% away)?
Also the toggle buttons on the home page don't seem to work.
It's easier to drop the price (or give volume discounts) than raise it.
https://www.wepay.com/online-invoicing
I'll shoot you an email when it's up on github if you're interested.
So for an invoice of $8000.00 I pay only $0.25 in transaction fee.
I also see that you are testing the response from HN. Well done. But the landing page for HN and regular visitors are the same. Why not run some quick tests with all the traffic?
You might have branding issues with the project Blimp (getblimp.com). The founders are really cool guys, but do chat with them about it.
The design is top-notch, though a button or link that scrolls down to the area with more information should be tested. Right now, the first impression you get is that this is an empty landing page.
A demo would also be nice.
Regarding the demo: we're planning on adding one to the home page. Until then I added the button to my blog: http://sam.odio.com/2012/10/31/buy-me-beer/
As for the product, is this a direct competitor to Gumroad?
I guess the strange fact is that the more successful your clients are, the more likely they are to leave. How will Helium deal with this?
FWIW, I think it is potentially a very viable product if you can find and effectively market to the proper niche (which obviously is not the HN crowd). Good luck!
https://stripe.com/us/help/pricing
If you're selling in any kind of volume, something like shopify would be a no brainer over this.
* Why is my email address under billing?
* Why is the CVC field on a different row?
* Email, name, and street address fields will contain long data. Neither my street address or email address will probably fit in there.
* Why is the year only two digits? Y2K led me to believe two-digit years means accidental ICBM lanches.
Also, I spent fifteen seconds wondering why I couldn't flip the switches underneath "Effortless for everyone" on https://gethelium.com/. I even tried dragging the switch nub left and right.
I hope this helps. This looks like a really useful service. I'd love to look at the integration documentation (if there is any).
Probably because Stripe uses it. Doesn't necessarily mean the UX should follow.
> * Why is the year only two digits? Y2K led me to believe two-digit years means accidental ICBM lanches.
Because it's like that on most cards and the idea is to match what people are looking at on their card as closely as possible.
It does seem to need a little polish, but I don't think the form layout is the _most_ important thing for them right now. It's certainly _an_ important thing.
Does it really matter much? It seems like a logical-enough section to place that field under. I can't think of use-cases where a user would be confused about this unless the company using this tool has primed them to think in certain way about Billing. For example, a company that says "we will never email you billing information" can have its users confused. But that is a made up use-case that is uncommon at best.
Why is the CVC field on a different row?
Again, your question makes it sound like there is a well-accepted standard that it should be on the same row. As an online shopper, I am used to finding the CVC field under the CC field and it has never bothered me.
Why is the year only two digits? Y2K led me to believe two-digit years means accidental ICBM lanches.
That could be because most credit cards list two digits instead of four. And if you have made a payment over phone, it is standard to say something like "0614"(instead of June 2014) when asked for expiration.
On long term things yes it's questionable. But credit cards all expire within a short date period so it's not a concern.
How do you handle chargebacks ?
Your homepage design is definitely better but it would be really nice to see a demo, screenshots, or a video somewhere.
Also, do you think you'll have problems with integration once you go beyond hackers who know how to paste embed code into their site?
May I ask how you created the responsive design for this page (fluid layout + mobile navbar)? I noticed some backbone.js in the script code, but I have no clue in how far you have used a CSS framework like e.g. Twitter Bootstrap.
Backbone is used when creating a page–mainly because we have certain attributes and form fields that only apply to certain pages.
We have been trying to find a great solution for web ordering. We sell doggie ice cream. We currently sell retail in Chicago. Have a couple of stores in New York that are interested in carrying our product.
We want a simple solution for our online ordering. First, we need to test and see if people are willing to order dog ice cream online.
This looks like a good solution for us to try. I will implement this later today. I will likely give some feedback.
This is a long sentence. How about "We bring powerful data analytics to online sales"?
Fast Spring, which did 44.5 million in rev in 2011, charges 5.9% plus $.95 or 8.9% flat per order (user chooses which). Granted, Fast Spring may be more of a total ecommerce solution, but the point isn't +2%. It's who is the end user and how much easier does this product make their life/business.